Princeton Alum Advice: "Find a Husband on Campus"

The advice from a Princeton University graduate to current students: "Find a husband on campus." 

Those words have sparked a controversy both on and off campus, since The Daily Princetonian newspaper printed the letter from Susan Patton '77 on Friday, March 29.

"Forget about having it all, or not having it all, leaning in or leaning out — here’s what you really need to know that nobody is telling you," Patton wrote.

Patton's letter, couched as the advice she would give the daughters she never had, says Princeton women hear enough career advice.

What people aren't telling them, she said, is that they will never again be surrounded by so many smart men, men who will make intellectually stimulating life partners. 

Patton's comments came after she and her best friend since freshman year attended the Women and Leadership conference on campus between University President Shirley Tilghman and Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter. The discussion was based on Slaughter's article in the Atlantic, titled "Why Women Still Can’t Have It All."

During a breakout session afterward, students didn't ask the women for career advice. They asked about their friendship, their husbands and their children, she said. 

"At your core, you know that there are other things that you need that nobody is addressing," Patton wrote. "A lifelong friend is one of them. Finding the right man to marry is another."

"Men regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated," she wrote. "It's amazing how forgiving men can be about a woman's lack of erudition, if she is exceptionally pretty. Smart women can't (shouldn't) marry men who aren't at least their intellectual equal."

Patton appeared on CNN Monday morning to address the controversy. Click here to read her comments.

Jill Dolan, the director Princeton University's Program in Gender and Sexualty Studies, has written a response to Patton's letter. Click here to read it.