AN ODDITY has hidden for nearly a century in a dusty bowl just east of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. Deep Springs is a two-year college and, also, a cattle-and-alfalfa ranch. Its 26 students share duties irrigating fields and riding the herd, but also fixing boilers and scrubbing pots, alongside reading Nietzsche and swotting at their maths problems. They pay no tuition fees, and most finish their bachelor’s degrees at Harvard, Yale and the like.
近一个世纪以来，加州内华达山脉东部的凹地中藏匿了一座男校——深泉（Deep Springs）,它是一座两年学制的男校，学校中有长满苜蓿的大农场，养了些牛。深泉中的26名学生分工劳动，有灌溉田地，放牧，看锅炉，洗碗。课业方面，学生阅读尼采，钻研数学。学生无需交学费。大多数学生都会去哈佛、耶鲁等名校完成大学学业。
And they are all male. The college has admitted no women as regular students since it was founded in 1917, in accordance with a trust established by Lucien Nunn, the tycoon who founded it as a place “for promising young men”. The atmosphere is intellectual, rugged and ascetic, and the college is a democratic body, where student-led committees decide admissions, hire the faculty and mind most matters of policy.
这所学校由 Lucien Nunn于1917年出资创立，这位大亨要为有潜力的年轻男性提供学习机会。自创立以来该校只收男生，从没有女生被录取。学校的校训是学术、劳动、自制。深泉十分民主，学生领导的委员会有权决定招生，教职工应聘和学校政策的制定。
The big exception is over the question of co-education. Since the 1970s successive student bodies have lobbied to admit women, only to be rebuffed by the college’s trustees. Only recently, with the support of a newer tycoon from the class of 1980, have the co-ed supporters on the board felt able to press their case. In September 2011 they moved to make the change. Young women were invited to apply for the entering class of 2013.
但唯独在招收女生这个问题上由不得学生委员会做主。自从20世纪70年代开始，连续几届的学生委员会都建议招收女生并对资助方进行游说，但都招到了拒绝。直到最近，在得到一位曾是深泉1980届校友的新资助人的支持后，董事会中支持男女同校的成员觉得时机来了。在2011年9月他们竭力推行男女同校，最终决定将在2013年第一次招收女生。
On January 8th that plan stumbled. A county court rejected the trustees’ motion to reinterpret the college’s trust. A judge found that “young men” in fact means young men. More than 140 young women had applied by then, for perhaps only six places. They were summarily rejected.
但在1月8日，该计划流产了。县法院反对现任出资者重新解释 Lucien Nunn的办校宗旨。一位法官认为“young men”指的就是年轻男性而不是年轻人。深泉只招收六名女生，而截止到8日，有超过140名女生申请。在招生流产后，学校草草的拒绝了所有申请。
Deep Springs is one of only four remaining (non-clerical) all-male colleges in America. Yet despite the prevalence of co-education these days, the trustees face a legal mess if they try to modify the terms of the trust. By all accounts, the place is flourishing as it is. That poses a difficulty for the trustees, and current students, who would claim that the founder’s intent is being thwarted by the all-male policy. If they cannot make that case quickly, Deep Springs will enter its second century in almost the same form in which it began.
深泉是美国现有的4所男校之一（非教会办学），虽然如今男女同校当道，不过据说，深泉发展势头强劲。现任出资者与学生都认为只招收男生的政策与创立者建校初衷相悖。如果出资者改动出资协议的内容，就会面临法律麻烦。如果他们不能尽快推行男女同校，那么深泉就会以同样的形式继续发展下去。
扩展：
1。学员们在深泉完成两年的学业之后可以得到Associate(副学士)学位，而将近80%的毕业生离开深泉大学后直接转学到哈佛、耶鲁、布朗、哥伦比亚、康奈尔和牛津大学等名校读大三，其他人则会先志愿服务一年。