The appeal and the promise of a women's college

I HEARTILY endorse the view of Mount Holyoke president Joanne V. Creighton that we need women's colleges (Op-ed, May 21). And I offer two more reasons.

All of us absorb cultural messages as naturally and constantly as the air we breathe. And like air, the messages we take in are often invisible. As a student at Smith College, I was too busy to think about the fact that every student organization was run by women. Every demonstration was organized by women. The top athletes, artists, and orators were women. Women wrote and published the articles we read in the newspaper. The most compelling arguments in class were made . . . by women. What I have noticed since graduation is that other alumnae and I take for granted -- like the air -- that women can do anything.

If that doesn't persuade you, consider this. In today's world of over-the-top competitiveness in college admissions, boys have an edge because of their declining enrollment numbers. At women's colleges, this disadvantage for girls disappears. Girls have a great deal to gain from attending women's colleges -- not just an excellent education, but a lesson for life.

CHERYL SUCHORS
Cambridge

I WAS relieved to see Joanne V. Creighton remind readers not to forget the enduring challenges women face at a moment when a woman seems to have shattered the ultimate academic glass ceiling by becoming the president of Harvard. But she might have gone further to encourage Drew Gilpin Faust and other national leaders to draw on the astonishing achievements of women's colleges to make a difference at co-educational schools.

The fact remains that the vast majority of women are educated at mixed-sex institutions, where they currently make up the majority of applicants and yet face higher hurdles than men for entrance as colleges seek to strike something like gender balance among incoming students. Women's colleges have an important role to play, not just in providing women "a room of one's own," but in teaching colleges across the country how to make room for the legions of bright female students in their midst.

LINZY BREKKE-ALOISE
Somerville
The writer, a 1998 graduate of Mount Holyoke, is assistant professor of history at Stonehill College.