Sarah Lawrence College: Encyclopedia II - Sarah Lawrence College - History

Sarah Lawrence College - History

Sarah Lawrence College - Early History

Founded in 1927 by pharmaceutical and real estate mogul William Van Duzer Lawrence on the grounds of his estate and named for his wife, Sarah Bates Lawrence, Sarah Lawrence College was originally constructed as a finishing school for affluent young women in rapidly expanding Westchester County. William Lawrence played a critical role in the development of the community of Bronxville near the present-day Sarah Lawrence campus, and his name can be found on the affluent Lawrence Park neighborhood adjacent to the campus, and at Lawrence Hospital in downtown Bronxville, an institution that was created when Lawrence’s son, Dudley, nearly died in route to a hospital in neighboring New York City.

William Lawrence worked closely with the president of Vassar College, Henry MacCracken, to establish a school that was founded on ideas of educational reform that MacCracken felt unable to apply at Vassar. The College was modeled with the tutorial system of Oxford University in mind, and a low student-to-faculty ratio was considered to be of absolute importance. Followed by Bennington College, Sarah Lawrence was the first Liberal Arts college in the United States to incorporate a rigorous approach to the arts with the principles of progressive education, focusing on the primacy of teaching and the concentration of curricular efforts on individual needs. Sarah Lawrence began to take its present shape shortly after World War II, when the College began admitting male students on the G.I. Bill, though the school did not become fully coeducational until 1969.

Although his wife, Sarah Bates Lawrence, was progressively minded in the sense that she believed in a woman’s right to vote and to a formal education and had worked to fund women’s colleges throughout the nation, the values of the Lawrence family as a whole do not accurately reflect the present shape of the College. William Lawrence believed that the role of a young woman’s education was to train her for polite society, and the nature of that society was not questioned. Sarah Lawrence College was founded with these social values in mind.

During the early years of the College, student lifestyles were thoroughly regulated. Students could neither keep a car nor ride in one without the accompaniment of a chauffeur, and men could be entertained only during restricted hours and under the close watch of a staff supervisor. A major component of the curriculum was “productive leisure,” wherein students had to work for eight hours weekly in such fields as modeling, shorthand, typewriting, make-up, gardening, and other disciplines that today seem quite opposite from the College’s curricular composition.

Sarah Lawrence College - Development of Today’s Sarah Lawrence

It was perhaps Harold Taylor, President of Sarah Lawrence College from 1945 to 1959, who had the greatest influence on shaping the College as it is known today. Taylor, elected President at age 30, maintained a friendship with educational philosopher John Dewey, and worked to employ the Dewey method at Sarah Lawrence. Taylor spent much of his career calling for educational reform in the United States, using the success of his own College as an example of the possibilities of a personalized, modern, and rigorous approach to higher education.

Sarah Lawrence College - Political Involvement and Activism

Political activism has played a crucial role in forming the spirit of the Sarah Lawrence community since the early years of the College. As early as 1938, students were working in lower-class sections of Yonkers, New York to help bring equality and educational opportunitiees, and the Sarah Lawrence College War Board, organized by students in the fall of 1942, sought to aid troops fighting in World War II. During a time when the College's enrollment was at only 293 students, 204signed up as volunteers during the first week of the War Board. During the McCarthy Era, a number of Sarah Lawrence's faculty members were accused by the American Legion of being sympathetic to the Communist Party, and were called before the Jenner Committee. For more information on accusations of Communist Party sympathies, click here. Since that time, activism has played a central role in student life, with movements for civil rights in the 1960's and for student and faculty diversity in the 1980's. Also in the 1960's, students established an Upward Bound program for students from lower-income and poverty areas to prepare for college. Theatre Outreach, the Child Development Institute, the Empowering Teachers Program, the Community Writers program, the Office of Community Partnership and the Fulbright High School Writers Program are among the many programs founded the since the1970s to provide services to the larger community. In the late 1980's students occupied Westlands, the main administrative building for the campus, in a sit-in for wider diversity. Students have remained active in recent years, with numerous organizations and movements sprouting in response to the Iraq War. For many years, the College has been considered at the vanguard of the sexual rights movement.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki