I went to RMWC from 1979 to 1982, and attended their 1981-82 junior year program in Reading, UK. Last year, without so much as a by-your-leave, we were “informed” that the school was in financial trouble, and that they were ending the Reading program, selling the UK student houses, chop-chop, end of story. The alums who had gone to Reading were outraged, and the board had to back down for a year but Reading’s end is imminent. However…we weren’t paying attention to the big picture, which is emerging now.

Because one thing that struck me as odd at the time of the Reading announcement was one of the justifications for closing Reading;the RMWC Board of Trustees felt that the money from Reading needed to be put toward a new, fancy student center in Lynchburg because, according to “perception” (from a focus group, I’m sure) RMWC was not a fun, exciting place to be. We should have been asking ourselves, “Hmmm, where’s this fire coming from?”

So…it seems to me the destiny of these special places–Newcomb, Randolph-Macon W. C., and other women’s colleges–can all too often lie in the hands of “bean counting” trustees, or trustees in thrall to a president with a hidden agenda. Pardon my naivete, but how do trustees who don’t “get” a school wind up on its board?

Yet there are the success stories, as well. How do these schools manage to maintain their mandate and sense of place, and retain a supportive board of trustees? How does Hampden-Sydney do it, or Sweet Briar, or Mount Holyoke? The only things I can think of are that alumnae/alumni (for H-S) have a great deal of power and influence, and nearly all the students who attend these places do so because they specifically want to be at a single-sex school. But…that was exactly the sort of place Randolph-Macon Woman’s College was. If Newcomb will live again, and other single-sex schools are to survive and thrive, we need to mark these places and learn from them.