Mills College students and alumnae say they will not go down without a fight.
The 169-year-old women’s school, which said Wednesday it will stop offering degrees in two years, has a history of activism. Its students have battled administrators before and won.
But this time could be different. Mills has endured years of falling enrollment and declining revenue, and the problems only worsened during the pandemic.
As the rare private college with more than half of undergraduates identifying as people of color, and half LGBTQ, Mills holds a unique place in the Bay Area and in higher education, one that its supporters say is irreplaceable.
Mills is believed to be the only single-sex college in the country ever to get its board of trustees to reverse a decision to go coed. Student protesters occupied the campus for 13 days in 1990, triggering a reversal and cheers that echo to this day.
Now, as word travels among students and 25,000 Mills alumnae that the stately college in Oakland will no longer enroll new students after the fall, and will close in 2023 to become an institute, their anger and sorrow has turned to action. They have begun a movement to propel the trustees to reverse their decision.
Among the prominent voices protesting the closure is Lateefah Simon, a BART board director and president of the racial justice Akonadi Foundation in Oakland.
“I, along with hundreds of alumni, will work to save Mills,” said Simon, who spent 12 years working part time for her degree, earned in 2018. “I went to Mills as a single mother, and my daughter often sat at my side on the floor while I was in lectures. There’s not another place like Mills in the world.”
First year student, Kendall Bobo stands for a portrait just outside Mills College on Thursday, March 18, 2021 in Hayward, Calif. One of the oldest and last women's colleges in the country, Oakland's Mills College, is winding down, and is no longer enrolling first-year students
Amy Osborne / Special to The ChronicleAfter learning of the board’s decision, U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland and Mills Class of ‘72, announced that she was urging the trustees to reconsider “and to explore all available funding options to meet its financial challenges.”
Lee also was a single mother 50 years ago when she, too, brought her children to class at Mills. Lee led the Black Student Union and credits Mills with inspiring her passion for politics. She called the school “a bastion of diversity in higher education.” The school “must be able to continue in that important role.”
Katie Sanborn, chair of Mills’ board of trustees, told The Chronicle that she appreciated Lee’s passion for the college they both graduated from. But she gave no indication that the trustees would reverse their decision.
“Aggressive fundraising is not a solution to ongoing strategic operating deficits,” Sanborn said. Nor is admitting men.
“We believe the best long-term solution is to transition from being a four-year, degree-granting college and instead focus on building the Mills Institute,” she said. “At the same time, we will continue to seek collaborations with other academic institutions.”
Officials have said the college will become an institute — with details pending — to carry on the mission of the college to promote racial justice and the voices of women and people of color.
The private school is one of just 37 women’s campuses left in the country, according to the 2021 Guide to Women’s Colleges.
“Regional small colleges are deeply struggling, and it just so happens that some women’s colleges fall into that boat,” said Casey Near, author of the women’s college guide and a former admissions counselor at Mills. “It’s not a correct read to say this is happening to Mills because it’s a women’s college,” she said, noting that larger, more selective women’s schools like Smith, Wellesley and Scripps are doing well.
Those schools have a mixture of students, with a large number able to pay full freight, Near said. Mills does not.
Mills’ tuition is $29,340, a dramatic reduction from the nearly $45,000 basic price of just four years ago. Back then, nearly everyone got financial aid, so in 2017 the college reduced tuition by 36% to match what students actually paid, in hopes it would be a more appealing number.
But 95% still don’t pay full price, and the tuition reset failed to bring more students to the stately, 135-acre campus. Enrollment has dropped by more than 20% since 2018, to 609 undergraduates. Graduate enrollment fell by 28%, to 352 students.
Students and alumnae are mobilizing across social media, including on the “Save Mills” Facebook page, and on Instagram at _savemills. The groups are also finalizing plans for a rally next week in downtown Oakland.
“Mills has a social responsibility to remain open,” said Heidy Gutierrez, a 2008 graduate who noted that Mills was educating women before they even had the right to vote. “We are not going down without a fight.”
Lila Goehring, an English major graduating in May, said: “Definitely we’re fighting it. I mean, it’s completely heartbreaking. I came to Mills because women’s education is so important right now. I came because it’s a place where people fight (for social justice).”
People still talk about the 1990 strike at Mills, when hundreds of students, cheered on by faculty, occupied the Oakland campus and forced the trustees to reverse their decision to admit male undergraduates as a way to increase revenue.
A less dramatic confrontation led to the rescue of the college’s much-loved book arts program in 2017, but did not prevent layoffs — including the rare severing of tenured professors that year.
Also boosting hope among supporters is the story of Sweet Briar in Virginia, which in 2015 announced its pending demise — only to be resurrected by donations and lawsuits.
Now, organizers are quickly surveying students and alumnae to find out what they can do to help. The private Save Mills Facebook group has more 700 members who have been sharing their shock, opinions — and ideas.
“Veep (Kamala) Harris is from the bay! What if we flooded her with letters asking here to help save Mills? If there is anyone with the juice and heart to do something, it HAS to be her,” one woman posted.
Another wrote: “Each class could start a stimulus check donation fund.” Another suggested a concert fundraiser. Goehring posted a draft of a poster for a noon rally Friday on the steps of the Oakland Civic Center.
Simon added her voice: “I’m super here. Sigh...this is going to be a fight. So honored to be in the crew.”
A woman walks past the cafeteria building at Mill College on Thursday, March 18, 2021 in Hayward, Calif. One of the oldest and last women's colleges in the country, Oakland's Mills College, is winding down, and is no longer enrolling first-year students.
Amy Osborne / Special to The ChronicleSanborn, the board chair, did not respond when asked the size of Mills’ fiscal hole. In 2015, Mills reported an endowment of $189 million. But Moody’s withdrew its rating for Mills’ debt that year, already having downgraded it due to deficit spending and enrollment loss.
Mills hasn’t released details of what the new Mills Institute will look like. But an expanded collaboration with UC Berkeley, still in discussions, could play a role.
Douglass College in New Jersey calls itself a “women’s college without walls.” The private school exists within the public Rutgers University.
“If UC Berkeley could absorb Mills,” that might be one solution for Mills, said Near, the former admissions counselor.
None of these potential solutions will help Kendall Bobo because Mills will award its last degrees in 2023 — and Bobo is in the Class of 2024.
The first-year student from the Central Valley called her year “amazing.”
“It’s kind of irritating that it’s happening now,” said Bobo, who missed out on the joys of her last semester in high school because of the pandemic. And now this. “It’s my introduction to adulthood,” she said wryly.
Sanborn said the school is “doing everything we can” to help students who will need to transfer to other schools.
Still, many students aren’t persuaded that Mills is doing all that it can, or all that it could have done.
“The fact that they did this announcement right before spring break — that’s strategic. They didn’t want as much interaction with us,” said senior Priyadarshini Rizal, an international relations major.
“We all just feel very devastated. There have been 169 years of hard work to make Mills a safe space for Black, indigenous and (other) people of color,” she said. “Students and faculty work so well together, listening and hearing each other, to make this environment for people who need it.
“It’s all gone down the drain.”
Nanette Asimov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov
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