
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 4, 1993                   TAG: 9305040047
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HAMPDEN-SYDNEY                                LENGTH: Medium

IN A MAN'S WORLD, WOMAN RISES TO THE TOP

Tanja Schiffer, the only woman enrolled at Hampden-Sydney College, is the leading candidate to be named valedictorian of this year's graduating class.

The college faculty will name the valedictorian at the end of the final exam period Wednesday.

Schiffer has a grade point average of 3.99 with only her senior honors thesis left to finish.

Scott Colley, college provost and dean of the faculty, declined to give the second-best grade point average, but he said that if Schiffer were a betting woman, "she should be getting her speech together."

Schiffer will be only the fifth woman to graduate from Hampden-Sydney in at least 35 years.

Hampden-Sydney, founded in 1776, and Wabash College in Indiana are the only two liberal arts colleges in the country that limit their regular enrollment to men.

The other four women known to have graduated from Hampden-Sydney in the past three decades have been three professors' daughters and a college employee. Other women have studied at the college, but only women with a direct connection to the college may graduate.

Schiffer is the daughter of English Professor James Schiffer. Her mother, Susan, works in the college library.

Schiffer has some doubts about accepting the honor if it is offered.

"I've been in a bit of a mind-fog about whether I should accept," she said. ". . . I don't want to force myself on anybody, but I feel that I participated in the curriculum and worked very hard."

Asked if the college might confer the title of valedictorian on the man with the highest grade point average, Colley said Schiffer will not be passed over.

"She won it fair and square," he said. "I think she should take the honor. It is not an ambiguous matter in my mind."

Schiffer, a psychology major, had only one grade below an A at Hampden-Sydney - a B-plus in a biology lab.

Schiffer said she usually has felt comfortable at the men's college, particularly with other psychology majors, but she missed having female friends her own age.

"I've often felt a bit of an outsider, even though people have tried to make me feel comfortable," she said. "I'm now working in a restaurant with three other girls my age. It's like a whole new learning experience, listening to them."

by CNB