#goldtunnels

[ezak89]

Doing something different. #newhaircut #mowhawk #greenhair #skincut #goldtunnels #atl https://www.instagram.com/p/BrGVaMLHW3J/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1fn96h3zmv13a

[ezak89]

I had to show off the pink hair! #pinkhair #igetboredoften #goldtunnels #dimple #pinkhairboy

[bullshitandallmotherful]

What did you not like about Smith? I'm applying there and I just want to know the "head up". If it makes you feel more comfortable answering this privately, please do.

Hi!

So this is going to get long because I get a little ranty about Smith. To preface this, please do apply and also keep in mind you may not experience ANY of the crap I went through so. My problem with Smith can be divided pretty much in two: being a woman of color (a black latina woman) and mental health issues. I don’t know how you identify or your history but that’s mainly what was going on with me.

First, Smith talks a lot about diversity. It continually accepts and aggressively recruits people of color to attend Smith. When you get to campus, the support from the administration falls away and you have to form relationships and give and receive support from your fellow Smithies, especially fellow people of color.  (NOTE: not all people of color at Smith experience this/acknowledge this. Some like to pretend they are not treated any differently from our white counterparts. When I saw this, it was a division among class lines but that may not necessarily be always true.) (NOTE 2: I did not join organizations catered to people of color or queer students through my years at Smith which was mistake! I encourage you to join if you are poc and you want to. My friends who did join found a great community of support in these organizations.)

 It also offers pretty great financial aid packages. I’m going to be paying off debt for a long time but it’s still a lot less than at other schools, your experience may be different. I mention this because after my first year when I realized Smith wasn’t for me, none of the colleges  I applied to as a transfer student gave me even close to the same grant aid as Smith, it created a barrier for me to leave the school.

Second part: For some people, getting help from the administration and the professors goes really well and this may be your case, which would be awesome. Personally, I never received the academic and health related help I needed and my academic work and personal relationships suffered because of it. To sum up a really really long story, my class dean actually apologized to me and told me I fell through the cracks or whatever when I asked for help my last semester. Smith has a lot of offices/services to help students and I reached out to most if not all of them (dean’s office, disability, professors, counseling, spinelli and Jacobson centers, etc). It was always assumed I was just being lazy and I didn’t get any concrete help from the college. (I wasn’t being lazy, I was depressed and anxious but you know, whatever.) (NOTE 3: Some of my professors were GREAT in this regard but that wasn’t always the case.)

  Also in terms of using the faces and bodies of people of color for their campaigns and to increase their cool diversity points in the world of selective liberal arts colleges, Smith is all for it. But, how many professors are black? How many professors of color have tenure or are even on a tenure track? How many people in counseling services are black? Are poc? Dean’s office? In disability services? In financial aid? The housing office? Can they get someone in the financial aid office that understands that not all Smith students are well off?  I don’t know the exact answers to these questions but they’re not good.

Other people are better qualified to speak to those shitty practices. If you look far back enough on the smith college tag, people writing about the protests in Spring 2014 will have more coherent thoughts than me.

 Also, remember you’re going to a college with a large percentage of well off liberal white people, and not even well off ones. You can substitute Smith for White Feminism ™ and it’s the same thing, in terms of their most prevalent demographic. So be prepared for a lot of analysis in class and in the dining hall that is completely devoid of race, class, nationality, immigration, how queerness is different in different contexts, accessibility, and lots of things. And as can be expected, most of these people are racist. They’re just the type that used coded language and make sure not to say anything too bad in public. So you know, white liberals in a nutshell.  (Also will exotify the hell out of you both romantically and in a platonic way)

Soooo that’s why I didn’t like Smith.  And like I said before, none of this may apply to your or you may not experience any of this which would be great! This is just my personal experience with the college.

 Best.