On Feb. 24th the New York Times published an article by Michael Powell entitled, “Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College.” The article sought to trace a history of tension at Smith, citing, among others, an incident in July 2018 when a student was racially profiled, the cancelation of a Religion Studies class, and most recently, the college’s battle with Jodi Shaw, who recently resigned over allegations that Smith is a racially hostile workplace. Smith students and alumni reacted quickly to the article’s claims in conversations on campus and on various online platforms.
Many community members expressed anger at the New York Times for giving this piece a platform. Alumna Sara Meirs ‘20 said, “Personally, I think the article was the most spiteful, petty, and tone deaf journalism I’ve ever read and I can’t believe it was published by the NYT. The fact that they named the student [involved in the July 2018 incident] in the first line and then proceeded to mock and misalign her experience makes the article seem like a hit piece on a college student. They knew the exact kind of people who would take the bait too.”
Students described the article as “sloppy,” “biased” and “ill-researched.” While many commenters agree that the issues that Powell raised concerning racial and class structures at Smith need to be addressed, most disagreed entirely with his method and analysis.
Multiple comments criticized the article’s lack of intersectional analysis. First-year Ada Comstock scholar Adriana Piantedosi was disappointed to see Powell’s article pitting race and class against each other instead of focusing on the intersections of these issues that impact every member of the Smith community. She was heartened to see many Smithies discount Jodi Shaw’s message along with the Times article and recognize that it “employs the same tactics we’ve seen for centuries used to try to incite in-fighting and destroy any sense of solidarity that we should be cultivating across differences and shared realities re: race and class.”
This discomfort with the article’s refusal to break out of a rigid binary separating race and class was shared by many students. Anonymous student A said, “I think that you can’t position an elite institution in that way, you can’t say that institutional racism doesn’t exist just because classism exists here. And it definitely ignores a lot of intersectional identities.”
Anonymous student B criticized Powell for using class “superficially” to justify his point about racial issues at Smith. “They didn’t really get into class at Smith and how it affects students who aren’t upper class, or how it affects students and workers of color at Smith. If they really wanted to talk about class and workers, they could’ve talked a lot about COVID and unions … it just lacked a lot of nuance,” they said.
The complications and nuances that arise from considering intersecting identities like class and race are further complicated when set against the back-drop of a historically women’s college. “I feel as though there was maybe some internalized sexism in it as though that sort of piece would not be written about Amherst, Hampshire, or Oberlin, for instance,” said anonymous student C.
Many students were especially concerned for the safety of the student involved in the racial profiling incident in July 2018, condemning the Times for publishing her name and story. “I’m all for holding Smith accountable for not treating their workers well, but setting a bunch of angry white conservatives onto a young person of color seems like a useless and disgusting way to go about it. It’s just an evil tit for tat,” Meirs said.
A consistent theme connecting all these Smithie’s criticisms of Powell’s piece was how surreal it was to read about their community from the perspective of an outsider. The article attempted to encapsulate and speak for the daily experiences of so many Smith community members, and many felt that it failed to do so accurately.
Piantedosi described her reaction to seeing Smith featured in the Times as “suddenly being under a microscope and being open to misrepresentation.”
“I think that the main word to describe how I felt after reading the article was ‘invaded.’ It felt like poorly represented information, crummy reporting, and it was like they took a couple glances around and made their decision about where we stand and who we are,” said anonymous student C.
Students also disagreed with the article’s representation of Smith students’ reactions and responses to issues of inequality within the college. Many emphasized that Smithies are known to fight passionately to protect their community, even if it means criticizing the institution itself.
“I think it’s worth noting that basically every Smith student I’ve seen defending Smith from this article is usually highly critical of the college. We only defend it when the criticisms against it are ugly and made in bad faith,” said Meirs.
“The article tends to paint the students as kind of prone to emotional reaction and outburst and willing to fight fights that weren’t worth fighting, when in reality we just cared about supporting our classmates and making sure our classmates feel welcome here,” said anonymous student C.
The Sophian reached out to multiple Smith administrators for comment; every time we were referred back to President McCartney’s two recent community-wide emails, the first sent on Feb. 22 concerning Jodi Shaw’s resignation, and the second sent on March 3rd responding specifically to media coverage about Smith, including Powell’s article.
