Sarah Lawrence College

History

Establishment and development (20th century)

Sarah Lawrence College was established in 1926 by the real-estate mogul William Van Duzer Lawrence on the grounds of his estate in Westchester County and was named in honor of his wife, Sarah Bates Lawrence. The college was originally intended to provide instruction in the arts and humanities for women. A major component of the college's early curriculum was "productive leisure", wherein students were required to work for eight hours weekly in such fields as modeling, shorthand, typewriting, applying makeup, and gardening. Its pedagogy combined independent research projects which were individually supervised by the teaching faculty, and seminars with low student-to-faculty ratio, a pattern that it retains to the present. Sarah Lawrence was the first liberal arts college in the United States to incorporate a rigorous approach to the arts with the principles of progressive education, focusing on the primacy of teaching and the concentration of curricular efforts on individual needs.

Harold Taylor, President of Sarah Lawrence College from 1945 to 1959, influenced the college. Taylor was elected president at age 30, maintained a friendship with the educational philosopher John Dewey, and worked to employ the Dewey method at Sarah Lawrence. Taylor spent much of his career calling for educational reform in the United States, using Sarah Lawrence as an example of the possibilities of a personalized, modern, and rigorous approach to higher education.

Sarah Lawrence became a coeducational institution in 1968. Prior to this transition, there were discussions about relocating the school and merging it with Princeton University, but the administration opted to remain independent.

Larry Ray scandal (2010)

Starting in September 2010, after being released from prison Larry Ray, born Lawrence Grecco (then 50), resided in the on-campus student housing dormitory apartment of his daughter, Talia Ray, in Slonim Woods Building 9. At the time, Talia was a sophomore at the college, and lived in the dorm with seven other students. Sarah Lawrence College later told New York Magazine that it was not aware that he had been living on campus. While there, Ray started a sex cult in which he presented himself to students as a former U.S. Marine with training in psychological operations. In 2011, he induced some students to move into the apartment of Lee Chen in nearby New York City. In 2013, four of Ray's victims graduated from Sarah Lawrence. In February 2020, he was charged by prosecutors in Manhattan with conspiracy, extortion, sex trafficking, forced labor, and other related offenses, following nearly 10 years of alleged transgressions with students and former students. Ray was convicted on all counts and sentenced to 60 years in prison.

College presidents

The first president of the college was Marion Coats, serving from 1924 to 1929. She was a friend of Vassar College president Henry MacCracken and William Van Duzer Lawrence. Coats had traditional views of women's role in society that were at odds with her progressive approach to women's education. Cristle Collins Judd was introduced as president in 2017.

Academic rankings

As Sarah Lawrence College dropped its SAT test score submission requirement for its undergraduate applicants in 2003, thus joining the SAT optional movement for undergraduate admission, the college does not have SAT data to send to U.S. News for its national survey. Of this decision, Myers states, "We are a writing-intensive school, and the information produced by SAT scores added little to our ability to predict how a student would do at our college; it did, however, do much to bias admission in favor of those who could afford expensive coaching sessions." At the time, Sarah Lawrence was the only American college that completely disregarded SAT scores in its admission process. A 2007 article in The Washington Post reported that without an SAT score U.S. News would "make up a number" to use in its magazines, and argued that the school's ranking would be artificially decreased. Sarah Lawrence College now maintains a test-optional policy.

On June 19, 2007, following a meeting of the Annapolis Group, which represents over 100 liberal arts colleges, Sarah Lawrence announced that it would join others who had previously signed the letter to college presidents asking them not to participate in the "reputation survey" section of the U.S. News & World Report survey (this section comprises 25% of the ranking). The 2019 edition ranked Sarah Lawrence tied for the 65th best liberal arts college in the nation.

In 2022, Forbes rated it 467th out of 660 in its America's Top Colleges ranking. That same year, Washington Monthly rankings ranked Sarah Lawrence 155th in the liberal arts college category.

Undergraduate admissions

In 2024, Sarah Lawrence accepted 49.9% of undergraduate applicants, with admission standards considered exceptional, applicant competition considered average,

and with those admitted having an average 3.75 high school GPA. The college does not require submission of standardized test scores, Sarah Lawrence being a test optional school. Those accepted that submitted test scores had an average 1360 SAT score (15% submitting scores) or average 31 ACT score (6% submitting scores).

Political involvement and activism

Political activism has played a role in forming the Sarah Lawrence community since the early years of the college. As early as 1938, students were volunteering in working-class sections of Yonkers, New York to help bring equality and educational opportunities to poor and minority citizens, and the Sarah Lawrence College War Board, organized by students in the fall of 1942, sought to aid troops fighting in World War II. 204 of 293 students signed up as volunteers during the first week of the War Board. During the so-called McCarthy Years, a number of Sarah Lawrence's faculty members were accused by the American Legion of being sympathetic to the Communist Party, and were called before the Jenner Committee.

Since that time, activism has played a central role in student life, with movements for civil rights and against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and for student and faculty diversity in the 1980s. Also in the 1960s, students established an Upward Bound program for students from lower-income and poverty areas to prepare for college. Theatre Outreach, the Child Development Institute, the Empowering Teachers Program, the Community Writers program, the Office of Community Partnership, and the Fulbright High School Writers Program are among the many programs founded since the 1970s to provide services to the larger community. In the late 1980s, students occupied Westlands, the main administrative building for the campus, in a sit-in for wider diversity. Students occupied Westlands again in 2016, in a sit-in supporting improved wages and safer working conditions for the college's recently unionized facilities workers. For many years, the college has been considered as being at the vanguard of the gay rights movement and many other progressive causes.

Campus

Much of the 42-acre (17 ha) Sarah Lawrence campus was originally a part of the estate of the college's founder, William Van Duzer Lawrence, though the college has more than doubled its size since Lawrence bequeathed his estate to the college in 1926. The terrain is characterized by outcroppings of exposed bedrock shaded by large oak and elm trees. Many of the older buildings are in the Tudor Revival architecture style that was popular in the area during the early 20th century, and many of the college's newer buildings attempt an updated interpretation of the same style. The campus is divided into two distinctive sections, the "Old Campus" and the "New Campus": the first is roughly contained within the boundaries of the former Lawrence estate, and the area of the second was acquired sometime after the college's earliest years.

The area outside the original Lawrence estate holds the college's newer facilities. Several century-old, Tudor-style mansions among the newer additions, including Andrews, Tweed, Lynd, Marshall Field, and Slonim House: each was once a private estate, purchased by the college during periods of growth and expansion. The more modest Tudor houses along Mead Way, which also had been private residences, now serve as dormitories for students at the college. "Slonim Woods" is a group of newer, townhouse-style dormitories, built on the grounds of Slonim House.

The Campbell Sports Center was constructed in 1998 in response to an increased focus on physical fitness and sports. This facility includes an indoor pool, gymnasium, track, squash courts, and weight rooms.

In 2004, the college completed construction of a modern visual arts facility, the Monika A. and Charles A. Heimbold Visual Arts Center, with environmentally friendly aspects which earned the college national press attention. Just down the road is Hill House, a six-story apartment building purchased by the college in the late 1990s that now lodges students. Across the street from Hill House is the large Wrexham house, also in the Tudor style, which the college purchased from the government of Rwanda in 2004; this building, once home to the Rwandan consul, has been renovated and is used for various postgraduate programs. At the opposite end of the campus stands the Science and Mathematics Center, completed in 1994.

Buildings

The Barbara Walters Campus Center is the newest building on campus. Finished in the fall of 2019, the building is named for alumna Barbara Walters. The building is a multipurpose space which is used for dances, speeches, class gatherings, etc. On the second floor is the Barbara Walters Reading Room. It includes a rotating exhibition, but currently holds artifacts from Barbara Walters' life. The building has a green roof energy efficient LED lighting.

Bates Center for Student Life is one of the original campus buildings. Designed in the English Tudor style that was begun by Bates and How and extended by Penrose Stout in the 1930's. It housed offices and classrooms and maids' quarters to dining halls to laboratories and arts facilities. At one time, it was home to a miniature basketball court that is now a faculty dining room, though the lines of the court can still be seen on the floors. Over the years, programs in science, visual arts, and physical education have grown to the point that they also are elsewhere on the campus, requiring three buildings of their own. Bates has always been home to the college's main dining facility and also houses the popular "Health Food Bar."

The Esther Raushenbush Library, designed in 1974 by Walter, Burns, Toan & Lundein in a modern architectural style with implied buttresses and features of its much older neighbor, Andrews House. The Raushenbush Library houses over 300,000 volumes.

The Alice Stone Ilchman Science and Mathematics Center, completed in 1994, is situated on the far north end of the campus. It houses science laboratories in addition to classrooms and faculty offices. The building is named for former president Alice Stone Ilchman.

The Marshall Field Music Building was originally created as part of William Lawrence's residential neighborhood, Lawrence Park West. Built in the Georgian Colonial style by Dwight Baum it was situated on 3 acres (12,000 m2) of landscaped land when the college purchased it in 1960 to house the music department and to provide additional student housing. Prior to the purchase, President Harold Taylor played his clarinet in several of the rooms to test the acoustics.

The Monica A. and Charles A. Heimbold Visual Arts Center The building was designed by Polshek Partnership Architects chief architect Susan Rodriguez. Completed in 2004, the building uses the landscape and existing campus circulation patterns. For its inventive use of materials, consistent development of the project in relation to the original concept, integrated plan/section, and use of building siting, solar orientation, daylighting, and locally quarried fieldstone to achieve LEED certification, The American Institute of Architects awarded a special 'Sustainable Architecture Honor Award' to the project as well as First Honor Awards at its 2005 "Celebration of Architecture".

Athletics

Sarah Lawrence College is the member of Skyline Conference of NCAA Division III. The college sponsors intercollegiate teams in crew (rowing), men's and women's cross country, equestrian, men's basketball, men's and women's tennis, men's and women's volleyball, men's and women's soccer, women's softball, and men's and women's swimming. In March 2011, the college announced that it would seek membership as a Division III member of the NCAA. The college began competing as a full member of Division III in the 2015–16 academic year after receiving a waiver to the required four-year 'provisional' period.

The college left the Hudson Valley conference after the 2013–14 season and joined the Skyline Conference beginning with the 2014–15 season. The Skyline Conference contains several schools including SUNY Purchase and Yeshiva University which have played against Sarah Lawrence regularly over the past few years.

The college's official mascot is a Gryphon by the name of Godric. It was chosen in the 1990s to represent the college's athletic teams after a long period of fielding sports teams without one. Unofficially, the student body had long adopted the large resident population of 'Black Squirrels' as a de facto mascot to the college. The position of silent mascot that the 'Black Squirrel' occupied was financially endorsed by the college itself with the production of various Black Squirrel merchandise (including Sarah Lawrence clothing branded with the Black Squirrel image) and plush toys. It is only recently (post-2003) that efforts on the behalf of the college to establish the Gryphon as the icon of Sarah Lawrence have begun to take root.