Does the archives represent Mount Holyoke College as a community?

Laura J. Curry

My first reaction to this question was that, putting Bauman’s Tantalus metaphor of ideal community aside and focusing on “really existing communities,” no, the archives do not represent community to me. Having no alumnae friends or relatives, my Mount Holyoke is the students, faculty, and staff that are on campus currently. I quickly changed my mind, however; I realized, of course the people that came before me (represented in the archives) are part of the college community, because without history having been the way it was, the present would not be the way it is.

With this in mind, I thought about the origins of the college and how different its mission is now, such as the departure from religious affiliation, and the ending of less formal (but equally influential) guidance of students towards the marriage market in Mary Browning Nelson’s day. However, there are certainly aspects of campus life which have remained for much of the college’s history, and many practices (the physical education requirement for example) that are more like updated versions of old ways than totally new ideas. In addition to all this we must not forget Mount Holyoke’s academic reputation, established and maintained by our predecessors, which continues to be one of the strongest influences on the college community and who becomes a part of it.

Additionally, I am not under the assumption that the archivists judge sources as useful or not, so in that way the collection should theoretically show real perspectives on the college, not just those which reflect well on Mount Holyoke. Our archivist Molly, however, pointed out to me that the community represented by the archives is very self-selected in that it lacks staff histories, and only represents certain students (and not a random sample.). So now I would have to say that maybe the archives could represent Mount Holyoke as community, but they fail to show the whole picture.