Members of an all-women college are upset over what some are calling “anti-feminist” remarks made in a commencement address.
Alumna Nella Gray Barkley, who founded a career counseling company, addressed graduates at Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, Va., on Saturday, focusing her remarks on career advice. Barkley touched on feminism and sexual harassment, reminding graduates that “it is you who makes the ground rules.”
Barkley’s “partial sympathy” for the #MeToo movement was not enough for some in attendance, however, as social media blew up with complaints over her comments such as “I have little patience with the woman who arrives breathlessly at her boss’s hotel room for a so-called conference … What did she think was going to happen?” as well as claiming it is “only natural for men from Mars to follow the shortest skirt in the room,” according to Inside Higher Ed.
Perhaps the kicker was her proclamation that she’s “no raging feminist.”
“I actually love men, and I married one,” she said.
According to Inside Higher Ed’s report, “Almost immediately after the graduation ceremony, some of the new graduates started to talk about the speech … discussion took place on closed Facebook groups, but some members shared screen shots from the discussion on condition that names not be used. Some who were present wrote about how shocked they were.”
“Sweet Briar should be embarrassed,” wrote one student. Others called the speech “tasteless and insensitive.”
On Sunday, Meredith Woo, president of the college, send an email to those who received their degrees Saturday.
“We need to learn from people with diverse skills – people with different ways of conceptualizing, imagining, and doing things; people with different life experiences, and different memories of what worked and what didn’t; people with different referents,” she wrote.
Notably, commencement attendees did not disrupt the event like seen at prior commencement addresses across the country.
