Seven Sisters (colleges)

Seven Sisters
Data
Established	1927
Continent	North America
Country	United States
University type	Private liberal arts college

The Seven Sisters are seven historically women's liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States. They are Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Smith College, Wellesley College, and Vassar College. They were all founded between 1837 and 1889. Four are in Massachusetts, two are in New York, and one is in Pennsylvania. Radcliffe (which merged with Harvard College) and Vassar (which became coeducational in 1969) are no longer women's colleges.

Seven sister colleges

Institution	Location	School type	Full-time enrollment	Opened door to students	Collegiate Charter
Mount Holyoke College/originally Mount Holyoke Female Seminary	South Hadley, Massachusetts	Private women's college	2,100	1837	1888
Vassar College	Poughkeepsie, New York	Private coeducational	2,400	1861	1861
Wellesley College	Wellesley, Massachusetts	Private women's college	2,300	1875	1870
Smith College	Northampton, Massachusetts	Private women's college	2,750	1875	1871
Radcliffe College/originally The Harvard Annex	Cambridge, Massachusetts	Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (no longer accepts students)	n/a	1879	1894
Bryn Mawr College	Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania	Private women's college	1,229	1885	1885
Barnard College	Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York	Private women's college	2,356	1889	1889

History

Background

In Women's Colleges in the United States: History, Issues, and Challenges, Irene Harwarth, Mindi Maline, and Elizabeth DeBra note that "Independent nonprofit women’s colleges, which included the 'Seven Sisters' and other similar institutions, were founded to provide educational opportunities to women equal to those available to men and were geared toward women who wanted to study the liberal arts". The colleges also offered broader opportunities in academia to women, hiring many female faculty members and administrators.

Early proponents of education for women were Sarah Pierce (Litchfield Female Academy, 1792); Catharine Beecher (Hartford Female Seminary, 1823); Zilpah P. Grant Banister (Ipswich Female Seminary, 1828); and Mary Lyon. Lyon was involved in the development of both Hartford Female Seminary and Ipswich Female Seminary. She also helped establish Wheaton Female Seminary (now Wheaton College, Massachusetts) in 1834. In 1837, Lyon founded Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (Mount Holyoke College), the "first of the Seven Sisters." Mount Holyoke received its collegiate charter in 1888 and became Mount Holyoke Seminary and College. It became Mount Holyoke College in 1893. Harwarth, Maline, and DeBra note that, "Mount Holyoke’s significance is that it became a model for a multitude of other women’s colleges throughout the country." Both Vassar College and Wellesley College were patterned after Mount Holyoke. Vassar was the first of the Seven Sisters to be chartered as a college in 1861.

Wellesley College was chartered in 1870 as the Wellesley Female Seminary and was renamed Wellesley College in 1873. It opened its doors to students in 1875. Radcliffe College was originally created in 1879 as The Harvard Annex for women's instruction by Harvard faculty. It was chartered as Radcliffe College by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1894. Barnard College became affiliated with Columbia University in 1900, but it continues to be independently governed. Smith College was chartered in 1871 and opened its doors in 1875. Bryn Mawr opened in 1885.

Mount Holyoke College and Smith College are also members of Pioneer Valley's Five Colleges consortium, which also includes Amherst College, Hampshire College, and University of Massachusetts Amherst. Bryn Mawr College is a part of the Tri-College Consortium in suburban Philadelphia, with its sister schools, Haverford College and Swarthmore College.

Formation and name

Harwarth, Maline, and DeBra also state that "the 'Seven Sisters' was the name given to Barnard, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Radcliffe, because of their parallel to the Ivy League men’s colleges" in 1927.

The name, Seven Sisters, is a reference to the Greek myth of The Pleiades (mythology), the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the sea-nymph Pleione. The daughters were collectively referred to as The Seven Sisters and included, Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope. In the field of astronomy, a cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus is also referred to as The Pleiades (star cluster) or the Seven Sisters.

Late 20th century

Beginning in 1963, students at Radcliffe received Harvard diplomas signed by the presidents of Radcliffe and Harvard. Joint commencement exercises began in 1970, and several Harvard and Radcliffe dormitories began swapping students experimentally. In 1972, full co-residence was instituted, and the departments of athletics of both schools merged shortly thereafter. In 1977, Harvard and Radcliffe signed an agreement which put undergraduate women entirely in Harvard College. In 1999, Radcliffe College was dissolved and Harvard University assumed full responsibility over the affairs of female undergraduates. Radcliffe is now the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Women's Studies at Harvard University.

Vassar College declined an offer to merge with Yale University and instead became coeducational in 1969.

Mount Holyoke College engaged in a lengthy debate under the presidency of David Truman over the issue of coeducation. On 6 November 1971, "after reviewing an exhaustive study on coeducation, the board of trustees decided unanimously that Mount Holyoke should remain a women's college, and a group of faculty was charged with recommending curricular changes that would support the decision."

Smith College also made a similar decision in 1971.

In 1969, Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College (then all-male) developed a system of sharing residential colleges. When Haverford became coeducational in 1980, Bryn Mawr discussed the possibly of coeducation as well but decided against it.

In 1983, Columbia University began admitting women after a decade of failed negotiations with Barnard College for a merger along the lines of Harvard and Radcliffe (Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia since 1900, but it continues to be independently governed).

Wellesley College also decided against coeducation during this time.

Seven Sister colleges in popular culture

There are a number of references to Seven Sister Colleges in American popular culture. As noted by Mount Holyoke College, "The Seven Sisters were immortalized in popular culture in a 2003 episode of The Simpsons. Having won local and state spelling bees, Lisa Simpson advances to the national finals. However, the moderator, concerned about the contest’s low television ratings, offers Lisa free tuition ('and a hot plate') at the Seven Sisters college of her choice if she will allow a more popular contestant to win. Lisa refuses, but she has a dream in which stereotypical incarnations of the Seven Sisters appear to her."

The article, "Wellesley College Is Among the Stars of the Film, Mona Lisa Smile" indicates the role of Wellesley in the Julia Roberts film.

Finally, the 1978 film, National Lampoon's Animal House satirizes a common practice up until the mid-1970s, when women attending Seven Sister colleges were connected with or to students at Ivy League schools. The film, which takes place in 1962, shows fraternity brothers from Delta house of the fictional Faber College (based on Dartmouth College) taking a road trip to the fictional Emily Dickinson College (either Mount Holyoke College or Smith College).

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Creighton, Joanne V. A Tradition of Their Own: Or, If a Woman Can Now Be President of Harvard, Why Do We Still Need Women’s Colleges?.
• Howard Greene and Mathew W. Greene (2000). Greenes' Guides to Educational Planning: The Hidden Ivies: Thirty Colleges of Excellence. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-095362-4. 
• Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993 (2nd edition).
• Perkins, Linda M. (Spring 1998). The Racial Integration of the Seven Sister Colleges. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: 104–08.

External links

• The Historic Seven Sisters - Barnard College
• The Seven Sisters - Mount Holyoke College
• Seven Sisters - Encyclopædia Britannica
• Seven Sisters and a Country Cousin

Seven Sister Colleges

Barnard • Bryn Mawr • Mount Holyoke • Radcliffe (merged with Harvard) • Smith • Vassar (coeducational) • Wellesley

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