by Grace Pusey 

Content Warning: This post contains racist slurs.

“Bryn Mawr College Hispanic students (from left) Nora Gutierrez and Christine Rivera say things seemed to have calmed down on campus this year following a rash of racist incidents against Rivera last year.” Diane Garrett, “Racism Alive on Campus,” Main Line Sunday, Vol. 6, No. 36, October 22, 1989. Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, Bryn Mawr, PA.

ON OCTOBER 7, 1988, first-year student Christine Rivera returned to her dormitory to find an anonymous note slipped under her door. “Hey, spic,” it read, “Why don’t you leave Bryn Mawr? If you and your kind can’t handle the work here, don’t blame it on this racial thing. You’re making our school look bad to everyone else. If you can’t handle it, get out. We’d all be a lot happier.”¹

Rivera reported the note immediately. College administration responded swiftly, issuing a memo to students, staff, and faculty the next day. “We want to make it very clear that prejudice, harassment, and discrimination will not be tolerated in the bi-college community,” it read. “They represent the antithesis of the values essential to our basic mission: pursuit of knowledge in a free and open atmosphere where differences of opinion, background, and belief are valued and respected. […] [Until] everyone in our colleges — students, faculty, and staff — is free from harassment and discrimination here, we have failed to live up to our principles.”² The memo concluded by urging the perpetrator of Rivera’s harassment to turn herself in to the Honor Board, or to his or her immediate supervisor if they were College staff.

No one came forward, however, and the abuse continued. First, Rivera found a paper she had written for an English course slipped under her door with a slash through her last name. Then she discovered a decoration that she had hung on her door ripped to shreds and slipped underneath it. “I was very fearful of walking through my door,” Rivera later admitted in an article published in Main Line Sunday a year after the initial verbal attack,but she did not report these incidents at first.³ Unwittingly placed at the center of an unfolding campus scandal, she “[…] didn’t want to cause any more tension.”⁴ Because the identity of Rivera’s harasser remained unknown, all the controversy was drawn to her. Some students, unable to fathom how such a vitriolic note could have been written by anyone at an institution with a “liberal, open-minded” reputation like Bryn Mawr’s, even believed Rivera was faking her own harassment.

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1. Huntly Collins, “Student Conference Focuses on Campus Racial Problems,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 6, 1988. Accessed April 4, 2015. http://articles.philly.com/1988-11-06/news/26248254_1_student-conference-minority-students-white-students [↩]
2. Memo from Deans to Bi-College Community, October 8, 1988, Box 9JAF, “Diversity,” Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, Bryn Mawr, PA. [↩]
3. Diane Garrett, “Racism Alive on Campus,” Main Line Sunday, Vol. 6, No. 36, October 22, 1989, Box 9JAF, “Diversity — Newspaper Clippings,” Bryn Mawr College Special Collections, Bryn Mawr, PA. [↩]
4. Ibid. [↩]

by Emma Kioko

Note: This is the second of a two-part post about the climate of racial activism on campus between 1970 and 1972. The two posts center on two events: the “near sit-in” of March 12 (1970) and the first fight for Perry House (1972). Woven through both events are incredibly intelligent and nuanced discussions of race introduced and led by students including Bryn Mawr’s Sisterhood. These women paved the way for truly engaged activism on campus and their efforts should be celebrated and remembered. Read Unwavering Dissent Part I here.

Sisterhood letter, 1972 (to view second page, visit the Greenfield Digital Center tumblr).

A Demand for Space in 1972

The fall of 1970 welcomed a new perspective on race relations at Bryn Mawr in the form of a new president, Harris Wofford. This new president seemed genuinely interested in fostering better lines of communication between students of color and the administration. In a speech at Convocation in 1970 he said, “The antidote is a deep respect for persons, an enjoyment of differences, and a robust readiness for dialogue.” At the beginning of each academic year President Wofford reached out to the women of Sisterhood and reaffirmed his commitment to them and all black students on campus. However, the black women on campus were still missing something they regarded as incredibly important to their mission of creating community and celebrating culture: an adequate cultural space.

Given to them after their initial demands in 1970, Longmaid House, located at a far edge of campus close to Batten House, was wholly unacceptable as a cultural center. Constant flooding and security problems with the old building made it unsuitable for residence and completely useless as a display space for art. Racial tensions were high in the dorms, and the black women of Bryn Mawr were fed up with the conditions of Longmaid. In addition to the conditions of Longmaid House, the women of Sisterhood observed that Perry House, the space they had originally requested and been told was already contracted as a language house, was not being utilized as a language house at all. Owl House, their second choice, which they had been told was a fire hazard in 1970 and unusable, was being used in spite of the repair fees. These inconsistencies did not add up. Had the administration lied years before for the sole purpose of not giving up Perry or Owl as Black Cultural Center? Unwilling to sit silent, they began crafting a new list of demands for a safe space on campus in 1972.

On February 28, 1972, the women of Sisterhood issued to Dean McPherson and President Wofford a demand for Perry House. Continue reading →