May 2001 

The folks at Wellesley College reacted in a predictable manner to our story about what adults are teaching the students about morals and values.

The president, Diana Chapman Walsh, hid from view and told the students to defend the school.

Some of the students attempted to do so while others distanced themselves from the scandal.

The letters below continue the mantra that Wellesley isn’t different from other schools. “Everyone does it,” they say. They are clearly regurgitating the humanistic worldview they have been taught: “There is no ‘right’ nor ‘wrong.’ Everything is relative.”

A recent graduate wrote, “Let me remind you that you can find a gay population on almost every campus in the United States.”

Another said, “You took several stories that could have happened at any school and blew them way out of proportion.”

A freshman said, “Homosexuality is present to a certain degree at Wellesley, as it is almost anywhere else, and it is both acknowledged and accepted on campus.”

We have to agree with the students that Wellesley isn’t “different,” but it should be. The man who founded the College back in 1875, Henry F. Durant, started a school that would be different. It would present women with the finest education available anywhere. It would be special and unique. The students would be proud that they are “different.”

Their education would include studies in the spiritual and moral realm as well as the physical. That is obviously not true today.

Most Probably Reject the School’s Values

Other students showed some discomfort with what goes on. They told Emily Rooney as anonymous voices on her Channel 2 show, in effect, that they aren’t part of those people featured in the Rolling Stone article.

Student #1. “The article implies that the activities that are mentioned in the [Rolling Stone] article are widespread at Wellesley ... and neither of those things are true.”

Student #2. “I know that some things in the article, some things do go on.”

Student #3. “I was repulsed and disgusted and I think it is really sad that this whole intellectual community can be belittled by something so very untrue.”

Should the College Be A ‘Day Care?’

The letters below carry the message that the college is not a “day care center.” But they totally miss the point because, in fact, Wellesley College is a “day care center.”

Most parents of a 17- or 18-year-old girl who has graduated from high school are happy and proud, but a little anxious, to see their daughter happily ensconced in her own apartment if she is moving to a new city. But they would also like to check the apartment and the neighborhood in which she is establishing her new home.

But when a girl goes to Wellesley, she is not going to her own apartment. She is not going to be independent. She is going to an institution which is going to be teaching her new values and morals. The teenager will not be on her own; she will be at a place where adults are waiting to inculcate her.

The college placed a large article in a recent alumnae magazine by an alumna who wrote that Wellesley is an escape from the world. She said, “We knew we were living in a safe place for four years, and upon graduation we would get our faces slapped by the reality of the cold, cruel, capitalistic, patriarchal world.” It was like living in a “womb,” she wrote. “I attributed [this] to Wellesley’s resemblance to a womb. Other students saw this, too. We even called our college the Wellesley womb.”

That is by definition a “day care center.”

What values and morals are the students learning from those adults? No one denies the brief “window” of Wellesley that Rolling Stone showed us.

No one can deny that casual sex, both heterosexual and homosexual, is tolerated -- and even approved -- by Diana Walsh and the other adults. As for the heterosexual students, everyone knows that if a heterosexual girl wishes to have a boy stay for the night, her roommate is expected to vacate to a new bed. As for homosexuals, no one denies that there are special areas and dorms reserved for those who wish to practice homosexuality.

As we mentioned in our article, not every student accepts the milieu that she finds at the school. One Mormon girl was cited in Rolling Stone as saying that it reinforced her “conservative upbringing.” In addition, we know many others whose names we will not mention who went through unscathed. But it would be difficult to pass through without digesting some approval of the worldview that any sexual activity is fine as long as it feels good and doesn’t “hurt anyone.”

That should be a concern to everyone, students, parents and alumnae. After all, a recent telephone poll shows that 92% of Massachusetts citizens believe that teenagers should not be encouraged to be sexually active.

It was also disappointing, but not surprising, that no one will explain the large article which was printed in the Wellesley alumnae magazine in 1995. It was a total lie about the president of Harvard, and an attempt to make the college students believe that men have always opposed women. The lie was documented in our April issue, but Ms. Walsh hopes that it will also fade away.

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