From Sunday's Star-Ledger:
College deserves to keep its identity
Sunday, October 09, 2005
In 2019 -- just 14 years from now -- Douglass College, the country's largest publicly funded women's college within a major co-ed research university, will celebrate its 100th anniversary.
Maybe.
Or maybe not. Because by that time, should the recommendations of Rutgers' Task Force on Undergraduate Education prevail, Douglass will no longer be a college. It will be a campus within Rutgers University, effectively eradicating not only the cshool's identity, but one of New Jersey's most respected institutions.
Not surprisingly, this questionable new status for Douglass is largely the brainchild of men, who outnumber women on the task force roughly two to one and who, pparently, aren't especially concerned with preserving and serving the student population of one of Rutgers' unique components.
Douglass is already under the Rutgers umbrella. The task force is now saying it must be totally overshadowed by that umbrella.
Subsuming Douglass is not the primary goal of the task force's recommendations, of course. In the bigger picture, it's trying to find ways to better let the world know what a fine university we have in Rutgers -- a worthy and admirable goal. So it was entirely appropriate for President Richard McCormick to convene a group of faculty, students and staff to generate ideas for transforming its undergraduate education structure and overall image.
Problem is, the Douglass recommendation will work against the latter goal. While it makes good sense to consolidate and centralize applications and other functions, it makes no sense to replace the school's historic college system with a consolidated Rutgers College of Arts and Sciences.
Fact is, many large and prestigious universities are happily subdivided into colleges. At Yale, for instance, every prospective student applies to Yale and, if accepted, is assigned to one of its colleges. While these colleges don't provide separate academic programs (aside from the occasional seminar), they serve as a residential hub and the center of student life. It's where you live, eat and socialize -- the idea being it's easier to forge connections in a small community than in the sprawling environment of a huge university.
Yes, the uniqueness of some Rutgers institutions -- Douglass being strictly for women, for example, or Cook for agricultural studies -- would argue against random assignments for incoming freshmen. But surely there are ways to work that out, with an applying student stating a preference for a particular college.
You'd think that would accomplish several of the report's key objectives, such as improving admissions and recruitment or providing a nurturing and satisfying environment.
I'm not even sure the undergraduate programs at the central campus in New Brunswick ought to retain the Rutgers College nomenclature, as its own surveys show that name carries more prestige than Rutgers' other undergraduate institutions.
Perhaps a way to spread that prestige through the whole institution -- and, incidentally, eliminate the confusing distinction between Rutgers College and Rutgers University -- would be to return Rutgers College to the name Queens College, which is what it was called from the time it opened its doors in 1766 to the day it was named for Revolutionary War veteran Col. Henry Rutgers in 1825.
A survey last year found people were confused by Rutgers' myriad schools, campuses and programs -- and who can blame them, considering the school's facilities are sprinkled around the state like confetti?
So make it easy. Give each facility the prestige of being a college with the university's moniker attached -- Douglass College, Rutgers; Livingston College, Rutgers; Queens College, Rutgers; Cook College, Rutgers; and so on.
A significant benefit of that plan could be money, as in alumni donations.
A fellow I know who went to New York University's Stern School of Business tells me he receives annual pitches from both NYU and Stern. He always gives to Stern, almost never to NYU. Clearly, Stern is the keeper of his memories, the institution to which he feels the stronger connection.
But here's the most compelling reason for Rutgers to retain Douglass' status as a college: It's the right thing to do.
A tradition at Douglass that began in 1919, when the school opened as New Jersey College for Women, held that no freshman students could use the path between College Hall and George Street until the end of the year, when they would be ushered down that path by upper-class women.
That initiation rite along the torch-lit "Sacred Path" continues to this day.
Every institution, over time, develops such traditions and rituals. They are part of its character. Douglass has more than earned the right to keep what it has built.
Fran Wood is a Star-Ledger columnist.
