{"id":6061,"date":"2014-05-02T17:09:32","date_gmt":"2014-05-02T21:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/?p=6061"},"modified":"2014-07-07T16:39:19","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T20:39:19","slug":"carving-an-uncertain-path-the-experiences-and-legacies-of-trinity-and-amhersts-first-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/2014\/05\/carving-an-uncertain-path-the-experiences-and-legacies-of-trinity-and-amhersts-first-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Carving an Uncertain Path: The Experiences and Legacies of Trinity and Amherst\u2019s First Women"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAll the world over, so easy to see, people everywhere just want to be free.\u201d\u00a0 The 1968 school year began with The Rascal\u2019s topping the Billboard Charts,[i]<\/a> and students everywhere were taking their lyrics to heart.\u00a0 Be it Vietnam, Nixon, Civil Rights or Women\u2019s Rights, campuses across the country overflowed with activism and controversy.\u00a0 Among elite colleges in the Northeast\u2014traditionally all-male institutions\u2014a tidal wave of progressive change was taking place, the highlight of which was the admission of women at many of these schools.\u00a0 With widespread student support, and administrative consent (albeit for reasons other than equality), Trinity accepted their first women for the 1969-1970 school year. At the same time, when the subject of co-education was raised at Amherst College, the student body\u2019s ambivalence and the administration\u2019s opposition culminated into a failure to integrate fully for another five years, later than almost all of their peers.\u00a0 While the administrations and trustees of both Trinity and Amherst showed profit-driven motives for co-education\u2014which resulted in their unwillingness to adequately support their first women\u2014the prevalence of opposition among Amherst students and officials resulted in Amherst\u2019s first women having a more difficult experience than the first women to attend Trinity.<\/p>\n

While the Trinity administration\u2019s motives for implementing co-education placed economics and academic competitiveness above equality, the student body\u2019s support for co-education evidenced a progressive campus community.\u00a0 Evidence of the administration\u2019s reasons for admitting women can be found in a private memorandum written by Robert Fuller, the Dean of Students at the time of the first admission of women, to Theodore Lockwood, who served as president of the College from 1968-1981.\u00a0 In the report, Fuller explained how co-education would allow Trinity to increase their academic competetiveness, writing, \u201cwe could replace the less qualified among the men we are now admitting with women who were the academic equals of the upper half of our entering men.\u201d[ii]<\/a>\u00a0 According to Fuller, this would prevent Trinity from falling behind their peer institutions, including Swarthmore College, Wesleyan University, and Williams College.\u00a0 He also claimed that accepting women will decrease the economic burden the College faced, writing, \u201cThe admission of women would reduced this demand [for scholarships], because a family seldom considers sending a daughter to an expensive private college unless it can pay her way.\u201d[iii]<\/a>\u00a0 While the Fuller memo points to the administration\u2019s profit-driven motives for implementing co-education, evidence shows that the student body was ready to welcome women to the College.\u00a0 A poll taken by the Trinity Tripod in October of 1968, less than a month after Fuller wrote his report, showed that 76% of students were in support of having females as classmates and peers.[iv]<\/a> \u00a0This proves that, while the administration may not have been ready to accept women for reasons of social progress, they would find at least some level of support from the student body.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>Although they finally bowed to the pressures of competition in 1974, the Amherst administration and Board of Trustees were initially very reluctant to admit women, and their hesitance was initially matched by ambivalence on the part of the student body.\u00a0 It was not until the early 70\u2019s that the tide of student support for co-education switched in favor of the admission of women.\u00a0 Discussion surrounding co-education at Amherst gained steam around the same time that Trinity admitted it\u2019s first women, yet the College claimed that the problems surrounding a switch to co-education were too great to overcome.\u00a0 According to Joan Annett, who took classes at Amherst as a part of the \u201c12-College Exchange\u201d in 1970, wrote, \u201cThe feasibility of coeducation at Amherst is, undeniably, a complex issue; however, most of the obstacles involved are not as insurmountable as many of the officials of the College would have us believe.\u201d[v]<\/a>\u00a0 Despite the rapid acceptance of co-education among elite Northeastern colleges, the Amherst administration managed to paint the difficulties attached to co-education as being too difficult to overcome.\u00a0 And while any resistance to co-education prior to 1970 by Trinity officials and trustees was counterbalanced by strong student support for co-education, this was not the case at Amherst.\u00a0 In December of 1968, two months after 76% of Trinity students had declared their support for co-education, only 49% of Amherst students did the same.[vi]<\/a> \u00a0It was not until 1973 that the support for the admission of women began to grow among students and faculty, and the administration finally decided to appoint a committee to study the benefits of transitioning to co-education.\u00a0 A Boston Globe article from November of 1974 reported that, \u201cthere was considerable opposition to it by the alumni…however, as other schools began to accept women and pressure for the change built up among Amherst faculty and students, the trustees last year agreed to consider at this year\u2019s meeting if a study could show its benefits to the college.\u201d[vii]<\/a> \u00a0The results of this study finally convinced the Amherst community to accept co-education, but the absence of active support for co-education over the last few years would prove to predicate an uphill battle for Amherst\u2019s first women\u2014one that they would find themselves undertaking with very little external support.<\/p>\n

The first generation of women at Trinity found that, while the administration was often ambivalent to their struggles, they could rely on the support of certain portions of the student body and the faculty.\u00a0 In the classroom, while isolated instances of prejudice were certainly present, women reported that the system as a whole treated them with fairness.\u00a0 One member of the class of 1979 reported that they \u201cdon\u2019t remember being treated any differently than [their] other male classmates.\u201d[viii]<\/a>\u00a0 Not all of the early women at Trinity corroborated these reports of academic equality, including another member of the class of 1979 who recalled that they \u201cfelt discrimination against women by faculty, in the classroom\u2014blatant\u2014with words.\u201d[ix]<\/a> \u00a0While Noreen Channels did not report the majors of the individuals quote in her survey for the sake of privacy, the disparity in academic experiences had by Trinity\u2019s first women suggests that the integration of women into the classroom was welcomed differently by different academic disciplines.<\/p>\n

Outside of the classroom, Trinity\u2019s first women faced numerous, terrifying struggles, but reported that they were able to find support among the student body, which they found especially vital in the absence of administrative support. One member of the class of 1979 recalled the reluctance of the Administration to act on their behalf, saying, \u201cEven though there were a significant number of physical assaults on women, there was essentially no college-sponsored remedy,\u201d[x]<\/a> while a 1984 graduate remembers, \u201cthe response of [a male administrator], when told of a gang rape of a women at Trinity (at a frat) by male students, was \u2018boys will be boys\u2019\u201d[xi]<\/a> The actions of the Trinity administration during the first years of co-education explicitly speak to their priorities; the reputation of the College was a far higher consideration than the health, safety, and wellbeing of its female students.\u00a0 Another member of the class of 1979 provided a recollection that, while providing further evidence of the College administration\u2019s skewed priorities and general apathy to the safety of women, spoke to the courage of a more progressive student body that recognized female students as their peers, and recognized their safety as being an important issue.\u00a0 She recalls,<\/p>\n

My friends and I were outraged when there were a number of rapes and assaults (1974-75) and TC would not post composite drawings of the men who were responsible.\u00a0 We were told it would hurt the reputation of the school.\u00a0 The make students, without the help of the school, organized escort services and in 2 cases that I witnessed, the students cornered and\/or beat up 2 men who\u2019d been assaulting or planning to assault women.\u00a0 One of the suspects was caught in my dorm bathroom, hiding with a knife.[xii]<\/a><\/p>\n

The above passage, while highlighting the failure of the Trinity administration to support their first female students, makes it clear that these students were not entirely along in their difficult journey.\u00a0 Brave male students, without any support from the College, stood by Trinity\u2019s first women as they faced the incredibly daunting challenge of integrating into the campus community.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>The first women to attend Amherst, in light of the broad resistance to co-education, often felt that they were unwelcome and excluded. From when they first stepped on campus, the first female students were made to feel as though there presence was opposed and their admission was illegitimate.\u00a0 Alissa Reyness, a 1981 graduate, reflected on the hostile campus culture, saying,<\/p>\n

When school started that fall, there were rumors about coeducation.\u00a0 Rumors that the majority of the alumni, and many students and faculty were against it.\u00a0 The decision (so the rumors went) had not been based on notions of equality and equal access, but on economics:\u00a0 Amherst was losing out in the application pool to the now coeducational Big Three.\u00a0 Another rumor was that the high proportion of attractive women that first year was an intentional sop to the unwilling students, alumni, and faculty.[xiii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Reyness\u2019 account of the rumors that were circulating campus during their first year it very easy to imagine how unwelcome women felt in the Amherst community.\u00a0 However, the hostility went beyond the campus murmurings and was sometimes far more direct.\u00a0 One female member of the class of 1981 an incident where she realized how blatant and universal the hostility could be.\u00a0 She writes,<\/p>\n

One very strong, clear\u2014and still sad\u2014memory I have was of a reunion dinner in 1980.\u00a0 The president at the time came in to speak and he was booed\u2014by a lot of people there\u2014because he had been instrumental in the coeducation of the College.\u00a0 For me it was like a deep wound\u2014to see this great man treated badly and disrespectfully like this\u2014and also to feel that these people\u2014alumni\u2014hadn\u2019t wanted me at the College.\u00a0 I\u2019ll never forget this scene.\u00a0 I found a male friend after this and tried to explain my hurt to him and he didn\u2019t even understand.[xiv]<\/a><\/p>\n

The first women at Amherst, as evidenced above, felt isolated and unwelcome on their own campus.\u00a0 Emily Cooperman of the class of 1982 described \u201ca whole atmosphere, a kind of culture, in which [she] felt [her]self clearly a foreigner.\u201d[xv]<\/a> \u00a0This experience differs from that of Trinity\u2019s first women in that women at Amherst felt that they were ostracized on a more universal level, and they felt that they were without allies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>Since these first women bravely carved their way through Trinity and Amherst, both institutions have come a long way in terms of treating women fairly, but both still have a long way to go.\u00a0 One member of the class of 2016 reported that she has thus far had a \u201cfair classroom experience,\u201d but that \u201cTrinity is a male-dominated social institution.\u201d[xvi]<\/a>\u00a0 Another member of class of 2016 spoke of the mistreatment of female faculty that still exists at Trinity, saying that, \u201cMy advisor is leaving for [another University]\u2026because she can\u2019t deal with how she\u2019s treated as a woman by her colleagues.\u201d[xvii]<\/a>\u00a0 This student also noted a present stigma surrounding the Woman and Gender Studies program at Trinity, saying that, \u201c[as a Woman and Gender Studies minor,] people assume I\u2019m a feminist who doesn\u2019t shave their legs.\u201d[xviii]<\/a>\u00a0 The experience of women at Amherst has come a long way since co-education.\u00a0 One member of the class of 2015 said, \u201cI don\u2019t see my experience at Amherst as being as scripted by my gender as I think I might have felt soon after co-education.\u201d However, she noted that \u201cmany classroom spaces are still male-dominated, and men will speak disproportionately to the number that are in the class.\u201d [xix]<\/a> \u00a0While the framework laid by the first women at each of these institutions has done a great deal to improve the female condition at Amherst and Trinity, continuing to fight for equal treatment is still of the utmost importance.<\/p>\n

The first women to attend both Trinity and Amherst faced an incredibly daunting battle, and found that their respective administrations did little to support them.\u00a0 However, support among male students at Trinity (which was largely absent at Amherst), resulted in Trinity\u2019s early female graduates finding a support network that was not present at Amherst.\u00a0 Women at each school, with or without allies, fought for their safety, their rights, and the opportunity for their voice to be heard.\u00a0 While both schools have made tremendous progress, women in the NESCAC and beyond are still fighting for the same rights, and it is my hope that by better understanding where the battle has been, we are all better equipped to fight for a better, more just future.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0Special Thanks to Rob Walsh, Peter Knapp, Jack Dougherty, and the staff of the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections Library for their invaluable help with research.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
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[i]<\/a> \u201cThe Hot 100 Archives.\u201d Text. Billboard<\/i>, January 2, 2013. http:\/\/www.billboard.com\/charts\/hot-100.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[ii]<\/a> Robert Fuller, \u201cThe Admission of Women Undergraduates to Trinity College,\u201d September 30, 1968.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[iii]<\/a>\u00a0ibid.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[iv]<\/a> \u201c76% Support Coeducation in Tripod Evaluation.\u201d Trinity Tripod<\/i>. October 11, 1968, Vol. LXVII, No. 8 edition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[v]<\/a> Joan Annett, \u201cCoeducation at Amherst: A Feminine View,\u201d Amherst Alumni News<\/i> XXII, no. 3 (Winter 1970): 3\u20135.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[vi]<\/a> \u201cAmherst and Coeducation: A Summary.\u201d News of Amherst College: Amherst College Bulletin<\/i> 63, no. 6 (March 1974).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[vii]<\/a>McMillan, Gary. \u201cAmherst College to End Male Tradition, Trustees Decide to Admit Women Next Fall.\u201d Boston Globe<\/i>, November 3, 1974.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[viii]<\/a>.Noreen Channels, Survey of the Trinity College Alumnae Conducted in the Spring, 1990<\/i> (Hartford, Conn., United States: Trinity College, 1990). Pt.4, P.10.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[ix]<\/a>\u00a0ibid.<\/em>\u00a0Pt. 4, P.17.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[x]<\/a> ibid.<\/em>\u00a0Pt.3, P.5.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[xi]<\/a> ibid.<\/em>\u00a0Pt.3, P.15.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[xii]<\/a> ibid.<\/em>\u00a0Pt.3, P.6.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[xiii]<\/a> Auban Haydel and Kit Lasher, The Fairest College?:\u00a0 Twenty Years of Women at Amherst<\/i> (Amherst, MA, 1997). P.13.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[xiv]<\/a> ibid.<\/em>\u00a0PP.10-11.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[xv]<\/a> ibid<\/em>. P.29.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[xvi]<\/a> Monteleone, Isabel. Interview with Isabel Monteleone, Trinity College, Class of 2016. Interview by Evan Turiano. Face to Face, April 21, 2014.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[xvii]<\/a> Reny, Olivia. Interview with Olivia Reny, Trinity College, Class of 2016. Interview by Evan Turiano. Face to Face, April 20, 2014.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[xviii]<\/a>\u00a0ibid<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[xix]<\/a> Ellis-Moore, Kyra. Interview with Kyra Ellis-Moore, Amherst College, Class of 2015. Interview by Evan Turiano. Email, April 22, 2014.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAll the world over, so easy to see, people everywhere just want to be free.\u201d\u00a0 The 1968 school year began with The Rascal\u2019s topping the Billboard Charts,[i] and students everywhere were taking their lyrics to heart.\u00a0 Be it Vietnam, Nixon, Civil Rights or Women\u2019s Rights, campuses across the country overflowed with activism and controversy.\u00a0 Among … Continue reading Carving an Uncertain Path: The Experiences and Legacies of Trinity and Amherst\u2019s First Women<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":735,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[71],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/735"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6061"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6213,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6061\/revisions\/6213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/edreform\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}