School of Athens thinks it can explain why Sweet Briar’s Board of Directors voted to close the college.

The decision by the Board of Directors to immediately close Sweet Briar College despite the college still having approximately $90 million dollars in the endowment and a positive asset to debt ratio seems simply bizarre. While the historic college might be losing a little money during the economic downturn, the endowment is designed to keep things going during the lean years and seems to have ample funds. Yet the swift decision to immediately close and the secrecy surrounding the Board’s processes seem odd to say the least, especially considering that the money to save the school appears to be available with the website savingsweetbriar.com already raising over $16 million with simple social media networking. …

We are hearing from a source in position to know that this beautiful land is the reason that Sweet Briar is closing. Because there is a buyer ready to move quickly and quietly to purchase the whole lot, historic buildings and all. This buyer has the immense economic power and major influence to keep the related decisions silent, immediate, and final. Who? Well, it has a lot to do with a similar land deal of about 3,000 acres that got scuttled about twenty years ago. According to our source, the reason Sweet Briar is closing is to make way for:

In 1994, Disney was all set to close on 2,000 acres in Haymarket in as the core to its envisioned 3,000-acre Disney America in Prince William County. That deal was scuttled, but Disney is on the record as keeping its plans alive to set Disney America in Virginia. Riley over at Virginia Virtucon was openly calling for Disney to revive its Disney America design in the Williamsburg area a few years ago. Many in Virginia consider the protests and objections that forced Disney to shut down its plans 20 years ago a big mistake. Our source has informed us that Disney is ready to rectify that mistake, and now wants the 3,250 acres that Sweet Briar sits on to bring Disney America back to life and back to Virginia. That kind of potential investment causes things to develop both quickly and quietly, and Disney is no wilting flower when it comes to political muscle.

The immediate and irrevocable action in shutting down makes sense, because Disney does not want a repeat of the protests related to the sale of historical land that killed the project in 1994. Instead, if the college is already closed and shuttered, Disney can come in like a hero and rescue Amherst County from the economic disaster that closing Sweet Briar would otherwise lead to.

Read the whole thing.

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Sweet Briar officials promptly denied the story, but School of Athens remained sticking to its guns.

Sweet Briar students traditionally liked to sit outside by the Bell Tower.

Sweet Briar College is a 114-year-old liberal arts woman’s college located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge a little north of Lynchburg, Virginia.

Although Sweet Briar was always a small school, it was, back during my pre-coeducation freshman year, socially well-connected enough to participate in mixers with elite New England schools like Yale. My memory is that Sweet Briar’s echt-Southern girls dressed better, had livelier personalities, and were typically more friendly and conversable than the representatives of Vassar, Smith, and Holyoke whom we previously had entertained, and we were decidedly impressed that Sweet Briar girls managed to be so soigné on their arrival in New Haven after a God-only-knows-how-many-hours-long bus ride from deep in nethermost Virginia.

Sweet Briar girls seemed to us representatives of Yankeedom like exotic specimens imported from a distant, more tropical habitat. But, though they were obviously the offspring of wealthier and more socially prominent families than most of ours, they were also clearly the products of a rural culture, and were more interested in talking about their horses and sport than in calculatingly sizing you up, in the manner of Vassar, as a potential husband and breadwinner. I remember having more fun at the Sweet Briar mixer than at any of the others I attended that year.

Sweet Briar takes its name from a 3250-acre plantation, left along with an endowment to create a woman’s college by one Indiana Fletcher in 1901.

One reads today in the Washington Post the sad news that the Sweet Briar board has voted to close the school down next August, being apparently unable in a time of declining enrollment when fewer women desire single-sex education to make end’s meet. I think that is a shame. There ought to be a place like Sweet Briar where young ladies can major in horsemanship along with the liberal arts in preparation for an adult life spent hunting three days a week somewhere in Virginia.

Sweet Briar was renowned for its opportunities for equestrian instruction and activities.