A Farewell Message from Former President Suzanne Keen

By Nina Howe-Goldstein ‘25 Cracked Two Ribs at the Function

Dear Scripps College Community Members,

I bet you thought you’d finally escaped Interim President Amy Marcus-Newhall, huh? You thought that just ‘cause we gave her a sad little patch of mulch on Jacqua and called it a ‘rose garden,’ you might be free from the tyrannical rule of a woman with a five-star RateMyProfessor score and a hyphenated last name? Tough luck! Suzie is outta here.

You might be wondering… why? Why would I leave less than a year in, a month before my official inauguration? Why would I dip after Scripps spent so much goddamn money sending me all over the country promoting the school? Why, when every single student at this miserable institution identifies as an empath, would they fumble the bag on one of the world’s leading scholars of empathy?

The answer is simple: no hairstylist in Claremont, Los Angeles County, or the Inland Empire could do justice to my incredibly triangular hair. Every day I woke up in the house that your tuition subsidizes, stared at myself in the mirror, and mourned the fact that I could not find anyone who would perfectly sharpen my waves into a perfect isosceles. The Board of Trustees was worried. And the other 5C presidents mocked me. They laughed behind my back at Athenaeum talks and DIII football games, saying that my insufficiently geometric tresses were proof that Scripps College had lost the mandate of heaven, and our grain crop would surely wither in the coming harvest. So I simply had to leave.

The allegations are true: yes, my 87-year-old father has unspecified maybe-ailments which demand my attention back on the East Coast. (He may have been 86 when I took the job, but that’s an entirely different ballpark from 87.) I may or may not be returning as a normie literature professor in 2024 once [redacted]. Hopefully time in New Jersey will revitalize my lucious, shapely locks and make everyone forget whatever other scandal has apparently pushed me out.

My husband Fran — a name which, let’s be real here, made everyone briefly think I was a lesbian — and I have loved our time in sunny, idyllic Claremont. I will miss directing traffic at Saturday brunch, wearing Ann Taylor pantsuits, and carrying around the world’s most massive tote bag.

I recognize this transition is