Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 2, 1990 TAG: 9006020345
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN ROSENFELD THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WELLESLEY, MASS. LENGTH: Long
On an early spring day, when New England is just beginning to turn green, students guide wooden hoops with a stick over a course on their elegant campus. It used to be that the woman who got to the finish line first was dubbed the first who would marry. In recent years the winner is said to be the first who will make $1 million.
Both fates seem to be regarded with an equal lack of seriousness, but the newer tradition represents, in a small way, the change in what Wellesley women expect of themselves. The class of 1990 has packed up sweat pants and answering machines, worrying about jobs or grad school or getting a ride to Arizona, knowing that this spring will not soon be forgotten.
As Act 3 in this drama unfolded - Friday morning's commencement address by Barbara Bush - the students could be assured that at least it dealt with important themes. The speech was clouded by controversy over women's roles in modern American life that began, innocuously enough, with a protest over Barbara Bush's selection to address the graduates.
Bush was joined at the women's college graduation by her Soviet counterpart Raisa Gorbachev, who delivered her own words of advice to the 575 graduates and nearly 5,000 other guests gathered inside a white tent on the sylvan campus.
In her address, the first lady sounded the same themes she usually discusses at commencements, but acknowledged with a joke the controversy over her appearance.
"I know your first choice for today was Alice Walker, known for `The Color Purple,' " she said. "Instead you got me, known for the color of my hair," said the woman George Bush affectionately calls the Silver Fox.
She urged the women to "cherish your human connections, your relationships with friends and family."
"You will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent," she said.
Rising shrillness
Act 1 began with what appeared to be a small group of seniors objecting as many seniors on other campuses have before them to the person who was to give the commencement address. They expected a message of advice and inspiration with which they were to leave their snug world ". . . of unapologetically intelligent women" (as a 1988 graduate put it).
Since the speaker they objected to was the first lady, and her selection was questioned on the grounds that she was chosen only because of the position of her husband, Act 2 ushered onto the stage everyone and his uncle - or aunt - who ever had an opinion about feminism.
The reams of editorials, letters, calls, telegrams from alumnae, talk shows and call-in radio programs, all sparked by what was intended to be a 6 1 BUSH Bush private and almost deferential protest, prompted a lot of talk about women, feminism and the current buzzwords: changing roles, choices and empowerment.
The pundits weighed in with defenses of Barbara Bush, motherhood, volunteerism and middle age, while a separate, misogynist bunch hurled invective at the young women of Wellesley. ("Spinster tartlets" was one of the more endearing epithets.)
It is no longer possible to figure out how much of the debate was the result of what the Wellesley protesters actually said and how much was reaction to what people thought they said, or wished they had said.
On the campus itself - an exquisite lakeside enclave of green lawns and stone towers - the discussion for the most part was temperate, in the Wellesley tradition.
Off the campus, the tone was shriller. The Denver Post called the protesters "snobbish little brats" and "wet-nosed upstarts."
Mike Barnicle, a columnist for the Boston Globe who fancies himself a spokesman for the working stiff but lives in a posh suburb himself, referred to them as "chicks," "girls," "female persons" and "a pack of whining, unshaved feminists." Susana Cardenas, one of the protest organizers, was told to go home to Peru by an anonymous writer who called himself (must have been a he) only "An American."
An alumna wrote the campus newspaper, saying, ". . . this is your grandmother speaking: you are being rude." Another lectured, "If you think a woman who can successfully raise 5 children while following an ambitious husband . . . is not a woman of achievement, then you haven't a clue as to how the real world works, nor do you understand the meaning of your liberal-arts education. Grow up!"
What's going on here?
"I guess we touched a nerve," said Peggy Reid one of the seniors who wrote the petition.
A small protest
When Reid heard that Barbara Bush was to be the commencement speaker at Reid's graduation, she called her friend Cardenas. "We've got to do something," she said, and that evening they and two other friends batted out a two-paragraph petition that said the undersigned objected to Bush because she was known only because her husband was famous and requested an additional speaker "who would more aptly reflect the self-affirming qualities of a Wellesley graduate."
The next day they made copies of it for each of the 20 Wellesley dorms and set up a table in the student center to solicit signatures. They deliberately restricted their objections to philosophical issues, rather than political ones such as abortion or party affiliation.
And they were careful, they said, not to harass people into signing. They got 150 signatures from among the 632 seniors, about 23 percent of the class.
A week later the whole matter was resolved to their satisfaction (a change in the selection process for future speakers), and they went on spring break. Three weeks after that they were - as their commencement speaker's husband used to say - in deep doodoo.
A brief story by a stringer for the Boston Globe that appeared on an inside page ignited a media brush fire that left them and many others on campus hurt, confused, angry or, in some cases, quietly delighted.
Let's get one thing straight: Neither Peggy Reid nor Susana Cardenas lacks respect for Barbara Bush or her achievements as a wife, mother and volunteer. They love their mothers (Reid's is a lawyer; Cardenas's is a nurse) and hope to be mothers themselves someday.
But, they argued, if Bush was being honored by their college for those achievements, there are many other women who are equally accomplished in those areas. The thing that placed Bush on the list of commencement speakers is her husband. And they questioned the appropriateness of that choice, given the fact that they are expected to achieve on their own.
Previous commencement speakers in their memory - Michael Dukakis's campaign manager Susan Estrich (who shocked many by talking about having been raped), Gloria Steinem (who was too radical for some and too boring for others), Cabinet member Elizabeth Hanford Dole (seriously dull), Harvard psychologist and feminist Carol Gilligan (also dullsville) - were all women who fit that category.
Not exactly radicals
To thumb through a Wellesley yearbook ("Legenda") is to see the many faces of today's women. There are pictures of "Flower Sunday," when the students attend an interfaith service, and seniors give flowers to freshmen; the Asian Association Blind Date Dance; a vigil for the Central Park rape victim, who was an honors graduate; and the 800 women who traveled to Washington for the March for Choice in 1989. "Wendy Wellesley will always include velvet and taffeta in her wardrobe," said one line in an entry about a fashion show.
It was claimed by several highly reliable sources that more than one student has been seen wearing a suit and heels to class, but there was no evidence of this on a recent visit. Dress was strictly the oversized sweat shirt, baggy sweat pants fashion popular on most campuses. But there must be some reason that the small town of Wellesley supports both a Talbots and a Pappagallo.
And if during commencement, anyone was wearing one of the newly spawned T-shirts, which say on the back, "Just a bunch of whiny unshaven radical spinster tartlets," it was under her robe.
The lone note of discord during the ceremony was aimed at Raisa Gorbachev, not Barbara Bush. During the playing of the Soviet national anthem, a handful of protesters held up a banner that read, "Free the Baltics."
The debate over the value of single-sex education is a "dead fish" on this campus, in the words of one sociology professor. Going coed was discussed in 1970, said Nancy Agnew, vice president for media relations, and rejected.
The school has no shortage of applicants, and it accepts fewer than half of those who apply. The college has a healthy endowment, including $107 million of a projected $150 million fund-raising campaign.
What the students who are accepted want from the school is less clear.
"They want success, but not at the expense of traditional values relating to family. They are confused about what their expectations should be. . . . And they don't get much help from their professors, their parents or the popular culture.
They are taught that self-determination for women is an absolute value, but what those words mean is left open. . . . These are some anxious people."
Andrews, who is one of few black males on campus, was asked by the senior class to give the baccalaureate address, a more informal event that took place in the chapel Thursday night. The assigned theme is "illumination."
Prompted in part by the Bush debate, he planned to read or reread five books to prepare for his "sermon," ranging from a new biography of Simone de Beauvoir to the book of Isaiah from the Old Testament.
"They are expected to be their family's sons and daughters. Nobody expects a son to be a daughter too. It's a lot to ask," said Susan Reverby, director of the women's-studies program. "If you go over to Harvard and interview male seniors, I don't think you'll find them worrying about how they're going to combine work and fatherhood."
A small victory
Reid and Cardenas did not succeed in getting an additional speaker for commencement. (Raisa Gorbachev, a surprise bonus delivered by Bush, wasn't what they had in mind.) But they did succeed in changing the process.
Next year, after the first round of nominations is whittled to 20, there will be another vote by the senior class to select the first choices.
"It probably isn't important to anyone outside of Wellesley, but we got the system changed," Cardenas said.
Now that the hate mail and the phone calls from Australian newspapers and radio talk shows that don't tell you they're live has died down, she can look back and feel proud of the whole episode. "We provided a forum," she said.
"It was a learning process," Reid said.
Apparently an on-going process.
Before the commencement Friday, Reid and Cardenas had a new broadside waiting on each of the chairs.
"We ask you, Barbara Bush, as a concerned mother and as a symbol of service to others, to take a definitive and vocal stand on the following critical issues that shape the lives of women in the United States," they said.
The issues include the "deterioration of women's reproductive rights"; passage of a family and medical leave act that President Bush has threatened to veto, and affordable day care.
Act 4?
The Associated Press provided some information for this story
by CNB