125 and Counting

Early Alumnae Persisted, Despite Many Challenges

by Malinda Triller

January 2, 2010

Dance cards from the 1930s are among the items on display in the Archives & Special Collections’ May Morris Room.

Dickinson had existed for nearly a century as a college for men when the question of admitting women finally emerged. The prospect was first raised during a trustee meeting on June 28, 1876. Financial concerns—the need to enroll more students—appeared to be a contributing factor, according to trustee meeting minutes. Among the reservations, however, was the appropriateness of classroom facilities for ladies, as students then attended classes in the same buildings where male students lived.

So the decision to admit women was postponed until 1883, after campus facilities had been modified and all faculty recommended the admission of women to the board of trustees, with the exception of Henry Harman, class of 1848, professor of ancient languages.

On Sept. 10, 1884, the first women signed the student matriculation book at Dickinson. They were Zatae Longsdorff, a sophomore transfer from Wellesley College, her sister Hildegarde and Elizabeth Bender, both first-year students. This trio constituted a clear minority among the population of about 110 students.

In July 1884, shortly before the first women enrolled, The Dickinsonian included a blurb that simply read “Hurrah for Coeducation.” Three months later, after Zatae, Hildegarde and Lizzie had settled in, the student newspaper included a message that read “The Ladies of Dickinson College, may they add learning to beauty and beauty to learning.”

A story written by Zatae Longsdorff’s daughter that could be based on her interpretation of her mother’s memories tells of male students harassing Zatae when she entered the junior oratorical contest and their efforts to sabotage her speech by setting off firecrackers and dimming the lights and other types of disruptive behavior.

Despite challenges faced by the early women students, the numbers grew until, in 1909, they represented 28 percent of the student body (roughly 90 women out of 330). At that time, President George Reed expressed his concerns to the board of trustees, noting “some irritation of feeling among the male portion of the student body due to the fact that in recent years … the women … have won an altogether disproportionate share of College honors and prizes. Those successes … have been due not so much to the intellectual superiority of the women as to the fact that women in the College have fewer distractions, by far, to encounter than have the men, and so are able to give closer attention to scholastic work.”

Thereafter, the college limited enrollment of women to 25 percent. With the exception of temporary suspensions during World War I and II, that quota was in place until 1964, when it was increased to 40 percent. It finally was lifted in 1973, the year after the Title IX clause of the 1972 Federal Education Amendments, or Equal Oppor-tunity in Education Act, was signed into law, prohibiting discrimination based on sex in educational programs that received federal funding.

Quotas, however, weren’t the only obstacles facing early female enrollees. When the first women arrived in 1884 there was no campus housing for them. They lived locally with their families and commuted or rented rooms in boarding houses in the Carlisle community. The college gradually began providing lodging in off-campus facilities.

In 1895, female students began living in Ladies’ Hall (also known as Lloyd Hall) on West Pomfret Street. Housing became available in 1913 in Metzger Hall on North Hanover Street, six blocks from campus and, later, in houses on and off campus. It wasn’t until 1952 that Drayer Hall opened, becoming the first building constructed on campus to house women. Next came Adams and Witwer halls and, in 1969, Kisner-Woodward became the first coeducational residence hall on campus.

Another challenging arena was extracurricular and social life. For the first 50 years or so, these activities were fairly strictly divided according to gender. In 1885, Zatae Longs-dorff requested permission to join the fraternity Beta Theta Pi and, after a short discus- sion among the members, was refused. Two parallel sets of organizations formed—one for women and one for men, including a Women’s Athletic Association and even a Women’s Student Government Association until its merger in 1935 with the male Student Senate.

This is just a brief snapshot of some of the things we know based on research completed since last January by the Archives & Special Collections staff and a team of 15 enthusiastic student interns and volunteers, supported by the Research and Development Committee, the Waidner-Spahr Library, the women’s & gender studies department, the institutional Women’s Center and the Instructional and Media Services Department.

The student researchers explored official college records, campus publications, photographs, scrapbooks, oral histories, student essays and memoirs, dating from the 1870s to the present. To share their discoveries in an interactive way, they posted their findings to the Women’s Experiences at Dickinson blog, available at http://itech.dickinson.edu/ coeducation.

Dickinson community members can read more than 900 posts about women’s history and share their own memories and experiences. Through Alumni Weekend in June they also can enjoy an alumna- and student-curated exhibit in the lower level of the library. This continued exploration of the history of women at Dickinson provides a wonderful opportunity for collaboration and sharing, and all are invited to lend a voice to this effort.

Malinda Triller, special collections librarian, assisted in coordinating the explorations of women’s history at Dickinson. You may contact her at archives@dickinson.edu.