emily l. wagner

At each of the (five) Seven Sisters, a professor walks into the classroom at 9am and says, “Good morning, class.”

At Mount Holyoke, 20 students wait expectantly.

At Wellesley, 20 students furiously scribble “good morning, class” in their notebooks.

At Bryn Mawr, the students look puzzled, and one says “Excuse me, professor, but I don’t think this issue was addressed in the assigned reading,” and another says, “I know it wasn’t covered, because I read all six chapters carefully three times,” and a third says, “it’s not in next week’s assignment either.”

At Smith, one student says, “What do you mean by ‘good,’ how do you know that my values align with yours?” A second says what do you mean by saying ‘morning,’ that’s Western-hemisphere-centric.” A third says, “You shouldn’t use the word ‘class,’ classicist language should be eliminated.”

And at Barnard, nobody says anything. The classroom is empty because everybody got back to their rooms at 5AM, and they’re still sleeping.