Hostile Treatment of Men on Mount Holyoke Campus

Image Courtesy of aamhc

When I arrived at Mount Holyoke College, a women’s college in Massachusetts, for my first semester of college, I was thrilled to be surrounded by strong, independent feminists. Though I love my friends at college, I missed my guy friends from back home and stayed in touch with a lot of them. All of them would regularly ask if they could visit so that I could introduce them to some “sexy lesbians.” Just like the requests, my response was pretty standard:

• First of all, lesbians do not like men. Pretty self-explanatory.
• Secondly, my college is not full of desperate women who throw themselves at men.
• Thirdly, you will not be able to stand the pressure of being THAT guy.

As soon as you enter the college campus center, you will endure the sting of a hundred eyes on your back. Even after you leave the campus center, the pain will follow you around campus like a persistent toothache. In the real world, you might feel like you are part of the patriarchal majority, where you have the power of looking without shame. At Mount Holyoke, however,  everyone knows where your weak spots are due to the popular Self Defense for Women class where you practice kneeing certain areas of the male anatomy. It’s almost a customary test to figure out whether or not you can withstand the heat.

To be honest, sometimes you can’t help but look up because men do stand out. Everything from the way they walk to the tone of their voice causes a line of heads to perk up. Sometimes, it’s harmless. We all joke about women’s reaction to men on campus and how absurd it can get. But there is a point where it starts to become a little extreme.

During her first year of college, Jenna Caputo’s father came to pick her up from campus and  take her home for the weekend.  He got a call from work so he waited on the steps of the dormitory while Jenna went inside to get the rest of her things. Suddenly, Campus Police pulled up and asked him what he was doing there. They explained that somebody had reported Jenna’s father as a suspicious individual. When Jenna’s father asked what he was doing that was suspicious, they refused to answer and left.

When Jenna first told me her story, I laughed. She was surprised but incredibly amused by how uneasy Mount Holyoke women were around men, whether they are students from other colleges or Mount Holyoke dads.

As I began to understand Mount Holyoke culture more, I started to question the treatment of men on this campus. When you call the authorities on an older man who is waiting by his car for a few minutes, at what point does a concern for security turn into the criminalizing and alienation of men?

Most colleges around the country have guest sign-in procedures, especially in bigger cities. Due to the fact that Mount Holyoke does not require guests to sign-in, there are other rules in place. The decade-long college policy states, “All guests will need to be escorted by their host, but not necessarily escorted while on the floor of their host. Guests must be escorted to other floors in the hall. In the case of co-ed bathrooms, a guest will need to request permission to enter.”

Todd Porter, the Associate Director of Residential Life, says that this is because all guests must be monitored at all times for the sake of safety. However, though the sex and gender of guests are not specified, female guests are not as noticeable and therefore are not treated differently. This instantaneously places the blame on men for any crime that takes place on campus. While in fact, there has been an increase in thefts committed by Mount Holyoke students over the past few years.

At the beginning of the semester, my Senior Community Advisor sent out an email about this regulation specifying, “Male visitors cannot walk up and down the stairs unaccompanied.”

This means that if a student has left her boyfriend alone for a few minutes or even for a class, he is not allowed to go to the bathroom if it is on another floor. If he leaves to go to a male bathroom in the library or campus center, he cannot come back into the building with his host’s student ID. When my boyfriend visited me, the treatment was outright appalling and hilarious.

One night, while going up the stairs, there was a Mount Holyoke student who walked wearily around my boyfriend and I. When we entered the bathroom, there was a girl looking at the mirror in front of her and brushing her teeth. We both approached the mirror at the other side of the bathroom to brush our teeth, too. Suddenly, the girl turned away from the mirror, with her back towards us and brushed her teeth while in an odd angle that made spitting into the sink seem very uncomfortable. She rinsed her mouth in the sink, still facing away from us, and walked out.  My skinny, five-foot-three, boyfriend never knew his presence could be so offensive.

As a Mount Holyoke student, I have learned to stand up for myself as a woman. But in that process, we’re not supposed to look down on men and treat them in a condescending manner. In my opinion, this is why so many people perceive feminism in a terrible light. Skeptics think that feminism is about giving women more power and respect than men. In my eyes, feminism is about gender equality and that is something we must promote within and outside of our women’s college bubble.