SummitPost.org

I have met a couple of guys in the northwest through work and forestry connections who attended Deep Springs College, California. Maybe its only association with the Sierra Nevada and the White Mountains is its proximity. Actually, I had never heard of the place before meeting either of these two folks. But I was fascinated to hear their two year student body is 26, and part of their program involves ranch and farm work. Maybe it would be a good college to go to if a student wanted to go hiking and mountain climbing on the weekend! Any folks here familiar with this college?

It's is also an amazingly tough school, with very high academic standards. I used to work down the hall from a fairly famous mathematician who went to that school. When I first heard where he went to college, I thought it was a joke... until I checked the academic rankings.

Yeah, my cousin and a good friend attended and my uncle taught there. It's a great location, but between demanding academics and ranch work, good luck having the time and energy for peakbagging. Great school, though! It's pretty tough to get in, but tuition is free for the two years if you do. Hiking aside, it would be a great school to attend if it's a possibility for you.

For two years... no drinking, no visitors, no females...

No thank you!

The location is excellent if you love isolation. It has a reputation for excellent academics and difficulty of admission.

They voted last year to begin admitting women.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011 ... dmit_women

In the late 70s when I was looking at them, the student teacher ratio is 1:2 (yes, you read that correctly - 2x professors as students). When I was a senior in high school I was seriously interested in going there but they required submission of 13 separate essays to apply, and I had already gotten an early decision admission to a good college back east so bailed before even finishing the application. One of my friends who went there worked as a whitewater kayaking guide before eventually becoming a software architect at Google.

I coincidentally was driving down 168 yesterday, saw the sign for DSC, and was wondering what was back there

Yeah, for sure this small college in the middle of the desert sounds academically rigorous to me! The student I know went on to get a degree in veterinary medicine (Cornell). Maybe it will get tougher when women arrive, Laura. And mrchad9 may change his opinion.

the judge said no...

http://www.sierrawave.net/16213/judge-stout-rules/

I am not a lawyer and don't play one on TV. But I am curious if no trustees objected to DSC going coed, would the change have gone through easily? There are certainly examples in our society of private schools changing from male only to coed. Does it have to be a unanimous decision by BoT? In my part of the world some Catholic high schools have made that change. It is interesting that a Trust setup 100 years ago, cannot be modified by a current board of trustees. Any lawyers on this website who want to weigh in on this decision? Another question, are there any public schools left that are not coed?
I would not think so.

The Chief's right. The school was established by a gift from a trust that directed the creation of a school for the development of young men, or similar language to that effect. If the school was created in furtherance of that gift, it's not within the trustees' or the board's discretion to change that directive. If you gave a parcel of land thru a trust to the city with the express intent that it be used as a park or open space, you wouldn't want the city selling it to a developer after you're gone.

AFAIK, Douglass College (women's college which was/is part of Rutgers University) was the last single-sex degree granting public college, although you could argue about whether it should count since the classes were mostly Rutgers classes and open to the general student body. Douglass did have independent living arrangements, academic rules, etc. An internal reorganization a few years ago meant that the Rutgers colleges ceased to be independent names; Douglass still exists as a residential arrangement.

While I am not a lawyer and fatdad is, IIRC, it seems to me that there is often wiggle room in interpreting the terms of a trust. The trust directs the education of young men, but a sufficiently creative lawyer might be able to argue that it is non exclusive given how higher education has evolved - unless it explicitly says something about excluding women. Breaking the explicit terms of a trust is much harder. The example I know about is the Barnes Foundation art museum, and that was a decades-long battle, since the intents of the founder were being contradicted. (IMO, Barnes was both a great benefactor and a crackpot, so there were two sides to the issue.)

OK, it sounds like modifying a Trust or changing the interpretation of a Trust is somewhere between being impossible and extremely difficult. It will be interesting to see if the Board of Trustees gives up after the judge's recent ruling or they hatch a new plan to achieve a coed college. Through lawyer friends, I have been told before that lawyers like to work in the grey area between where law is black and white. We'll see.

the judge said no, again

http://www.sierrawave.net/16979/judge-stout-rules-2/