Mills College never cultivated its alumnae of color
On March 17, my alma mater, Mills College, announced that it would transition from a degree-conferring academic institution to a “Mills Institute” connected to UC Berkeley.
This change will also mean that Mills College may hold its last commencement ceremony in 2023.
That year, 2023, holds special meaning for me and my classmates from the graduating class of 1973. It will mark the 50th anniversary of our commencement. It will be the year in Mills’ parlance that we become “Golden Girls.”
A Mills “Golden Girl” gets the royal treatment at her 50th reunion. It is a wonderful and joyous achievement, whether it is tethered to the institution, to us a group of amazing women, or both. To truly understand how significant that year will be for us, you have to know that the Mills class of 1973 is still thought to be the largest class of Black women in the history of the college.
In 1969, we arrived Black with stellar grade point averages at a Mills College that begrudgingly welcomed us. With a progressive presentation on the outside, Mills was, and is still, deeply biased on the inside.
I write this from the perspective of a former student who in 1969 was both richly encouraged and treated with withering disdain. I write this as the first and only woman of color appointed, in 2005, as the executive director of the Mills College Alumnae Association, and who on my first day on the job watched three White employees walk out as one of them said, “There is no way we will ever work for her.”
I write this as a short-term contractor at Mills who, while in a 2007 staff meeting, listened as the art museum director at the time said she was taking down an African art exhibit and putting it in the basement “because no one wants to come here and see that crap anyway.”
The Mills College announcement last month cites changes in higher education, declining enrollment and budget deficits as the reasons for its academic demise. But, as with many colleges, Mills relied heavily on the financial contributions of the “good old girl” White alumnae, many of whom have now passed away.
Some of these same women can be found in the college’s yearbooks of their era in drama classes smeared in blackface. While I was executive director, one of them asked me more than once if I was available to clean her house. Many of them are gone now, and when it came time to seek new funding pathways, Mills did not cultivate the alumnae of color.
Don’t get me wrong here: Mills did in fact ask us for money from time to time, but they never cultivated us as a Mills affinity group. They never mixed us in their famous Mills College chocolate chip cookie dough as a part of the Mills alumnae recipe. Mills never connected and acted upon the changing demographics of its alumnae base. As I write this in 2021, Mills College has no Black employees in its Office of Alumnae Relations.
So, while I am saddened by news that my alma mater will no longer exist in its present state, I also understand the inevitability of it all.
We have come full circle, my beloved ’70s sisters. Who could have imagined that the Black women who graduated in 1973 would be among the last group of “Golden Girls” for Mills College?
And who could have imagined that, here in 2021, we would still have to wonder if Mills will celebrate our shining legacy?