cover image Forgotten Promise: Race and Gender Wars on a Small College Campus

Forgotten Promise: Race and Gender Wars on a Small College Campus

Gretchen Von Loeww Kreuter, Gretchen V. Kreufer, Von Loewe Kreuter Gretchen. Alfred A. Knopf, $23 (201pp) ISBN 978-0-679-44700-9

When a student brawl with racial overtones polarized small, midwestern Middleton College (not its real name) in 1992, its president resigned and Kreuter spent a year as its interim president. In this ironic, witty memoir, in which all the names are changed, she writes about being a white, middle-aged female administrator at a racially charged, smoldering, sexist campus dominated by a macho-male, athletic culture. During her brief tenure, Kreuter launched a multicultural center, hired African American faculty and broadened the Eurocentric curriculum through a campus-wide, consensus-building process. But her narrative at times bogs down in the minutiae of constant racial incidents, thefts and provocations, and she departed Middleton lamenting its divisive, separatist atmosphere. Her stormy experience at a college beset by small endowments and limited enrollment, where fewer than 45% of entering freshmen ever become seniors and where business administration is by far the primary major, will resonate with teachers, administrators and students. (Aug.)