Residential culture and student life Smith requires most undergraduate students to live in on-campus houses unless they reside locally with their families. This policy is intended to add to the camaraderie and social cohesion of its students. Unlike most institutions of its type, Smith College does not have dorms, but rather 41 separate houses, ranging in architectural style from 18th-century to contemporary. It is rumored the architecture of Chapin House was the inspiration for the Tara Plantation House in
Gone with the Wind. (Author
Margaret Mitchell went to Smith for one year and lived in Chapin.) A novelty of Smith's homelike atmosphere is the continuing popularity of Sophia Smith's recipe for molasses cookies. These are often served at the traditional Friday afternoon tea held in each house, where students, faculty and staff members, and alumnae socialize. Two recent additions to the campus, both of which enhance its sense of community, are the architecturally dramatic Julia McWilliams Child '34 Campus Center and the state-of-the-art Olin Fitness Center. In 2009, construction was also completed on Ford Hall, a new science and engineering facility. According to the Smith College website, Ford Hall is a "...facility that will intentionally blur the boundaries between traditional disciplines, creating an optimum environment for students and faculty to address key scientific and technological developments of our time." The building was officially dedicated on October 16, 2009. The campus also boasts a botanic garden that includes a variety of specialty gardens including a rock garden and historic glass greenhouses dating back to 1895. The botanic garden formerly featured a Japanese tea hut, which was removed in October 2015 following concerns over "issues of safety and vandalism." Smith continues to be a college focused on the education of women. Their website in 2025 clarifies: "Smith is a women’s college and considers for admission any applicants who self-identify as women; cis, trans, and nonbinary women are eligible to apply to Smith." Students who, after being admitted, transition to an identity other than "female" continue to be supported as Smith students. The Resource Center for Sexuality and Gender; The Office for Equity and Inclusion and its Trans/Non-binary Working Group; Transcending Gender, a student group focused on support and education; and the Transgender Support Group run by Counseling Services work to support trans and non-binary students at Smith across the
gender identity spectrum.
Houses Smith College has many different houses serving as dormitories. Each house is self-governing. While many students remain in the same house for the entirety of their four years at Smith, they are not obligated to do so and may move to different houses on campus as space allows. While houses previously collected dues, in the 2019–2020 school year they were eradicated to avoid placing financial pressure on low-income students or students who were otherwise unable to pay without sacrificing funding for the House. Houses are found in four main regions of campus: Upper and Lower Elm Street, Green Street, Center Campus, and the Quadrangle. Each part can, in turn, be divided into smaller areas to more precisely provide the location of the house in question. In 2019, the college shifted from officially recognizing the four main areas of campus to instead categorizing houses in four neighborhoods: Ivy, Paradise, Mountain, and Garden. This change was largely internal and categorizes houses by size rather than location.
Green Street houses • Hubbard House – Hubbard House is the residence of fictional President
Selina Meyer from the HBO Show
Veep.
Julia Child resided in this house during her time at Smith. • Lawrence House – Sylvia Plath resided in this house during her time at Smith. • Morris House – Morris was built in 1891, with its sister house Lawrence to help accommodate the growing student body. It is named after Kate Morris Cone, Smith College class of 1879. • Tyler House – Named after
William Seymour Tyler, one of the original trustees of the college. Former First Lady
Barbara Bush lived here before she left to marry George Bush. • Washburn House – Washburn is named for former trustee and senator
William B. Washburn. During the Second World War, the house served as a Spanish-speaking residence for students unable to study abroad. • 44 Green Street • 54 Green Street
Center Campus houses • Cutter House • Chapin House – Author
Margaret Mitchell lived here. Chapin's staircase served as the inspiration for the staircase of Scarlett O'Hara's Tara in
Gone With the Wind. • Haven/Wesley Houses • Hopkins House. What stands now was known as Little Hop when there were three houses. Hopkins A and Hopkins B were torn down to make a parking lot. • Park Complex • Park Annex – One of two new Affinity houses at Smith College, houses that cater to minority identities on campus. • Sessions Complex – The oldest house on the Smith campus. It has a secret passageway. • Tenney House • Ziskind House
Upper Elm Street houses • Capen House – Built in 1825 by Samuel Howe, the founder of
Northampton Law School, it became part of the Capen School in 1883 and was willed to the college by the school's founder in 1921. It is designed in the
Classical Revival style. It is named after the founder of the Capen School, Bessie Tilson Capen. • Gillett House – Connected to Northrop house via a breezeway, Gillett houses the only vegan/vegetarian dining hall on campus. • Lamont House – Built in 1955, Lamont House was the first house constructed after the construction of the Quad houses in 1936. Named for alumna Florence Corliss Lamont, who earned her A.B. in 1893 and later an M.A. from Columbia. She married Harvard graduate and future Smith Trustee Thomas Lamont and had four children. Throughout her life, she would continue to give generously to her alma mater. Lamont House is just across Elm Street, tucked behind Northrop and Gillett Houses. Lamont houses 83 students. • Northrop House • Parsons Complex • Parsons Annex – one of two new Affinity houses at Smith College, houses that cater to minority identities on campus. • Talbot House – Built in 1909 as part of the Capen School, it was willed to the college in 1921. Its mascot is the moose. US First Lady Nancy Reagan '43 lived here during her time at Smith. It is also named for Bessie Tilson Capen.
Lower Elm Street houses • Albright House • Baldwin House – U.S. Senator
Tammy Baldwin ('84) was a Baldwin House resident during her time at Smith College. • Chase House – Once a school for girls from the 1870s until 1968 when it was acquired as housing for the college. It was once a Junior & Senior only house and now serves as a substance-free residence. Named after Mary Ellen Chase, a writer, and English professor. • Conway House – A residence for
Ada Comstock Scholars and their families, named after Smith President
Jill Ker Conway • Duckett House - Built in 1803, Duckett house is one of the oldest buildings on campus. Aside from affinity housing and special housing (Friedman’s, family complexes, co-ops, etc.) it is the smallest traditional house, with only 36 residents. Residents in Duckett are known as "Ducks", which is also the official mascot of the house. There is also a "duck shrine" in the common room, where small miniature ducks face a larger stuffed-animal duck. It is a long-held tradition for alums to leave small rubber ducks with their class year and initials on the table of the shrine, often the rubber duck you were gifted in your first year. The house is named for Eleanor Duckett, who taught in the English department at Smith in the 20th century. Per Eleanor Duckett’s journals and writing, recovered in the Smith special collections, Duckett was the "life-long partner"; of fellow English professor, Mary Ellen Chase. Many students joke that this is why Chase and Duckett houses are conjoined, existing together, but separately, in one building complex. • 150 Elm Street
East Quadrangle houses • Cushing House – named for math professor
Eleanor P. Cushing; Gloria Steinem resided here during her time at Smith. • Emerson House • Jordan House – Built in 1922 and named for the longtime head of the Smith English Department,
Mary Augusta Jordan. • King House – Named for Franklin King, who served as the superintendent of building and grounds at Smith for 50 years • Scales House -King's "sister house," was named after
Laura Woolsey Lord Scales, who graduated from Smith in 1901 and was the school's first dean of students
West Quadrangle houses • Comstock House – Named after
Ada Comstock class of 1897, former dean of the college and president of
Radcliffe College • Gardiner House • Morrow House – Named after
Elizabeth Cutter Morrow, class of 1896 and former acting president of the college • Haynes House - Originally named Wilder House, this house was renamed in 2024 in recognition of the mathematician
Euphemia Haynes after concerns were raised about the scholarly legacy of
Harris Hawthorne Wilder and
Inez Whipple Wilder, Smith-affiliated zoologists for whom the house was originally named • Wilson House – Named after Martha Wilson, class of 1895 • Paradise Apartments – each complex is named after a notable Smith Alum
Campus folklore Smith has numerous folk tales and ghost stories emerging from the histories of some of its historic buildings. It was named the most haunted college in America by College Consensus. One such tale holds Sessions House is inhabited by the ghost of Lucy Hunt, who died of a broken heart after being separated from her lover, General Burgoyne. Reports of a ghost in Sessions House predate its history as a campus house. Built in 1751 by the Hunt family, the house has a secret staircase where, according to legend, the Hunt's eldest daughter Lucy would rendezvous with her lover,
General Burgoyne. The two were ultimately driven apart, and in the 1880s it was believed the ghost of a heartbroken Burgoyne haunted the staircase. Since Sessions House became part of college housing in the 20th century, the specter has taken on a decidedly feminine identity, and some former residents of Sessions House claim to have seen Lucy's ghost in the stairwell. The secret staircase has since been boarded up. On the third floor of Sessions House, there is a hinged hole in the wall where the secret staircase can be seen.
Clubs, sports, and organizations In addition to its 11 varsity sports, there are currently more than 120 clubs and organizations.
Athletics Since 1986, Smith's athletic teams were known as the Pioneers. The name expressed the spirit of Smith's students and the college's leading role in women's athletics (the first women's basketball game was played at Smith in 1893). A new spirit mark was unveiled to the Smith community in December 2008. The new visual identity for Smith's sports teams marks the culmination of a yearlong project to promote visibility and enthusiasm for Smith's intercollegiate and club teams—and to generate school spirit broadly. The spirit mark is used for athletics uniforms, casual apparel, and promotional items for clubs and organizations. As Smith was the first women's college to join the
NCAA, the new mark is seen as linking the college's pioneering alumnae athletes to their equally determined and competitive counterparts today. Smith athletes won some of the early national
intercollegiate women's tennis championships in singles (Louise Raymond, 1938 and 1939) and doubles (1933, 1935, 1938 and 1948). On May 7, 2025, Smith unveiled a new moniker. The Smith Bears took over as the new mascot following a survey indicating that student athletes did not identify with the Pioneer moniker. In an official statement from the college, the name change was explained as recognizing faculty alum
Senda "the Bear" Berenson, inductee to the
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, the
Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, and the
International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Smith College does not have college colors in the usual sense. Its official color is white, trimmed with gold, but the official college logo is blue and yellow (a previous logo was burgundy and white). NCAA athletic teams have competed in blue and white (or blue and yellow, in the case of the soccer, crew, swimming, and squash teams) uniforms since the 1970s. Popular club sports are free to choose their own colors and mascot; both Rugby and Fencing have chosen red and black. Smith has a rotating system of class colors dating back to the 1880s when intramural athletics and other campus competitions were usually held by class. Today, class colors are yellow, red, blue, and green, with incoming first-year classes assigned the color of the previous year's graduating class; their color then "follows" them through to graduation. Alumnae classes, particularly at reunions, continue to identify with and use their class color thereafter.
Cultural organizations There are 11 chartered cultural organizations that fall under the UNITY title: the Asian Students’ Association (ASA), Black Students’ Alliance (BSA), Chinese Interregional Student Cultural Org (CISCO), South Asian Student Association of Smith (EKTA), Indigenous Smith Students and Allies (ISSA), International Students Organization (ISO), Korean Students Association (KSA), the Latin American Students Organization (LASO), Multiethnic Interracial Smith College (MISC), Smithies of Caribbean Ancestry (SOCA), and the Vietnamese Students Association (VSA). Smith College Website Multicultural Affairs The Black Students’ Alliance is the oldest of all Unity organizations. In the Fall of 2012, as an effort to document the history of students of color on the Smith campus, the Weaving Voices Archives Project was created.
Reunions and commencement events The Alumnae Association of Smith College hosts official class reunions every five years. All alumnae from all classes are welcome to return in any year; "off-year" alumnae attend campus-wide events as the "Class of 1776." There have also been
several controversies at Smith's commencement ceremonies. ==Alumnae==