<p>I think the nicknames are in poor taste, but I will say (at least at Penn and NYU) that I have heard them used just as much by the Jewish kids. My impression over the last 4 years of my son being in college is that kids are a lot more willing to use terms in reference to their OWN religious, racial or ethnic group than I ever heard back in my day or would expect. It’s done in humor, but it’s still a little surprising to me.</p>
<p>The strong Jewish presence at Barnard/Columbia immersed my D in Jewish life more than she had ever been growing up. We are totally secular and non-practicing. She still is a secular Jew, but she got more input on her ethnicity than she ever had, both in courses and from social involvements including Jewish fraternities and JTS, which is a Jewish theological school intertwined with Columbia.</p>
<p>S is at Williams, not particularly Jewish, but he has been to Friday night dinners many times, with Jewish and non-Jewish friends. The Jewish Center on campus is very welcoming. And due to Jewish presidents, there have been “break-fast” dinners and such at the president’s house – something we could never predict from statistics.</p>
<p>LINYMOM - without the benefit of the Hillel data, if you had asked me to name a bunch of schools where there is a high Jewish proportion and a Jewish person would feel very comfortable, I would have said (in no particular order) Northwestern, WashU, Emory, UPenn, Tulane and GWU right off the bat - and NYU too, I suppose, but that’s more a function of simply being in NYC. I wouldn’t have said, say, MIT, Caltech, Duke, Chicago, Vanderbilt, or Dartmouth – not that any of those schools would be characterized as unfriendly or discriminatory or that there isn’t a Jewish community, but I don’t think of those schools as “being Jewish” the way I would have for the first group I listed. For whatever it’s worth. (And I’m taking Brandeis out of the equation for the sake of argument given its historical mission.)</p>
<p>Re: Tulane nickname of Jewlane. There was a lawsuit a few years back by a disgruntled prof who claimed that the school was discriminatory against Jews and cited the rhyme as part of it. Be forewarned, however, this is a “ranty” amateur website and I make no claims as to its accuracy. [Opposition</a> to Summary Judgment, Case No. 95-0358](<a href=“Error 404 - Not found”>Opposition to Summary Judgment, Case No. 95-0358)</p>
<p>I just got the URJ magazine from which the Hillel numbers were pulled from – and it also has an interview with Pres Schapiro of Northwestern (previously president of Williams), who is actively practicing and talks about how he and some of the students shared the holidays together. Since LINYMOM and I come from the NU era of “you see the president of the school at your graduation and that’s about it,” it’s so nice to see this type of thing.</p>
<p>It’s especially nice for me to hear that about NU because one side of my family (one parent and parent’s siblings) went to NU back when there were strict quotas on the number of Jews accepted. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So true. The RJ list and the Hillel website are great tools, but they’re not the final word.</p>
<p>SlitheyTove - my MIL (a nice Jewish girl from Hyde Park) went to NU in the mid-fifties and it was definitely the era when Jewish girls only joined the Jewish sororities (AEPhi and SDT). Actually, there are no longer any Jewish sororities there, but there still are Jewish fraternities (open to and welcoming of non-Jews for the last umpteen years).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If you grew up or live in a Jewish area, there is a tendency to take the culture and religion for granted. My wife & I both grew up in NYC and neither one of us is particularly observant. My kids were born on the west coast of Florida. As Bernard Malamud wrote, “If you forget you’re Jewish, a Gentile will remind you”. They got tired of being the token and continually questioned about Judaism, though mostly well meaning. So it was important to them to find colleges with enough of a Jewish population where they could just blend in.</p>