Salem College — Attraction in Winston-Salem

No educational institution is perfect, thus I’ve given 4 stars. I can’t fully speak to the experiences of Traditional students but from a Fleer (adult) viewpoint, I’ve enjoyed a most wonderful experience! The Fleer Center for adults (23+) has always been engaging, providing & reminding of available resources. As busy adults with demanding schedules (family, work, courses), it can be challenging but such is life. Coursework isn’t made any easier just because you’re an adult. You get right in there with your Traditional counterparts & get to work! I have loved the class sizes! (For me, it has ranged from 3 to 20-25 max, which was an infrequent occurrence.) Fleers are encouraged from day #1 to ask for help from the Fleer Ctr. & keep communications open with professors, especially since life really does happen. Doing so certainly makes a significant difference! My experience has been doing my best & speaking with my professors if I had any academic or family challenges that caused course interference. Each time resulted in a positive, win-win outcome. Otherwise for the adult experience, it would be a good idea to incorporate stronger career resources & placement help. With Traditionals being required to complete internships, I feel this option should be pushed more since a number of Fleers are re-entering or pursuing a different industry in the workforce. I have witnessed better traction behind the process, just needs stronger tread, especially for the female Fleer population. As for the Fleer-Traditional experience, I’ve so enjoyed it! I’ve heard some Fleers express feeling like an outsider but I believe that comes from not being intentionally engaging. I’ve met and kept communication with many wonderful Traditionals & I know the same to be true from the other perspective. While I can agree that the Fleer-Traditional experience can be more fluid in some areas, I have surely witnessed steps taken to bridge some of those gaps. What students do with those steps will be up to them/us. At the end of the day though, there are differences in campus-life engagement among the two populations but that doesn’t make it a bad thing, just different. For instance, I would have loved to have attended some Traditional on-campus festivities, but a 9 or 10pm start-time is completely outside of my social time frame, etc. So of course there are trade-offs, but like anything in life, you figure what you can participate in or not and keep your eyes open for other opportunities. As I stated from the start, no educational institution is perfect. Like any place else, institutional politics surface now & again but again, where doesn’t it? Overall, I chose Salem College for the empowering, nurturing & engaging culture and ESP. being an historic all-women’s college, and those qualities have proven true in my resulting experience. Hope my review helps!

P.S. I’m nearly appalled scrolling & seeing the 1-star ratings. Talking about lack of diversity, inclusion, poor institution to get education.. Perhaps it’s because I’m an adult who has been around a while & know the difference between non-diversity & non-inclusivity. And to say not a great place for education - you must not be doing your part because courses are rigorous and not for the faint of heart. I will also add, from my last few (recent) years of attending - if any student is feeling left out (diversity, inclusion, religious...), you need to become engaged & get involved! There are multiple culturally-diverse clubs, other frequent alternative activities, & ongoing diversity initiatives happening. And if there isn’t (activity), please step up & help be about the change that you feel should happen at Salem College. Because also as an adult, I can tell you right now, you are likely to have the same or worse feelings about other institutions, and esp. involving those of co-ed populations. Life comes quickly, and I really hope that for students who are disgusted with Salem College that you find peace & solidarity within this or another educational...

Salem College is complicated.

The college has recently finished contracting out all of its staff services. The quality of the staffing has gone down significantly. Many long time staff members who brought professionalism and workmanship to the school have quit. The Residence Life department have nearly all quit excluding two employees. The maintainence department is all but completely gone. Just ask the students how well the food staff can preform their duties. Grounds staff who have been contracted no longer maintain the grounds properly either.

The second service to be contracted was the Public Safety Department around 5 years ago. The number of security officers were cut significantly, their pay was lessened, their benefits slowly removed and revoked, and they were completely disarmed. That's right, the people in charge of your children have no capability to physically protect them. They are armed with a radio and a small flashlight. Nothing else. When the college ran security the guards had night sticks, hand cuffs and mace. On top of that they are paid quite poorly. From what I understand an average officer is paid approx. $11 an hour with no benefits. So the people in charge of protecting your kids are only paid approx. $21,000 per year. What happens when your children are in danger and the only people who can help are paid very little and have no weapons? I'll leave you to think about that. Now, the administration will say that the Winston-Salem Police Department patrols the area frequently. That is disingenuous. If there is a serious incident, let's say an active shooter, the police are anywhere between 2 and 7 minutes away from arriving on campus. Then the police must attempt to locate the shooter and neutralize them. However, the police do not know the campus very well because they do not directly patrol it. Only campus security knows the area and has the expectation to help the police. If you are paid $11 an hour and have no weapon to protect yourself, no body armor to protect against bullets, will you wait around for the police and then lead them to an active shooter? Maybe some would, but there's certainly no incentive for them to do so. They are simply unarmed security guards. Their uniforms and titles as Public Safety Officers are deceiving. This is not to mention the high turnover rate. It seems like I see a new face every month, and I don't mean they're adding employees. In fact, they are running on a skeletal crew. When the Public Safety Department was directly run by Salem College (not by a contracting company) they had ample personnel for proper coverage of the college. Now I can count the number of security guards on two hands. Ever since the college handed the security department over to contractor companies they have switched companies three times. If you send your children to attend this college they will not be adequately protected to the level I would desire my own children be protected. If you contact the school about these issues, they will downplay them. They will say they will work on addressing them but they have failed to do so in the past. Eventually those asking questions stop and everything returns to normal and no lasting changes are made. These security flaws need to be addressed and need to be addressed sooner rather than later. The safety of our kids is the most important thing.

The school culture is extremely left of center. The stereotypical liberal arts college where safe spaces, minority advocate groups (even though minorities are approx. 50% of the population), and whoever has the most minority status' wins, applies here. Conservatives are vastly outnumbered and often are unable to express their opinions for fear of being labeled a bigot, racist, or Islamophobe, etc. It goes without mentioning that the school costs a significant sum to attend.

I could go into further detail but Google has a...

I attended my freshman year here in 2002–2003, and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I sincerely hope the school has changed since then, because what I lived through was toxic and traumatic. The student culture was viciously cliquish—steeped in classism, cattiness, and exclusion. Professors often carried themselves with arrogance and disdain. And my roommate? Diabolical. It was my first taste of what it means to live with someone who can twist reality, make you look unstable in front of others, and leave you questioning your own sanity. My first gaslighting. I still don’t know how I survived it and it has impacted my ability to trust others to this day.

The larger campus environment wasn’t much better. In the Rat, most if not all, member of the wait staff was African American, serving an overwhelmingly affluent, white student body. That imbalance was impossible to ignore, and it left an impression that something was deeply off. Hazing was another nightmare. I can still see myself hiding under my bed in the dark, shaking and sobbing, as students beat on the door so violently that light flashed through the cracks with each blow. I thought the door would splinter and collapse. That night is seared into my memory as pure fear.

I eventually escaped and transferred to the Florida university system, which felt like coming up for air after drowning. But even in that dark, suffocating year, there was one light: my English professor, Dr. Rose A. Sackeyfio. She was brilliant, compassionate, and unforgettable. Her teaching gave me the foundation to write countless A+ papers and, later, a graduate thesis that was returned with the rare note that it “need not be defended.” That kind of influence changes you forever. Anyone who has the privilege of experiencing her teaching is truly blessed. She was the single bright spot in an otherwise devastating...