Work hard, get good grades, commit energy and resources to one’s community, and engage in activities to nourish the mind and body. That was one privileged young heiress’ American college dream that turned into a nightmare in the abyss of an expensive, prestigious higher education experience at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA. Anabella Rockwell is that girl, and she is not shy about her experience of complete indoctrination at the hands of a secular institution.
Rockwell likens Mount Holyoke to a political cult. She is telling tales out of school, and it doesn’t look good for the college. “I left school very anxious, very nervous, very depressed, and sad,” Rockwell admitted. “I saw everything through the lens of oppression and bias and victimhood. I came to the school as someone who saw everyone equally. I left looking for injustice wherever I could and automatically assuming that all white men were sexist. My thoughts were no longer my own.”
Does this surprise anyone at all?
Mount Holyoke Agenda?
The exalted Mount Holyoke College is one of the Seven Sisters colleges, each affiliated with a counterpart Ivy League school. When women began to tip their toes into the waters of higher education and pursue careers instead of domestic bliss, the administrators sought to accommodate what was, until the 1960s, a club exclusively for men. And Mount Holyoke, like others, was created not to teach women about becoming professional in the workplace; instead, its curriculum was mainly in the liberal arts direction. To get into the Seven Sisters, applicants must have a GPA of 3.84 to 4.0 and ACT score of 29 to 34. And Rockwell, a former competitive amateur figure skater, had the stats, pedigree, and pocketbook.
But a few years, Rockwell was running for her life. As she explained in an interview with the New York Post, “I literally arrived there bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I was just so happy.” That quickly devolved into “totally indoctrinated” and needing to be deprogrammed. She said she was shocked by male-bashing students and professors and shaken by the severe drinking campus rituals Rockwell believed were intended to create a genderless environment. For example, young, fresh-faced students restyled their hair with a “MoHo chop.”
And it all became crystal clear after she took a gender studies class. In her words, the abyss opened wide and sucked her through:
“This professor tells me about the patriarchy. I barely knew what the word meant. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I wasn’t someone that was into feminism. I just knew that I felt I had always been free to do what I wanted. I never experienced sexism. You’ve been oppressed, and you didn’t even know it. Now you have to fight it. And I just went down this deep rabbit hole.”
Deprogramming the University Cult Mind
(Photo by: History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The act of deprogramming aims to reverse indoctrination and allow an open mind to come to its own conclusions. Changing inculcated convictions and values requires severing ties with the brainwasher in question, that is, the religious, political, economic, or social groups that have created the particular ideology or belief system. It’s a controversial and tricky business, yet today the deprogramming industry may be dealing with the Donald Trump effect, secular institution abuses, any number of conspiracy theories, and even anyone who calls another a Kool-Aid drinker.
In Rockwell’s specific case, her mother had decided her happy child was spouting liberal nonsense. Her family hired a $300-an-hour deprogrammer, although she regained her equilibrium after she sobered up from a severe drinking problem and began questioning why riots and arson should be the answer to oppression. “It just began to click in that moment about how hypocritical it was,” Rockwell offered.
Now 29 and using that quarter-million-dollar college degree in a prestigious position with PragerU, the former Seven Sister student reflected on her mom’s relentless quest to rescue her daughter from the woke world that was bringing her only misery. “Mount Holyoke met its match in my mother,” Rockwell insisted. “If it weren’t for her, I’d probably be living in Massachusetts, working for some super-progressive politician, hanging out with people I had nothing in common with except ideology and drinking all the time. And I’d be miserable.”
Rockwell’s Mount Holyoke experience is a cautionary tale for parents who should be vigilant when choosing a higher education institution for their child. At the very least, parents should be aware of what they are paying for.
