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GORDON DANIELS

Smith College seniors pose for a photograph last Sunday before the start of commencement.

When it comes to social reform, America continues to evolve.

In 2009 we elected our first black president, legalized same-sex marriages in several states, and re-examined everything from health care to immigration. It's been four decades since the Supreme Court struck down segregation, relying on evidence that racially separate schools were inherently unequal. Today's Constitution and civil-rights statutes prohibit the state from discriminating on the basis of race or sex.

One thing that hasn't changed much, however, are the last remaining single-sex colleges like Smith and Mount Holyoke.

True, 150 years ago when women were excluded from male academies, colleges and universities, affirmative action was needed to create these special schools. We owe a debt of gratitude to women's colleges for taking an early stand to fight discrimination, raise awareness of gender issues, and crack the glass ceiling in government, business and even academia itself.

But today, schools like Smith and Mount Holyoke, Wellesley and Mills, are hypocritical in their fight against gender discrimination since they are among the few remaining U.S. institutions allowed to exploit a federal loophole that permits them to segregate their own admissions on the basis of sex.

Starting in the 1960s, private male U.S. colleges and universities voluntarily went coed to keep up with a changing society. Today Harvard is fully integrated and presided over by its first female president, Drew Gilpin Faust. Ruth J. Simmons, a black woman and former president of Smith, heads Brown. And Dartmouth, spoofed in "Animal House" for its frat boy misogyny, opened its doors to women in 1972. Rather than weakening these institutions, coeducation made them stronger and better able to prepare leaders for the modern world.

Even peers of Smith and Mount Holyoke reconsidered single-sex education long ago. Sarah Lawrence went coed in 1968 to "take risks, and go against the grain ¿ intellectually, emotionally, artistically and politically." Vassar followed suit in 1969, "in defiance of conventional wisdom." Wheaton in Massachusetts accepted men in 1987, "out of a commitment for equality and diversity for all." One has to believe that these schools were run by rational and intelligent people who carefully considered the pros and cons of single-sex education before rejecting a century of tradition.

To fight declining interest in women's colleges ¿ they're down from 300 in the 1960s to about 60 today - Smith and others are recruiting young women from the Middle East, according to The New York Times. Predictably, school officials tout their many distinguished alumnae. But again, are single-sex schools the best ambassadors to call on nations like Dubai that repress women? Wouldn't it be better for foreign students to matriculate at coed schools that share mainstream American values, and that do not subtly condescend towards the other half of humanity strictly on the basis of sex?

Women's colleges also tout that they provide a choice in the marketplace. Maybe, but the private Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia makes a similar argument as to why it restricts membership and the Master's tournament to men only. Both institutions may be legal but being stuck in their sexist ways doesn't make them right.

Nor is there empirical evidence that today's young women do better in the classroom when set apart from more aggressive and assertive males. This might have been true in the past but it's not true now, according to Wendy Kaimer, a women's issues expert. Today's women are thriving at coed colleges and in their careers.

Perhaps the most hypocritical myth is that these colleges exist for women. Look behind the scenes and you'll discover that schools like Smith and Mount Holyoke haven't been all-female for decades. Thanks to Five College cross-registration and exchanges like MIT-Wellesley, there are men on campus everywhere: in the classroom, among the faculty and administration, even informally in dorms.

To base your brand on being a school run for women is disingenuous. If you truly believe in single-sex education, either return to the 1950s and bar male students at the door (a silly non-solution) or stop deluding yourselves and go coed. And don't worry. Institutions like Vassar discovered that their endowment had far more to fear from Wall Street than from old-school alumnae who threaten to stop donating.

Finally, the messages on Smith's website show how intellectually dishonest the marketing rhetoric at these schools can get. For example: "At Smith, women are the focus of all the attention and all the opportunities." How does that make Peter feel after taking the bus from UMass to Northampton to attend a biochemistry class? "At Smith all the leaders are women." What signal does this send to the second class citizen men who are Smith department heads or who work with President Carol Christ in administration? "At Smith, the ¿old boys' network becomes an ¿ageless women's network.'" Smith should practice what it preaches in diversity class. This is sexism, pure and simple, and in a recession, smart people do not limit their network to one sex.

"Only as the sexes become less separate have women become more free," says Wendy Kaimer. It's time that the remaining single-sex colleges embrace inclusive 21st-century values instead of building bridges to the exclusive 19th.

William L. Pohl is a freelance writer who lives in Belchertown.