Defending the Stern Girl

How many times have you been placed in this predicament when visiting Columbia for the Sabbath (in a pathetic attempt to meet the opposite sex)? While eating the Sabbath meal at some stranger's suite (who happens to be a friend of a friend of a frie nd), you are forced to listen to inane dialogue touching on profound topics such as 70's sitcoms and the latest Hillel controversy. Ultimately, the conversation enters into high gear, as your hosts and fellow guests become increasingly animated when disc ussing their two favorite topics: Jewish geography and Stern (which invariably are inter-linked). Although the Jewish geography tends to be of the harmless sort (whose dating whom, whose living where, who got into med-school), one senses a mean-spiritedn ess in the dialogue's tone when it centers on Stern. Each person at the table offers his or her own "witty" anecdote underscoring the superficiality of the typical Stern girl, thereby perpetuating a gross caricature. Stern, for the people eating at the table, is little more than a place for a nice little JAP, whose favorite recreational activities include shopping and more shopping, to get her bachelor degree in jewel evaluation ( that way she will be able to tell how many karats her engagement ring is). That the majority of Stern girls are ambitious young ladies with strong religious ideals, who aren't solely consumed with thoughts of marriage, does not seem to bother the cackling college students as they strum their egos at the expense of others.

Although one can chalk up this shameless display of communal bravado to the usual one-upmanship endemic in the Modern Orthodox world (who has the biggest car or most lavish pool), I feel that this problem stems from more pedestrian reasons. If one a ctually looks at who usually instigates this Stern bashing festival, one will find the culprits to be Barnard students --- young ladies who like their Stern counterparts learn in an all-female environment and tend to be the butt of many jokes ( most ly from Columbia students). While one might expect these Barnard students to see Stern girls as their natural allies, the exact opposite is true. Indeed, when it comes to spewing vicious innuendo and flaming unflattering generalizations, the Barnard gir ls, with predatory zeal, are the first ones to volunteer their services, becoming the ring leaders of this Lashon Hara orgy. The reason for this is obvious: because of the perception that they could only get into an Ivy League school via the backdoor, B arnard girls are second class citizens in the Columbia scene-- a fact which causes many to be saddled with great inferiority complexes. As a result, Barnard girls use Stern as a convenient way of improving their own self-image, knocking down others to raise themselves. Additionally, because the predominant majority of Barnard girls come from co-ed high schools, where the message from college guidance counselors was "anything but YU," and went on to "progressive Yeshivas" ( read: Brovender's) in Israe l where one was taught to be "open-minded" and "forward looking," many harbor silly pretensions. Any person who willfully chooses to go to an institution where the secular education might be less than stellar, is dismissed immediately as being "vacuous" or "anti-intellectual".

But the sobering reality is that the differences between a given Barnard and Stern student is cosmetic at best ( about 50 points on the SAT's). No matter how vehemently Barnard girls protest otherwise, their Stern counterparts much like themselves are able-minded, hard working people who expect to enter the professional ranks. For the most part, both are dedicated to living Torah inspired lives and instilling in their children the correct values. By the same token, it is not an uncommon sight to s ee the typical Stern or Barnard girl engaging in an profligate spending expedition at Macy's or Bloomingdale's armed with Daddy's credit card. But such shopping ventures are far from extraordinary, but are the normal activity one expects young women fr om an affluent families to occasionally indulge in . Unfortunately, instead of trying to feed off Stern girls for inspiration, taking solace in the fact that other young Jewish women deem it imperative to be educated in a single-sex environment, Barnard students continue to try to differentiate themselves at all costs. Many times such antics are self-effacing. Indeed, they come off as pseudo- intellectual or fake, when misquoting philosophers or espousing the politically correct party line in a feeble attempt to cloak themselves in a veneer of intellectualism.

Thus, Barnard students -- and the Modern Orthodox world for that matter-- should respect Stern for providing a haven for frum young women to continue their Torah learning in a cloistered environment, secluded (as best one can be) from the he donistic and sexually promiscuous lifestyle encouraged in the secular collegiate world. Although like with any stereotype, there is a modicum of truth in the Stern girl caricature, Stern students, at least what we can glean from personal experience, a re not particularly vapid and simplistic. They do not think about getting married more than other sexually repressed young women who must conform to strict, ritualistic rules regarding a relationship with the opposite sex. Thus, by consistently disparagi ng their Stern counterparts, Barnard students seem like petty, small-minded people; women who lack the necessary confidence to stand on their own laurels.

While the more jaded will see this as a cheap ploy to stir up unneeded controversy, I am genuinely concerned about the current -- and more importantly -- future state of Modern Orthodoxy as a whole.

The weekly Sabbath meal at a given Columbia suite is a microcosm of American Judaism. In many ways it represents the best of American orthodoxy; an opportunity for young, ambitious Jewish college students to forgo the usual Friday night college "exp erience" and mix in a tempered environment. Unfortunately, the Sabbath meal, in many respects, also represents what is wrong with modern orthodoxy today: the flagrant bragging, the brazen showing off, and the constant disparaging of others.

P.S.

On a more general note, I also feel Stern girls receive way too much slack from Y.U. guys.

Their presence in the library and on the vans is a breath of fresh air for the typical Yeshiva student too tired to get out and meet some women.