<p>Johnwesley:</p>
<p>I will defer to you on the details of Wes history, but some of what you wrote about Swarthmore is not terribly accurate.</p>
<p>Perhaps an overview:</p>
<p>If you go back in history, Williams, Amherst, and Wesleyan were all-male schools catering to a very well-heeled prep crowd from New England and NY/CT. The three comprised the Little Three conference and played each other in sports. </p>
<p>Swarthmore was a coed school from its founding by a group of Quakers in the 1860s. It's founders Lucretia Coffin Mott and her husband were active abolishionists, heavily involved in the underground railroad. Lucretia Mott also organized the Seneca Falls Convention -- the first call for women's rights in the US. A member of Swat's first graduating class was the first woman to get a PhD in the US. Swarthmore originally drew heavily from the mid-Atlantic -- DC up through NY. There are a lot of Quaker prep schools in the region that were feeders and Swarthmore also drew from the large immigrant public high schools in NYC.</p>
<p>Skipping forward, Swat began to develop a reputation for academic excellence with a unique honors program implemented in the 1920s. Around the same time, progressive politics started to emerge. For example, the student body voted to abolish sororities because they didn't accept Jewish students. And, a Swarthmore grad, Alice Paul led the women's suffrage movement that eventually gave women the right to vote.</p>
<p>In the 1950s, Swarthmore was a leader in the anti-McCarthy movement. The college pulled out of the government student aid program entirely (replacing the money out its own coffers) when McCarthy passed legislation requiring students to sign anti-Communist loyalty oaths to receive federal aid. Swarthmore remained out of the aid program until John Kennedy overturned the loyalty oath rules. Two Swarthmore students were photographed on the front page of the papers delivering anti-McCarthy petitions to the Penns. delegation in Congress. One was Carl Levin (currently the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services committee). The other was Michael Dukakis.</p>
<p>This kind of principled action has continued. Swarthmore was, I believe, the first college to divest of holdings in South African companies. </p>
<p>At the height of the 60s, Swarthmore was quite radical. One of its more infamous alumni was a woman named Cathy Wilkerson, a member of the Weather Underground. A couple of her friends blew themselves up while the were making a bomb in Wilkerson's NYC apartment.</p>
<p>In the 1960's, Swat's admission dean, Frederick Hargadon was a rather old-fashioned guy when it came to diversity. The African-American students at Swarthmore went around and around with him and, in 1969, escorted him out of his office and began a week-long occupation of the admissions office that got national attention. In the middle of negotiations with the President over their list of demands, the President of the college keeled over dead of a heart attack. The students ended the occupation. But, the adminstration remained supportive of the demands. </p>
<p>Within a year, the admissions dean was gone (to Princeton, where he had a long tenure overseeing a notably white anglo-saxon admissions policy). Swarthmore immediately began implementing new policies, including an aggressive affirmative action program and the hiring of black faculty. Black enrollment increased dramatically, reaching a high point of around 10% within ten years. </p>
<p>I think that if you check, Swarthmore is one of the leaders in African-American faculty and tenured faculty today. 8% of the full-time faculty are African-American. 16% are minorities. Of the tenure track faculty hired in the last five years or so, 25% are minorities.</p>
<p>Wesleyan has a very slight edge in African-American enrollment, 7% to 6.5%. It's isn't from lack of trying. !2% of this year's acceptances went to African-American students, but they only enrolled 7%. If you look beneath the surface, Swat does well with Af-Am females -- over 8% and graduation rates around 97%. They can't get Af-Am males to enroll. Currently just under 5%. This is somewhat of a national trend, but I think Swat's academic reputation is tough to overcome. It is also a challenge, as a need-blind aid school, competing with some of the merit aid bidding for URM students these days.</p>
<p>In terms of overall diversity, Swat is much more diverse than Wesleyan -- 38% non-white or non-US versus 30% at Wesleyan. The big difference is Asian American enrollment with somewhat higher Latino/a enrollment as well. I think the more important point is that Swarthmore is one of the most inclusive campuses around. There is no theme housing, either official or otherwise. De facto segregation is considered to be against the traditions and culture of the student body. A few years ago, somebody on the Housing Committee ramroded through the idea of a "MultiCultural" floor. The housing dean went along with it under the condition that it include all races. The students were so upset with something that even hinted at "theme" housing that nobody applied for the floor and the idea was dropped - a perfect example of how the students defend the inclusive culture of the place.</p>
<p>I agree that Swarthmore is less visibly "alternative" or "radical" today than Wesleyan. Not so much that Swarthmore's values have changed, but the 60s were a long time ago, so the trappings are bit more muted. Swat students have been very active in the campaign agaisnt genocide in Darfur. A Swat freshman from Rwanda was MTV's corresondent on a trip to the refugee camps last year and, echoing a previous generation, several busloads of Swatties headed to Washington last year for a press conference and a day of lobbying all of their home-state congressional delegations. And, of course, the honors program is still going strong.</p>