Transformative Inclusion at Smith College

When Carrie Lee, an African American student from New Bedford, Massachusetts, arrived at Smith in the fall of 1913, she fully expected to move into Room 3 in Tyler House Annex; however, after her roommate—a white student from Tennessee—complained, Lee was forced to move off campus to live with Greek professor Julia Caverno. Lee was not the first Black student to come to Smith, nor was she the first to face such exclusion. Otelia Cromwell, class of 1900, as well as Ethel and Helen Chesnutt, classes of 1901 and 1902, respectively, encountered similar barriers years earlier. The Chesnutt sisters, for example, had to move to multiple off-campus addresses during their time at Smith.

Carrie Lee’s father, Charles, was unwilling to let the college’s decision against his daughter stand. Writing to then President Marion LeRoy Burton, he implored Smith’s administration to “live up to its contract” and allow his daughter to reside on campus among other students. Otelia Cromwell, who by that time had embarked on a career in education, also became an advocate for Carrie Lee, penning a letter to President Burton urging him to fulfill the promise of on-campus housing the college made to Lee upon her admission. Facing pressure from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Smith’s board of trustees took up the matter at its October 1913 meeting, voting to deny any proposal to exclude students of color from on-campus housing. Nearly two months after she arrived, Carrie Lee was assigned a room in Albright House, where she lived until she graduated in 1917.

Lee—who went on to have a long career as a public school teacher—is just one of the many students, staff, and faculty who, through their presence and actions, have transformed Smith over the past 150 years, thus helping Smith live into founder Sophia Smith’s intention that her namesake college be a “perennial blessing to the world.”

As vice president for equity and inclusion and as a student of language, I have given much thought to the question of how one could define the term “inclusion.” For instance, inclusion could mean conformity—that is, requiring an individual to meet a dominant standard in order to earn belonging from a central power. We might call this provisional inclusion. Another kind of inclusion, however, would enable individuals to bring their whole selves into an ecosystem—say, a college—and their contributions would be welcomed as a way to change the ecosystem itself. We might call this transformative inclusion, which expects that every student, faculty, and staff member will transform the institution—not merely assimilate into it.

I’ve seen this at Smith College over my 25-plus-year career. Students’ questions and comments in class influence not only discussions but also syllabi and curricula. Staff members improve lives and systems and lead initiatives to create spaces and programs that sustain education outside of the formal classroom. And faculty members create new knowledge and art, influence student trajectories, and participate in governance of the institution. Transformative inclusion brings out the best in all of us and the best in the college.

A call for transformation was articulated by the college in 2021 in the form of a strategic plan, titled Toward Racial Justice. The first principle of the plan acknowledges, “Because Smith was not originally designed for the diverse students, staff, and faculty that we have now, we are called to reflect on our past and present to build a more just and inclusive future.” This is necessary work that builds on the efforts of change makers like Carrie Lee and her collaborators.

In an interview earlier this year about Smith’s 150th anniversary, President Sarah Willie-LeBreton observed that Smith’s evolution came about in large part because of what she described as “an ivy chain of people who have ensured that the college has thrived.” Indeed, Smith’s history is rich with the stories of individuals and groups that have transformed Smith in profound ways. A Smith College Racial History Timeline recently created by my office and set to be published online soon captures some key moments. In addition, students and colleagues have taught me many other ways that our predecessors have transformed the college, higher education, and the world.

For instance, Professor Carrie Baker, chair of the Study of Women, Gender, & Sexuality program, shares a brilliant interpretation of a photograph of the class of 1883 in her talk, “The ‘Woman’ Question Today: Gender Identity at Smith College,” explaining how Smith students transformed gender expectations from the beginning. Though President L. Clark Seelye had warned Smith students at the time not to play “masculine sports” lest they damage their femininity, several students in the image hold baseball bats as signs of their defiance. Instead of standing or sitting in prim poses, some lounge cross-legged on the ground. In addition, they lean comfortably into one another, some with arms draped over classmates’ shoulders or around one another’s waists. As Baker argues, from our earliest days, Smith students challenged what it meant to be a woman.

Over the years, students and their allies have also transformed the racial makeup of the college. Thanks to efforts by Professor John Connolly, who served as acting president in 2001-2002, and College Archivist Nanci Young, we know the identities of the earliest students of color to graduate from Smith College:

• Salomé Amelia Machado, class of 1883, Smith’s first Latina student
• Angel DeCora, class of 1896, Smith’s first Native American student
• Otelia Cromwell, class of 1900, Smith’s first African American graduate
• Tei Ninomiya, class of 1910, Smith’s first East Asian student to graduate from Smith
• and Sabiha Yassin Hashimy, class of 1937, Smith’s first Middle Eastern student.

The Friedman Apartments, named in 2016, honor each of them.

Alas, as Carrie Lee’s experience illustrates, students of color were not always welcome to live in Smith housing, but their resilience in the face of such discrimination ultimately helped redefine who belongs in student residences. In 2024, the board of trustees voted to name five houses that were previously known only by their street addresses or as annexes after transformational figures, one of whom was Carrie Lee. Others honored were:

• Martha Euphemia Lofton Haynes 1914, the first African American woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics and a leader who helped to dismantle racial discrimination in the Washington, D.C., school district.
• Evelyn Boyd Granville ’45, the second African American woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics from an American university, whose work at NASA helped humans reach the moon.
• Yolanda Denise King ’76, an activist, actress, and author.
• Eleanor Rothman, the founding director of Smith’s Ada Comstock Scholars Program for nontraditional age students.

From the college’s earliest days, faculty have also been transforming what scholarly fields belong at Smith. After all, Sophia Smith stated in her will that in addition to teaching the ancient and modern languages, mathematical and physical sciences, useful and fine arts, and other major fields of her day, faculty should seek out “other studies as coming times may develop or demand for the education of women and the progress of the [human] race.” A sampling of newly developed majors, minors, and certificate programs includes:

• 1970: Africana Studies Department
• 1984: Jewish Studies Program
• 1996: Latin American and Latino/a Studies Department
• 2000: Five College Asian/Pacific/American Studies Certificate Program
• 2001: Five College Native American and Indigenous Studies Program
• 2007: Middle East Studies Department

Transforming an institution requires more than just individual efforts; it demands systemic change. In the past 80 years, the racial diversity of Smith’s faculty has steadily increased, beginning with Otelia Cromwell’s niece, Adelaide Cromwell ’40, who joined the sociology department as the college’s first Black faculty member in 1945.

According to the most recent data, of the roughly 300 full-time faculty members, 24 are Black; 25 are Asian American; 18 are Latinx; two are Native American, Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander; and 11 identify with two or more races. Additionally, 35 faculty members are international, some of whom identify as people of color.

This kind of diversification enriches not only knowledge production but also the mentorship of a student body whose diversity dramatically accelerated after the Civil Rights Movement. While Smith enrolled 15 Black students in 1964 (0.7% of the student body), this number increased to 163 in 1971 (6.3%). In 1988, 14.7% of the student body could be identified as hailing from underrepresented racial identities. Today, Smith includes more than 33% domestic students of color.

Like other colleges and universities, Smith established new administrative roles to support an increasingly diverse student body. Beginning in 1983, an assistant to the dean for minority affairs joined the dean of the college office. This position eventually evolved into the Office of Multicultural Affairs, a three-person team currently led by Dean L’Tanya Richmond. This office runs the Bridge Program to help students adjust to college, provides essential support to unity organizations, and builds community in collaboration with students.

Diversity in students’ religious and spiritual beliefs increased in the second half of the 20th century. Students of Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and other faith traditions joined a hitherto Christian majority. In 1980, the college established the position of director of chapel. Today, Director of Religious & Spiritual Life and College Chaplain Matilda Cantwell, M.S.W. ’96, leads a five-person team in the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life, which supports students interested in a range of traditional and meditative practices, as well as community building and social justice.

In the 1990s, some colleges and universities embraced a shift in focus, from assimilation to transformation. As a way to guide institutional transformation at Smith, President Ruth Simmons established the Office of Institutional Diversity in 1997. Now called the Office for Equity and Inclusion, the unit includes both the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life. Its mission focuses on three key areas:

• Hearts: Engaging individuals and communities
• Minds: Providing education and programming
• Systems: Collaborating to enact institutional change

Our work is informed in part by the framework for advancing equity and inclusion developed by the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE), which lays out more than 100 action items in 10 different areas ranging from “Institutional Structure” to “Curriculum and Pedagogy.” In collaboration with leaders across campus, the Office for Equity and Inclusion tracks the college’s progress on these items. Additionally, we periodically work with the board of trustees to provide status reports and answer questions, which builds in a system of accountability. While no method is perfect, this one allows us to continuously improve.

A few examples of systemic change in the past few years include the following:

• Spurred by Indigenous student activists and informed by colleagues in Native American and Indigenous studies, the college now has a land acknowledgment. Knowing that this is only a start, an Indigenous Justice Working Group, formed in 2024, is charged with proposing more actions to improve relationships with tribal neighbors and foster belonging for Native and Indigenous students, staff, and faculty.
• Thanks to a collaboration with the provost, the policy governing faculty tenure and promotion now explains that excellent teaching “includes a commitment to fostering an equitable and inclusive community of learners,” and it is now clear that the college explicitly values work colleagues do to advance equity and inclusion.
• With the knowledge that students of color are more likely to graduate with debt, the board of trustees decided in 2022 to replace loans with grants in financial aid packages. Of course, this change helps to welcome all financially aided students.

Even though Smith College was founded with a radical vision to extend educational opportunity to those who had been excluded from it, not all who have learned and taught here have felt included. Some endured and found ways to thrive beyond Smith. Many helped to transform Smith in ways both big and small. More recently, the leadership of the college itself has dedicated resources and fostered collaborations to make systemic change.

We have not arrived, but we have a map. Thanks to all in the Smith community who are on the journey with us.

Floyd Cheung is vice president for equity and inclusion and professor of English language and literature and American studies.