Why Save Newcomb College? A First-Hand Account.

The following is a response to a conversation I found on Tulane's Facebook page dated December 10, 2009 where a female Tulane student made a comment about leaving Newcomb College 'behind' to which several Newcomb alumnae, including myself, felt disheartened enough to respond. It was reprinted with my permission & minor modifications by The Future of Newcomb College (TFoNC) in their Save Newcomb Daisychain Newsletter 2/16/10 with the following description:

RAISING OUR VOICES: A MESSAGE FROM FACEBOOK

Add your voice to the chorus to Save Newcomb. Join the Save Newcomb group on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=15371595213&ref=ts and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/SaveNewcomb. We need to hear from you.

Recently, a Newcomb alumna wrote a Facebook entry in reply to someone asking why Newcomb alumnae were still devastated and vocal about the closure of Newcomb College. Her message, condensed here, is worth repeating:

Many, Newcomb alumnae, supporters, employees, and community are grieving the loss of a very sacred, special, unique, and irreplaceable institution that: was the first women's coordinate college within a university in the USA; the first degree-granting college for women within a university in the USA; opened doors for women to learn on the same campus as men; paved the way for women to enter co-educational academic atmospheres around the world; was founded at a time when women not only, did not yet have the right to vote in the USA and most, other countries, but by a mother (Josephine Louise Newcomb) in honor of her daughter (H. Sophie Newcomb), a young woman who died too early in life --age 15-- to be able to fully develop her own education, life purpose and legacy. Newcomb College, the center of the Newcomb & women's academic wheel at Tulane, with its multitude of internal spokes including,Newcomb Pottery, Newcomb Dance, Newcomb Arts, Newcomb Theater, Newcomb Sports, Newcomb Senate, Newcomb College Center For Research on Women, Newcomb Nursery, Tulane Junior Year Abroad Program, (which was run by women & housed in Newcomb Hall), provided not simply, academic infrastructure but also respect, inclusion, embrace, recognition, tradition, culture, innovation, safety, and celebration of womanhood for 120 years to tens of thousands of women from around the world, over decades, centuries, and even millenia! These women profoundly,continue to grieve the loss of their Newcomb 'Mother' alongside their Tulane 'Father' within the Tulane University family.

While the history of Newcomb College may seem like it only, applied to women from 'long ago', when we look at the facts of women's lives in Louisiana and around the world, we see otherwise. Women still, earn .66 cents to the male dollar in Louisiana and .77 cents to the male dollar nationally (this rate often, is considerably lower forfurther, marginalized female populations.) Studies show that approximately 1 in 3 women will be abused, attacked, or physically violated in her lifetime. According to the American Association of University Women, 20-25% of women will be sexually assaulted or experience attempted sexual assault during their college career and 95% of sexual assaults on campus go unreported (http://www.aauw.org/advocacy/laf/lafnetwork/library/assault_stats.cfm). By contrast, common research shows that women who have access to women-only education & classroom atmospheres--not to the exclusion of co-ed but in addition to--maintain higher self-esteem, higher performance rates, greater successes in class group-work, stronger class participation, more personal empowerment, and report feeling safer/happier in their college experiences, overall. As a Newcomb Women's Studies alumnae I understand first-hand, not only psychologically but academically, statistically, and clinically how women, both on and off-campus, whether student or staff, are being affected by the closing of Newcomb.

At this time, we cannot afford to lose ANY resources for women anywhere in the world. We simply, don't have enough to spare. The reinstatement of Newcomb College is a reinvestment--not only, in the lifelong 'literary and practical' education for women that Josephine Newcomb desired, mandated, and entrusted that Tulane would provide its female students specifically, through a degree-granting college for women in perpetuity--but in the education and prosperity of women worldwide.

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