- Dodging Flak from Click and Clack
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- By Ann E. Shanahan '59
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- Ruth Bader Ginsburg Receives
First Sophia Smith Award
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- Smith in 2020: Innovative But
Tradition-Minded
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- WNBA Notes Smith's Role in Women's
Basketball
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- Plath Beyond the Plinth
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- Hannah Stott-Bumsted '97 is a big fan of women's colleges--Smith, in
particular--and of the popular National Public Radio program "Car
Talk," hosted by the irreverent Tom and Ray Magliozzi (also known
as Click and Clack). So, one day last April, Stott-Bumsted found herself
in what she considered an extremely enviable position: one of the Magliozzi
brothers asked her-on the air-"What's so wonderful about the experience
of a women's college?"
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- In fact, Stott-Bumsted was not the first caller to discuss the women's
college issue on "Car Talk." Earlier in the year, a Mount Holyoke
student, Leah (the show's guests are known only by their first names),
had belittled the benefits of women's education. Stott-Bumsted was itching
to have her own say but was a little worried that her defense might not
measure up.
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- A double major in French and history from Hamilton, Ontario, Stott-Bumsted
explained to Click and Clack that at her high school it was the boys whose
hands went up first, who talked all the time, whose lower voices stood
out more. "Here at Smith, I'm not in competition with people. In high
school it was very definitely a competition for boys' attention" (in
much the same way, she conceded, that boys were competing for girls' attention).
"You have to act a certain way if you want to be popular and you want
to be liked by boys." But "being at Smith, I've really learned
to respect myself and to respect what I have to say.You have time to figure
out who you are instead of who you think you should be."
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- Her eloquent case for the advantages of women's colleges having measured
up quite nicely, thank you, Stott-Bumsted got around to her question for
the Magliozzi brothers-"a car protocol question," she called
it: Now that she was graduating and moving in with her boyfriend, who has
a car while she does not, what are the rules about using his car? "I'm
sharing his apartment so-do I share his car?" The brothers didn't
think so: "It's not like the refrigerator or the stereo." Wait
for him to ask, they advised; how he handles it will tell you a lot about
him.
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- There followed a little more non-car talk about how, going to a women's
college, she had ever met a boyfriend in the first place: "Did you
sneak out again?" "Did someone forget to turn on the electric
fence?" "Do they have an electric fence at Smith?" (Stott-Bumsted
answered each of these questions with an emphatic no.) The segment closed
with Click (or maybe it was Clack) thanking her "for the encouragement
for all the other young women embarking upon a women's college," and
Stott-Bumsted affirming that "Smith is a great school; I've loved
it."
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