Education: Debutante

Thirteen years ago a Manhattan drug manufacturer named William Van Duzer Lawrence went to Vassar’s President Henry Noble MacCracken for advice. Rich and generous Mr. Lawrence wanted to found a college for women but was not sure how to go about it. He was prepared to give the college his big gabled house Westlands in suburban Bronxville, N. Y., twelve acres of land, the sum of $1,250,000 and his wife’s name, Sarah Bates Lawrence. Would Vassar take the fledgling college under her wing? Magnanimous Dr. MacCracken promised that Vassar would.

Mr. Lawrence kept his promise and so did Dr. MacCracken. Sarah Lawrence College (chartered in 1926) opened its doors in 1928, year after Mr. Lawrence died, with 216 students, 36 faculty members and Henry Noble MacCracken as chairman of the board of trustees. That job Dr. MacCracken faithfully held until last week. Then he turned up at the college’s tenth anniversary banquet to announce that Sarah Lawrence was now able to go her way alone. Said he: “Mr. Lawrence recognized his own advanced age and was concerned lest the college, inadequately endowed, fall prey to misfortune or more grasping hands. Mr. Lawrence sought a defensive alliance with Vassar, giving that college the power … to control and finally take over Sarah Lawrence. … All its powers Vassar now willingly lays down.”

Exulted Sarah Lawrence’s President Constance Warren: “This marks our coming of age!”

What had come of age was the first U. S. women’s college dedicated to Progressive Education. Part of the advice President MacCracken gave Founder Lawrence was that big women’s colleges such as Vassar were growing to be much like big men’s colleges. He suggested that the new college might limit itself to a not too severe two-year course devoted to “activities” as well as study. Sarah Lawrence now has four fields of study: Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, the Arts and Literature. Each girl is expected to keep busy with individual projects, like planning a household budget, in addition to her class work. For her regular studies she meets for half-hour weekly “conferences” and a two-hour seminar with each of her instructors and her faculty adviser. Students have no lectures, textbooks, spend most of their working hours in the library or dropping in on busy people to ask questions.

In the beginning, Sarah Lawrence was so breezily progressive that its suburban neighbors viewed it askance, protested when it began to expand beyond the Lawrence estate. They complained that students raced through town in fur coats and rolled socks, played the piano and sang until all hours. Sarah Lawrence girls no longer overrun Bronxville. They are now responsible to advisers or “dons,” who watch their progress, give them permission to leave when they deserve holidays. When President Warren, stately, handsome daughter of the headmaster of Albany (N. Y.) Academy for boys, succeeded President Marion Coats in 1929, she put through a charter enabling the college to give a four-year course, grant A. B. degrees. Though few Sarah Lawrence girls avail themselves of the longer course, under Miss Warren the enrolment has grown, to 277, tuition has been shaved from $1,800 to $1,700. President Warren’s last big day in the news came when she forbade students to hitchhike to Yonkers for the afternoon for fear that they might be kidnapped. That provoked a memorable controversy between President Warren and the Mayor of Yonkers. To replace Board Chairman MacCracken, Sarah Lawrence last week elected Dr. Elliott Dunlap Smith, master of Yale’s Saybrook College. Elected a trustee was one of Sarah Lawrence’s own alumnae: Mrs. John Appleton Clark of Manhattan, Class of 1932, aged 24.