Seeing 2 Colleges Through a New Lens

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By BRITNEY PAYTON

"Oh don't you wish you were a Spelmanite like me!" That chant sealed Spelman College for me during an overnight visit in my senior year of high school. Until then, I had narrowed my choices down to Wellesley College ("women who will") and Spelman ("women who serve"). The nail-biting deadline of May 1 was quickly approaching, and I was still torn between the two schools. Both were women's colleges that have produced some of the brightest and greatest leaders over the years. Through prayer and lists of pros and cons at each, I decided to send in my acceptance to Spelman, even as I wondered about the experience I would have had at Wellesley. I had attended majority-white schools all my life, but, loving new experiences, I reasoned that attending a historically black college would be a whole new world of exposure.

At Spelman, though, my wonder about Wellesley continued to grow, and last year I decided to spend my fall semester at Wellesley on an exchange program offered by both colleges. (I had already done a foreign- exchange program, in Ghana, during high school.) I was told I was the first Spelman student to attend Wellesley in over 10 years. After this reassurance of my ability to act as a pioneer, I packed up and made the 20-hour drive to the small town of Wellesley, Mass.

After getting acclimated, I chose to explore Wellesley's academic reaches. Through one psychology course, I worked with an organization that helped the families of autistic children. This was an experience I will never forget because it opened my eyes to a community I would not have otherwise understood firsthand. I also explored my other passion — sports. As an exchange student, I was limited to nonvarsity sports, one of which happened to be rugby. I had never played rugby before, but I had always loved football, and being able to play anything similar was like receiving a gift with every tackle. Rugby, which was never popular in the South, was now at my fingertips. I loved the game so much that within the first week I was recruiting my roommate to play.

Representing Spelman the best way I knew how, I was kind, courteous, and, most of all, a lady to everyone I met. But coming from an HBC I naturally gravitated toward the black students on campus, as they did to me. I was "the new black girl." Wellesley's black-student organization, called Ethos, holds weekly meetings in a clubhouse on campus. This was so new and different to me — actually going to a sequestered location just to be around all black people. Other black students were very intrigued about Spelman life because, as it turns out, many of them had also been forced to make the tough decision between Spelman and Wellesley. Not only were they listening to my reasons for choosing Spelman, they were also vocalizing their own motives for choosing Wellesley.

While sitting, listening, and sharing, I noticed instantly a huge difference in how diversity was defined by the black women at each institution. At Spelman we are all women of color and therefore seek other distinguishing characteristics with which to define ourselves — such as the athletes, the bio majors, the sorority girls, and the legacies. At Wellesley, however, the division was truly between black and white. Students there saw no differences among the members in Ethos, and there were minimal interracial divisions. I found this to be an eye-opening exposure in that, even though the Spelman community is so similar, we still seek to find those minuscule differences that make us more individual. This revelation has not caused me to associate more with either side, but instead has allowed me to embrace both my membership in the black community and my individual identity.

During my exchange, I tried to immerse myself in activities and experiences that I would not otherwise have had. I was determined to soak up every second of time I had on Wellesley's campus, whether it was eating in every cafeteria on campus or sleeping in the library the night before a huge test. I promised myself to pack my semester full of as much "Wellesleyness" as I could. Of course, I had some transitional hardships due to differences in the teaching styles of the two institutions and in the amount of time dedicated to studying, but I waded through them with the fundamentals I had learned at Spelman and the skills I honed at Wellesley. Spelman's faculty members placed more emphasis on students' being professionals and African-American women combined in one package, while those at Wellesley stressed being an academic scholar more than any type of minority. I cannot pass judgment on which approach seems to work best; I am pleased to have gained the experiences of both.

Being an African-American from an HBC caused me to look through a different pair of lenses at Wellesley. However, I still was able to see an assembly of goal-oriented women who were just like me. After removing the lenses and being adopted as a Wellesley woman, I perceived that we were women who characterized both of our schools' mottoes — by being willing to do and able to serve. Now, seeing more similarities than differences between the two institutions has allowed me to fully enjoy my exchange by integrating the experience of both schools into my heart and memory forever.

I cannot express how fulfilling my experiences at both colleges have been. I highly recommend a firsthand gaze at a world beyond your own boundaries and self-set limitations.

Britney Payton is a senior at Spelman College, where she is a psychology major with a pre-medicine concentration. She hopes to become a child psychiatrist and help improve mental-health services for African-American children.