March 1, 2008 11:57 AM
TULANE AND NEWCOMB
Ed. Note: The following letter, cut for length, is in response to our Education column, entitled “Newcomb Musings” which appeared in our January ’08 issue. Letters in response to this topic were also published in our February issue.
Articles like that written by Dawn Ruth just irk me. Under the guise of writing an informational article, Ms. Ruth has instead written an opinion piece that is full of emotional baggage and incendiary imagery. For example, I doubt that all Newcomb graduates feel that they’ve been treated as “disposable diapers.” Newcomb College had existed for over a hundred years before Katrina caused such widespread disaster; therefore I believe it’s a gross exaggeration of the matter to state that Tulane’s Board of Administrators closed Newcomb “at the first opportunity.” Instead of trying to imagine what people were thinking in the late 1800s, we can actually inspect what they thought, and why they took the actions they did, by looking at the documents they left behind.
Ms. Ruth is very concerned with Mrs. Newcomb’s intentions. She says, “the central question is: What did Josephine Louise – as she is affectionately called by Newcomb supporters – intend to be done with her vast fortune when she left it to Tulane? Without waking the dead for an accounting there’s no way to answer this question without considering her words and actions at the time.”
Indeed, there’s no need to “wake the dead for an accounting” of what Josephine Louise Newcomb wanted to be done with her money. She outlined it specifically in her letter of intent to the Administrators of the Tulane University, dated Oct. 11, 1886:
In pursuance of a long cherished design to establish an appropriate memorial of my beloved daughter H. Sophie Newcomb, deceased, I have determined, at the instance of my friend, Col. William Preston Johnston, to intrust to your Board the execution of my design.
Feeling a deep personal sympathy with the people of New Orleans and a strong desire to advance the cause of female education in Louisiana, and believing also that I shall find in the board selected by the benevolent Paul Tulane the wisest and safest custodian of the fund I propose to give, I hereby donate to your Board the sum of $100,000, to be used in establishing the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, in the Tulane University of Louisiana, for the education of white girls and young women.
I request that you will see that the tendency of the institution shall be in harmony with the fundamental principles of the Christian religion, and to that end that you will have a chapel or assembly room in which Christian worship may be observed daily for the benefit of the students. But I desire that worship and instruction shall not be of a sectarian or denominational character. I further request that the education given shall look to the practical side of life as well as to literary excellence. But I do not mean in this my act of donation to impose upon you restrictions which will allow the intervention of any person or persons to control, regulate, or interfere with your disposition of this fund, which is committed fully and solely to your care and discretion, with entire confidence in your fidelity and wisdom.
Invoking the favor of Divine Providence for your guidance in the administration of the fund, and for your personal welfare,
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, Josephine Louise Newcomb.
Hardly leaves room for doubt about her intentions, and in wording her act of donation in this manner, Mrs. Newcomb also indicates that she expected people in the future to question her intentions or the Board’s handling of her donation, so she specifically included the bit about not allowing “the intervention of any person or persons to control ...”
Throughout the next 10 years, Mrs. Newcomb continued to fund and to oversee the development of Newcomb College ...
Mrs. Newcomb obviously knew what she was doing, knew what the Board was doing and was satisfied with the results, so much so that she left the majority of her estate to the Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund, adding:
“I have implicit confidence that the Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund will continue to use and apply the benefactions and property I have bestowed and may give, for the present and future development of this department of the University known as the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College.”
Mrs. Newcomb’s intentions seem pretty clear. Ms. Ruth states “Newcomb wanted what she said: a college for women to perpetuate the memory of her daughter.” I would counter with “Newcomb got what she wanted: an institution which continues to educate ‘girls and young women’ within the Tulane University of Louisiana, and which honors her beloved daughter with ‘an appropriate memorial’ by carrying on her name with the Newcomb College Institute and with the Newcomb-Tulane (not Tulane–Newcomb!) College.”
Ms. Ruth’s flippant suggestion of adding male students to Newcomb College to save money would clearly go against Mrs. Newcomb intentions to provide education to women. Her diatribe about the changes that Newcomb was forced to endure (classes becoming unisex; faculties merging) conveniently overlooks the integration of non-white women into Newcomb’s ranks, which also clearly goes against Mrs. Newcomb’s intentions as specifically stated in her original letter of donation. No one would argue today that non-white women aren’t worthy of being educated in Newcomb; why then were males not worthy of being taught in the same classrooms, or were the Newcomb faculty not worthy of teaching both sexes?
Newcomb College was established as the country’s first coordinate college, not as a separate college as Ms. Ruth states; it was meant to be a part of Tulane University, not a stand-alone college. Other than the very few first years of its existence, the Newcomb college experience was never one of an “all-girl” school. Newcomb women fully integrated themselves into the Tulane University life, even going so far as to raise $5,000 in 1916, to start a fund for the erection of a new grandstand at the Tulane ball field.
Throughout its long history, Newcomb College women have honored H. Sophie Newcomb with their actions and their accomplishments. It is now up to the alumnae of Newcomb College and of Newcomb-Tulane College to perpetuate Mrs. Newcomb’s desire for her daughter’s memory to be honored, through their own actions and accomplishments.
Ann E. Smith Case, CA
Assistant University Archivist
Tulane University
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