President Obama speaking at the Barnard commencement in May. Image: Barnard College, David Wentworth

There are tons of college options out there: big universities, small colleges, in the city, out of the way on a spacious campus, co-ed, all women…

That last one (applicable if you happen to be a woman), is a no-brainer for many people. I went to a women’s college — Barnard — and was once asked, “Well, what was the point of going to college with no guys around?” That person was (kind of) joking.

So what is the point? ”When I’m thinking about Barnard specifically, I think we’re able to provide a world-class education in a small liberal arts environment,” Pamela Phayme, Barnard’s director of diversity initiatives told me. She highlights the intimate classes, the ability to get to know the campus community, and the college’s association with Columbia University, which is right across the road, as some of the Barnard perks.

I personally enjoyed the experience for many of the reasons Phayme gave. I grew up in the New York City public school system, graduating from Brooklyn Technical High School. You need to take a test to be admitted to Brooklyn Tech, but it’s part of the public school system nonetheless. There were 5,000 students in my high school. Barnard’s website says there are about 2,400 students enrolled. It’s a difference you can feel, coupled with an incredible faculty.

I’ve actually never met Ms. Phayme and went to the school long before she arrived. Phayme didn’t study at Barnard; she graduated from the University of Virginia and did her graduate study at James Madison University. She also worked at Hofstra University for two years prior to joining one of the Seven Sisters.

The Seven Sister schools — the seven all-female liberal arts colleges in the Northeast — are Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Vassar (which is now co-ed), Mount Holyoke, Smith, Wellesley, and Radcliffe, which actually merged with Harvard and is no longer a standalone women’s institution. All have some connection to a larger, Ivy League university and, one way or another, it’s not that hard to see guys. Besides these schools, there are lots of others out there as well. I’ll be focusing on Barnard and its Sisters since that’s my alma mater — goooo Barnard! — but all of the schools seek to offer women a unique educational experience that is enhanced by the single-gender campus population. Once you graduate, a women’s college diploma makes an impact on your resume. Besides the name recognition of these seven schools, a women’s college education speaks to the rigor of the program and the commitment of the graduate, which resonates with anyone looking over your resume.

“Today, of course, women have many options, but we have only become more convinced that, for many women, a women’s college is the best option,” says the Smith College website (italics, theirs).

All of the Sister schools offer a traditional liberal arts education. At Barnard, Phayme says many students major in English, from writing to literature and beyond, dance and fine arts. However, there are a number of students who opt for the sciences and other areas. The student body comes from around the country and around the world. And for all of these schools, the point is to nurture women leaders; smart women who confidently go out into the world to tackle the areas and industries they’ve prepared for. Do you hear “I’m Every Woman” playing in your head yet?

(USA Today) — Revealed in Marvel Comics’ Ultimate Fallout Issue 4, out Wednesday, the new Spider-Man in the Ultimate universe is a half-black, half-Hispanic teen named Miles Morales. He takes over the gig held by Peter Parker, who was killed in Ultimate Spider-Man Issue 160 in June.  In his first appearance, he simply breaks up a fight. But readers will learn the true origin of Morales and how he became the new Spider-Man when Ultimate Spider-Manrelaunches in September with a new No. 1 issue.

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(New York Times) — For generations here in the deepest South, there had been a great taboo: publicly crossing the color line for love. Less than 45 years ago, marriage between blacks and whites was illegal, and it has been frowned upon for much of the time since.  So when a great job beckoned about an hour’s drive north of the Gulf Coast, Jeffrey Norwood, a black college basketball coach, had reservations. He was in a serious relationship with a woman who was white and Asian.  “You’re thinking about a life in South Mississippi?” his father said in a skeptical voice, recalling days when a black man could face mortal danger just being seen with a woman of another race, regardless of intentions. “Are you sure?”

But on visits to Hattiesburg, the younger Mr. Norwood said he liked what he saw: growing diversity. So he moved, married, and, with his wife, had a baby girl who was counted on the last census as black, white and Asian. Taylor Rae Norwood, 3, is one of thousands of mixed-race children who have made this state home to one of the country’s most rapidly expanding multiracial populations, up 70 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to new data from the Census Bureau.  In the first comprehensive accounting of multiracial Americans since statistics were first collected about them in 2000, reporting from the 2010 census, made public in recent days, shows that the nation’s mixed-race population is growing far more quickly than many demographers had estimated, particularly in the South and parts of the Midwest. That conclusion is based on the bureau’s analysis of 42 states; the data from the remaining eight states will be released this week.

In North Carolina, the mixed-race population doubled. In Georgia, it expanded by more than 80 percent, and by nearly as much in Kentucky and Tennessee. In Indiana, Iowa and South Dakota, the multiracial population increased by about 70 percent.  “Anything over 50 percent is impressive,” said William H. Frey, a sociologist and demographer at the Brookings Institution. “The fact that even states like Mississippi were able to see a large explosion of residents identifying as both black and white tells us something that people would not have predicted 10 or 20 years ago.”

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(Time) — The practice of passing — identifying with and presenting oneself as one race while denying ancestry of another — reached its peak during the Jim Crow era. Needless to say, the notion of having to “pass” as white is outdated and offensive, but as sociologists Nikki Khanna and Cathryn Johnson report in a new study, passing is still alive and well today. It just happens in the other direction.  For their study, Khanna and Johnson interviewed 40 biracial American adults about their racial identity, and were surprised by what they found: most people tended to suppress or reject their white ancestry altogether and claim to be entirely African American. It wasn’t simply about calling oneself black, but also aggressively changing one’s behavior, looks and tastes to appear more “black.”

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