NMH Magazine : Spring 2008

NMH, DLM, and the D Word

by Peter Weis ’78

We have never been afraid to educate a youth because of his or her sex, his or her race, his or her background, so long as the individual’s mind and character were sound, were open, were eager to participate in a common, challenging venture.
—The Honorable Theodore R. Newman Jr. ’51, Centennial Convocation Address, October 1979

 

Diversity is an overused word, a tired word, and often a misused word. As the school archivist, I’m occasionally asked to speak about the history of diversity at NMH. I usually cringe, not because I don’t like the topic, but because the word somehow misses the point about why our school was founded and what makes it such a dynamic place today.

As a school we’ve always prided ourselves on our diversity. But what does it mean to be diverse? What standards do we use to judge diversity? If we just look at skin color or sexual orientation, religious preference or financial standing, we ignore a host of other differences. In the end, we may be left paraphrasing the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s remarks about pornography: “I don’t know what diversity is, but I know it when I see it.” When I look at the school’s past, I see countless ways that it has embraced and struggled with difference. The following four areas, however, are key to understanding our history of diversity.

 

 

Racial diversity

Designed to aid the poor and disadvantaged, Northfield Seminary for Girls (founded in 1879) and Mount Hermon School for Boys (1881) had applicants from sections of society excluded from other institutions.

African Americans, Native Americans, and recent immigrants—particularly those from non-European countries—were welcomed. This was due in part to the vision of school founder D. L. Moody, a world-renowned evangelist who hoped that students would go back among their people and spread the gospel.

From the beginning, Northfield and Mount Hermon had racially diverse students. Lydia Keyes, a Cherokee from Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), was in the first graduating class at Northfield. She was one of 16 Native Americans who came to Northfield in 1880. Thomas Nelson Baker, born in slavery in Virginia, who later earned a PhD from Yale, was in the Mount Hermon class of 1889. Annette Anderson, another African American, was Northfield class president in 1895, and her brother William, who attended Mount Hermon, became a Vermont state senator. Before 1900, over 40 Chinese, Japanese, and Korean students came to Mount Hermon, including Chan Loon Teung, class of 1892, who spoke at Mount Hermon’s first commencement. Anita Hemmings attended Northfield from 1892 to 1893 before going to Vassar, where she was the college’s first known African American graduate.

Theirs are extraordinary stories—yet not all reflect unequivocal brightness on the schools or the society around them. Anita Hemmings had to pass for white to gain admission to Vassar. Thomas Nelson Baker, whose love for Mount Hermon was matchless, seemed distanced from the school by 1920, querying then-headmaster Henry Ford Cutler about whether it had established a “color line.”

It is clear that in the 1920s and ’30s the schools were “whiter” than they had been earlier. In part this phenomenon was due to administrative attempts to broaden the schools’ appeal. In trying to make them more like other college preparatory schools, and by appealing to the more affluent, admission officers recruited from a whiter population.

By the 1940s, particularly after the postwar recession, the schools found themselves returning to familiar ground. They established a relationship with the National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students (NSSFNS), which brought promising students of color to Northfield and Mount Hermon. In the early 1960s, NSSFNS ended its relationship with secondary schools for budgetary reasons.

Meanwhile, President Howard Jones began exploring other opportunities. Under his direction, the Independent Schools’ Talent Search Program (ISTSP) was initiated. The school bulletin described the ISTSP as “the middle man between the independent school and the culturally deprived student who was as yet unfound.” Soon afterward, Edmond Meany Jr. and Arthur Kiendl, Northfield and Mount Hermon headmasters, respectively, met with Dartmouth president John Dickey to discuss how such students could more easily make the transition from home to prep school. A Better Chance (ABC), now a national program, was born of these discussions. NMH’s Transition-Year Program (TYP), founded in 1983, provides similar transition for African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and students from developing countries. TYP celebrated its 25th anniversary this year and is still going strong, while domestic students of color make up 21 percent of NMH’s student body.

 

 

Religious direction

Because the schools were founded to provide a Christian education, they initially lacked religious diversity.

The foundation documents of Northfield Seminary state, “As the Seminary was founded for the glory of God and the service of Jesus Christ in and by the education of young women, it is required that every corporator, trustee, teacher, and officer shall be a member of some evangelical church.” Likewise, an applicant’s religious beliefs were subject to scrutiny. Northfield and Mount Hermon applications posed questions such as “Any evidence of piety?” and “In what religious belief educated?” Despite such queries, individuals who hoped to become Christian but weren’t yet could get an education here.

Through the 1920s, the schools were clearly Protestant institutions. Their atmosphere was steeped in religion, with eight chapel exercises a week (two on Sundays) and twice-a-week Bible study. Non-Protestants were not allowed to practice their religion on campus. Letters in the late teens to the headmaster protested required chapel for the first time. The issue waned but did not go away. Ultimately it became part of a larger question about the purpose of the schools: Were they to provide religious direction to their students, or a secular education informed by Christian ethics?

The issue came to a head during the early 1930s when President Elliott Speer responded to a disgruntled alumnus who wondered if the schools remained true to D. L. Moody’s ideals. In a letter to the president of the board of trustees, Speer wrote, “Certainly we do not believe exactly the same things which Mr. Moody believed…The real point at issue is ‘Are we true to Mr. D. L. Moody’s leader Jesus Christ?’ That is the one standard by which we ought to be judged.” For Speer, a liberal Christian, the answer was yes.

The schools remained avowedly Christian institutions, though Northfield changed its name to the Northfield School for Girls (dropping the “Seminary”) in 1944. As far as records show, neither school limited acceptance of Jews, Catholics, or members of other faiths, but their pronounced Protestant tilt still ensured a degree of religious homogeneity.

In the socially turbulent 1960s, however, the schools found themselves confronting the logical end of Speer’s liberal Christianity: the acceptance of all faiths. Required chapel services diminished in number, and students of all religions increasingly made up the student body. As they were gradually allowed to practice their own worship services on campus, the school acquired a new kind of religious vigor.

The merger in 1971 brought an end to required Sunday services, and weekday services became campus meetings instead of 20-minute devotionals. Bible study courses, long required of freshmen and sophomores, were no longer obligatory.

Despite—or perhaps because of—this shift away from mandatory worship and Bible study, NMH increasingly became a place of diverse religious expression.

Currently the school supports ten spiritual life groups, including the Catholic Student Organization, Christian Fellowship, Jewish Student Alliance, and Unitarian Universalists. Students are required to earn religious studies credits but do not have to attend chapel services, which the school chaplain conducts on Sunday. The attitude toward spiritual life on campus is perhaps best described as tolerant and accepting of all faiths.

 

 

International composition

From the outset, the schools have been global in their makeup.

Dobra Komaroff, a graduate in the second class at Northfield, came from Turkey. Willie Tonkin, the first Mount Hermon student, was born in England. The 1886 Northfield catalogue lists students from 19 states, Indian Territory, three Canadian provinces, England, and Brazil. By the end of the 19th century, students at each school hailed from about 30 countries and 30 states.

The number of international students peaked at over 40 countries and nearly 15 percent of the student population in the early 20th century, before the outbreak of World War I curtailed both transatlantic travel and immigration. The number of international students would not return to these levels for 60 years.

The 1972–73 NMH catalogue shows 39 students from 23 foreign countries and all six inhabited continents. In the spring of 1974, NMH began its relationship with the American Language Academy (ALA). The ALA’s mission was to provide international students with the English language skills needed for an education in this country. ALA students at NMH took part in all aspects of school life, including extracurricular activities, work jobs, and athletics. Many of these students subsequently enrolled as regular NMH students, which dramatically increased the school’s international flavor.

NMH and ALA parted company in 1979, but what might have spelled the end of this international renaissance proved its starting point. NMH subsequently began an English as a second language (ESL) program, integrating ALA courses into its curriculum and continuing to look overseas for promising students. The results were astonishing. In 1990, over 200 students from nearly 80 nations were at NMH. Today, international students make up 19 percent of the school population.

 

 

Socioeconomic distribution

During the 19th century, diversity in the student body was a by-product of the schools’ founding principles: fostering Christianity and providing an education to those who couldn’t otherwise afford one.

As Northfield’s first catalogue stated, “A prominent reason for founding this Seminary, the need of which some may question, will be evident on referring to the table of expenses. The golden gate of opportunity has thus been opened to many young women whose means would not permit them to enjoy the advantages of other schools.”

Northfield was founded contrary to conventional wisdom against educating women, particularly poor women. The price per term was $50; at about the same time, Wellesley was charging $300 a year for tuition. Northfield’s tuition was based on one half the actual cost of education; the remainder came from annual gifts from supporters. Two years later, Mount Hermon opened with much the same language about providing opportunity for the needy.

Given these founding principles, the student bodies of Northfield and Mount Hermon were startlingly homogeneous during their early years. Most students were professed Christians; almost all were poor, or at least unable to afford a more expensive school. The schools’ bias toward the needy was made explicit on the Mount Hermon application beginning in 1903, when a question regarding parent or guardian’s “occupation and means” was changed to “Can they afford to send the applicant to a more expensive school?” Northfield added the same wording to its application in 1912, and so it remained for another generation. Today some might say this amounts to reverse discrimination.

By the fall of 1931, a year’s tuition had risen to $350—still inexpensive, but a hardship to Depression-era students. Northfield and Mount Hermon did their best to remain affordable and broadened their admission appeals, dropping language that limited applicants from well-to-do households. In 1935, trustees implemented a sliding scale for students, which some criticized as socialism.

By the 1950s, the schools were facing hard financial reality. They’d never had a large endowment, in part because Moody believed schools needed to continually demonstrate their value; endowments, he reasoned, allowed institutions to stagnate. Annual giving no longer matched the rising cost of a Northfield or Mount Hermon education, and budget shortfalls forced steady tuition increases. While tuition increased, however, so did scholarship aid—so much so that by the mid-1960s, places such as Choate were writing to inquire how the schools managed to provide so much financial aid to their students.

Today, with boarding student tuition at $41,700 for 2008–09, even a 50 percent scholarship (as every student originally had) makes an education here beyond the reach of many. In recent years NMH has pushed to increase its financial aid program, which is making measured progress. In 2007–08 the program awarded more than $5 million in direct grants and loans to about 40 percent of the student body.

 

 

Whither Diversity at NMH?

Interestingly, in terms of diversity, the school now looks more as it did in the latter 19th century than at the midpoint of the 20th.

Despite the increasing price tag on tuition, our mission to educate youth of all financial means hasn’t diminished. Certainly the wealthy aren’t denied admission, but the egalitarian spirit that prompted Northfield Seminary handbooks of the 1920s to state “We do like to change our dress for dinner, but we do not dress elaborately” is still in effect. The long lists of international students represented in our classrooms have, for more than a generation now, stabilized at proportions not seen since before the outbreak of World War I.

If we look more like the school we’ve always thought we were (but haven’t always been), we’re also distinctly different. The schools were founded, at least in part, to help evangelize the world. Incoming students, rich or poor, black or white, international or domestic, weren’t expected to make their mark on the schools: the schools were expected to show them the path to Christianity and encourage them to show others the way.

An unexpected thing happened along the path: many of these students did leave their mark upon the institution, shaping it in new and diverse ways, while Northfield Mount Hermon also changed with the times. The result?

What was once perhaps only a happy accident of our founding has become a hallmark, albeit one we need to keep refreshing and renewing.