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Susan Haar VanDerzee

Southampton College in September of 1963 offered the chance to be a pioneer. I loved the idea of being in the first class. I loved the idea of starting everything from scratch. And I loved the view. Who could help loving the view?

Since I had never been to college before and neither had anyone I knew - at least in a residential sense since my dad had graduated from C. W. Post as a commuter, a thirty-something father with four kids - I had no idea what to expect, so nothing was startling. I thought everyone had dorm rooms in converted chicken houses (wasn't that what East, West and North Cottages were before the college took over?) and old lodges (Abney Peak - the lone girls' dorm that first year). It all seemed just like college must be anywhere - classes, meal plans, curfews, late minutes, panty raids, sledding on lunch trays snuck out of the dining hall and stored under the welcome mat at the door until needed, visiting in a windmill. Sure - just like everywhere else except there was no newspaper, no student government, no social organizations, no protest organizations, no alumni network until we started them or became them, that is. I was an editor of "The Windmill," served on student government (as president one year), a devoted follower of Sigma Lambda Chi (though I eventually married an Alpha Omega brother), and one of the Committee of 13 - the first protest group at Southampton College.

While I have no idea how my life would have gone without Southampton College, I am very sure that the pioneer spirit I learned there has affected me mightily. Over the years, I have helped found women's groups, school parent groups, a youth and family service agency, a camp for inner city children, worked on two start-up newspapers, and, eight years ago, started a new local newspaper with a group of three friends. I share the dual roles of one/third of the publisher's job and the entire editor's job. I also do reporting, take pictures, do lay-up (on the computer now) - the whole gamut of tasks that goes into producing a successful local newspaper. It was a flexibility learned long ago on the south shore of Long Island, where students got to do everything because there was no one to tell us we couldn't do it or "that isn't the way we do it here."

Southampton was also where I learned about a world beyond my rural Long Island upbringing. (Now, that would seem ludicrous - "rural" and "Long Island" do not belong in the same sentence except for maybe a few miles of the North Fork, but then rural Long Island was most of Suffolk County.) Perhaps more important than catching glimpses of unfamiliar lifestyles and strange scenes (an Off-Broadway production of Six Characters in Search of an Author with an English class, for example, or a nodding acquaintance with the houses on Dune Road, or meeting students from Greece who landed on the lawn in their own private helicopter), was the opportunity to explore what lies beneath the surface of things. At Southampton, I experienced my first anti-poverty work, tutoring on the Shinnecock Reservation (a stark contrast to Dune Road) and forged a strong friendship with Princess Nowedonah (or Marie Hunter, her "Christian" name). I learned firsthand how enriching it can be to bring cultures together, and I felt the power of the traditional stories of other people. That spark, nurtured by the likes of Professor John Strong and Dr. Donald Baker, has been another constant in my life. I have served on anti-poverty boards, diversity committees, social action committees and boards of directors, always trying to fan the spark that could ignite the fire of understanding that might burn away the coldness of hate and misunderstanding in our world.

Later experience with other institutions - the ones my four children have gone to, as well as where I have pursued graduate work - has shown me some of the things I missed in being part of the first class at Southampton College. On balance, however, I do not regret my long ago, rather romantic decision. I learned from superb professors, who mostly had a touch of the pioneer in them, too. I met my husband. I was able to be part of the first issue of "The Windmill," the first student government, the first panty raid, with a chance to have the kind of impact on my environment not usually granted to college students. In short, Southampton College, by its very unformedness during the years I attended, became a laboratory for the notion that one person could start things, could grow things, could make a big difference in the world. It is a formidable legacy.