Colleges: Claremont’s Sixth

“She’s a big, tall, strong blonde,” a Pitzer College admissions officer scrawled enthusiastically, in summing up the qualifications of a bright and idealistic student applicant. Personal evaluations count heavily at California’s intensely informal Pitzer, where the teachers lecture in shirtsleeves, barefoot girls pad into class carrying Cokes, and the janitor speaks his mind at faculty-student meetings so tumultuously democratic, says President John W. Atherton, “that the only way I can restrain myself from yelling is to walk out with great dignity.” Destruction of Innocence. Endowed by Orange Grower Russell K. Pitzer with a $1.2 million trust, the school nestles on a plain beneath the rugged San Gabriel Mountains 35 miles from Los Angeles. Dedicated this week, Pitzer is the sixth sibling in the distinguished cooperative family of Claremont Colleges* and the first independent U.S. college for women since Bennington was founded in 1932.

The school is sure of its goal—the study of the behavioral and social sciences—but in its first hectic weeks it is engagingly unsure of how to get there.

Pitzer’s 156 students and ten faculty members are alternately merry and moody as they strive to reduce chaos to confusion. “I’m just completely, totally in ecstasy over this whole thing,” bubbles Student Taffy Squires. “But the hardest part is that there is nothing concrete to hold on to.” The most concrete aspect of Pitzer is its first two buildings, a dormitory and a combination administration-classroom building, which are wired for closed-circuit television and tape recordings designed to transmit lectures, panel discussions and dramatic productions right into the girls’ rooms. Teaching methods are mostly experimental. Anthropologist George Park has set out to prove that “education is the destruction of innocence,” envisions a race-relations course that will generate an understanding of the motivations behind the White Citizens Councils, Psychologist Ruth Munroe is enthusiastic about a student who is analyzing novels according to whether they observe the Ten Commandments. “I don’t know if she’ll come out with a statistical study,” says Teacher Munroe, “but she will have a different view of social behavior and, perhaps, literature.” Adds Husband Lee Munroe, like his wife a Ph.D. from Harvard: “Right now the girls don’t know the difference between social work and social science. But by the time they’re seniors, they will be able to use the computer to analyze data.” Until that happy day, instruction is backed up by established courses at other Claremont colleges, which “Pitzies,” as the new breed is known, can attend.

Instant Tradition. Pitzer aims to expand its enrollment to 600 girls within five years. In the meantime, students and faculty have formed a unique partnership to produce an instant tradition. At weekly “TownHall Meetings” they debate issues that range from whether the girls should be required to wear skirts at meals to writing a school constitution. On the theory that a college ought to be a model democracy, Pitzer has demolished the sanctity of faculty meetings and invited elected student representatives to take part. A few checks and balances remain, however. Dean Charlotte Elmott recently vetoed a unanimous student vote for a midnight curfew on dormitory visits; conforming to the deadline at all-girl Scripps, the witching hour for Pitzies is 11 p.m.

Pitzer’s biggest asset is that its own inventive enthusiasm is teamed in comforting alliance with the Claremont Colleges, which will help pay Pitzer’s bills until the school is self-sufficient. In the words of Classics Scholar Stephen Glass, a Pomona graduate: “There is newness here without risk.”

* The others: Pomona, Scripps, Claremont, Harvey Mudd, and a jointly run graduate school.