The Green Curve of the Future
The Great Swami, swept away on a multi-colored trip, returns togive a most unnerving report of the College fifty years hencecompletely in the hands of organized females
March 31, 2024
DEAR SARA,
Your mother has sent me a copy of last week's Dartmouth with the news story about your petition to the Board of Trustees. As you know, we have been very pleased with your college career. It has been a rewarding experience for us to watch your progress through Dartmouth. However I am forced to think, as I read the Dartmouth account of your confrontation with President Seymour which quoted you as saying, "Dartmouth will never maintain her rank among Smith, Yale, Mt. Holherst, and Prince-mawr if she remains a university for women - Dartmouth needs men!", that your parents neglected to give you some background on the school of your choice.
Even though your father doesn't talk about it much, I am sure he has told you that he, as well as your mother, went to Dartmouth. It is true he didn't graduate, and I still find it hard to accept Dean Reich's explanation that since the Student Senate voted for .separation and that Palaeopitus declined to review the decision, the Ad-Fac Committee advisory to the Undergraduate Leader was powerless. I still think the President of Palaeopitus, Mabel Rycewicz, was piqued because your father brought that girl from Green Mountain University to Carnival instead of dating her. Not only was Dartmouth once coed - it was also, back in my day, exclusively male!
I am not sure myself whether I am in favor of men at Dartmouth. So much has happened to the place it is hard for me to reconcile Hanover today with the place I knew when I went to school. But my own prejudices aside, and in the interests of setting the record straight for you young activists, I think you should know how Dartmouth got the way she is, sex-wise.
When I entered Dartmouth in the fall of 1967 Dartmouth was all male. That is, all male except for some girls in the Med School and taking graduate work in some of the science departments. There was a lot of talk about taking in girls. The Dartmouth was forever taking polls in 1969 and '70 among the undergraduates, among the faculty, among the alumni, among the Emmetts and Newts, and even among the then all-girl colleges asking how many would want girls at Dartmouth as classmates, as students, as daughters, as customers, and as rivals. The polls were never very conclusive. Things simmered along, the pro-coed faction . hoping the Bicentennial Celebration would force an agonizing reappraisal, the anti-women faction counseling a slow approach until the College-University status was clarified. Dartmouth was still all male when I got out in 1971. And it looked like it would stay that way for another ten to fifteen years.
And then in 1973 two things happened that cracked the dam. Ever since the winter of 1968 Dartmouth has had undergraduate girls as exchange students from Talladega. There were only three or four a year, and they only spent one or two terms in Hanover during their junior year. Their Dartmouth credits were applied toward their Talladega degrees. Nobody thought they were either a threat to Dartmouth's masculinity or the first glimmer of salvation as a coed institution. But in the winter of 1973 two former Talladega exchange students were chosen as the first girl Rhodes Scholars. The whole Dartmouth family leaped to embrace the girls as their own. They were referred to by The Dartmouth, the ALUMNI MAGAZINE, the College News Service, and the Valley News as Elise Johnson, Dartmouth-Talladega '72, and Vivian Lee, Dartmouth-Talladega '73.
That was the first fracture in the male monolithic structure. The second occurred when a girl actually got a Dartmouth diploma after four years in residence. No, she didn't have to pose as a boy. It was all quite legal and out in the open. It happened this way. In 1969 the very popular Professor Hartshorne and his wife were involved in a tragic automobile accident. Mrs. Hartshorne was killed and the Professor was paralyzed from the waist down. Their daughter, who would have entered Radcliffe on a National Merit Scholarship that fall, stayed home to nurse her father. Although her father required her attention at regular intervals, there were times when he could be left alone. Judy Hartshorne asked if she could take three courses a term for credit to be applied at some future time to Radcliffe. The College did not hesitate. They knew her to be a well-organized, level-headed girl, and a brilliant student in chemistry. Although she sincerely tried to be unobtrusive and not trade on her sex, her father's popularity, or the sympathy of the community, it was impossible for her to avoid the limelight. She tutored Dartmouth's last Ail-American through Chemistry 4, unofficially coached the freshman ski team to an unbeaten season, and contributed distaff-side cartoons to the Jacko that won it such a wide audience among the sister schools that it not only paid off its huge debt to Roger Burt but was solvent enough to print a center gate-fold, fullcolo photo of the 1970 Carnival Queen sans parka, sans muff, sans mittens, sans everything but her hippie beads.
No one has ever proved that Professor Hartshorne malingered. He received many subtle hints and many unsubtle suggestions that he require Judy's attention for another year. She stayed on at Dartmouth for her sophomore year, did a "How to Snow Your Date" column for The Dartmouth, and got on the College Bowl quiz team that retired the cup. By now the students and the faculty were plotting to keep Judy at Dartmouth. The Administration might have succeeded in getting her off to Radcliffe for her junior year, but by now Judy herself wanted that Dartmouth diploma. What Judy wanted, Judy got. She qualified for the Olympic Ski Team in '71, brought home three gold medals from Japan, and made junior Phi Bete.
I think she might have gotten the Administration to surrender unconditionally then, but Judy was never one to gamble. On the Sunday before College opened in the fall of 1972 she married Assistant Professor Chickering (Princeton '68) of the Art Department. Faculty wives have had the privilege of taking courses for many years. Nobody even twitched as she changed her major to Drama, won the Barrett Cup, and graduated cum laude in a maternity academic robe.
Dartmouth had two quasi-alumnae they couldn't keep quiet about and one full alumna they couldn't keep quiet.
The next year Naomi Ponsonby applied. The fact that old man Ponsonby owned all the stock in the company that bought out Xerox and Psycho-Cola has been cited as one reason why Dartmouth capitulated. I have never been able to get anyone in any position to know to tell me whether C. J. Ponsonby offered to give Dartmouth ten million if they would take Naomi or sue them for ten million if they didn't. Naomi eloped with the assistant tennis coach in May of her freshman year, and never graduated, but she and Judy and Elise and Vivian had desegregated Dartmouth.
It is getting late and I am running out of video tape. I'll tape another letter about how Dartmouth lost all its men next week.
Love, GRAMPS
April 7, 2024
DEAR SARA,
Last week I promised I would fill the gaps in your background in Dartmouth history by telling you how the College was transformed from a coed institution to an all-female college. And I won't be a moment too soon. When I dialed "Northeast Educational News" on our videonews set this morning the loop was showing your demonstration in front of Parkhurst. I am sure President Seymour got the message. "Dartmouth without men is like beer without pretzels." Her father would have understood.
In any event, back in 1975 the College formally became de facto coed. And I must say when the Trustees finally did it they went all the way. As I understand it, they had a lot of help in reaching their decision about how fast and how far to go coed from their wives. Since Dartmouth could not get much news value out of accepting female students, being the last of the Ivy League to do so, they decided to make news by doing it right. In the fall of '75, 1700 girls joined 1700 men on the campus. They managed to come up with a 100% integrated faculty too. 150 women appeared in the classrooms. Every other floor of each dorm was reserved for girls, starting with the second floor. The top floor of the gym became the girls' gym, and they took over the old swimming pool. It was an exciting time. Six of the local fraternities got into the spirit of the thing and pledged sisters. Three-quarters of the entering girls were transferred sophomores, juniors and seniors. Judy Hartshorne was named Dean of Women, and the campus police hired three female Marine veterans. Among other things, they were known as the Doublebreasted Pseudo-Fuzz.
A girls' cheerleading squad was organized and the intramural games were enlivened by the female fans from the dorms and houses. The Players boomed with plenty of actresses in the right age bracket for a change and plenty of help in the costume department. Paul Zeller added a girls' chorus, the Daily D ran a fashion column, and Campion's, Town and Country, Ward's, Boutique 68, and Operation Petticoat expanded. Four new beauty parlors opened and three barbershops folded.
The novelty didn't begin to wear off until Fall Houseparties. The football team had lost five straight games. To make room for the girls the College had dropped all men with less than a 3.0 average. More than half of Coach Crouthamel's squad didn't come back. Then the Interdormitory Council, which still had a bare male majority, asked the Dartmouth girls to double up in the dorms with the out-of-town dates coming in. The girls agreed if the Dartmouth men would make room for their dates. "How the hell can I entertain my date in my room if there's some Princeton jock on the couch?" was the gist of the roar that went up. Sandy Smallwood lost her chance to be vice-president of the freshman class when she suggested over WDCR that there would be no problem if Dartmouth men and women would date each other. It had become apparent that while the new Dartmouth women were smart, lively and great to go to the Nugget with, and hike with, and do lab experiments with, they were not at all what the men had in mind for romantic weekends. The Admissions Office had leaned over backwards in disregarding surface beauty, possibly to avoid flak at home. 15,000 girls had applied and with room for only 1700 Dartmouth picked the best, brain-wise.
We lost the Fall Houseparty football game. Crouthamel announced his resignation.
There was an uneasy truce the rest of that year. The men hoped that the new freshman girls would be better looking and more cooperative when the senior transfers who had done most of the politicking had graduated. The Dartmouth girls laid plans.
In two years they had elected girls as presidents of three of the classes. They ran the Daily D, and dominated the Forensic Union. Three of the houses who had pledged girls the first year disbanded and the men reorganized as an all-male house. One stayed coed, but it became very intellectual and social-problem oriented. It was known as the only coed monastery with a mother superior in existence. Two fraternities became sororities and three new sororities were formed.
Originally the two College dining halls had been used by both sexes. By the third term the men boycotted them because they could not stand the broccoli with chocolate sauce and the rest of the tearoom type menus that were being offered. In 1978 the dining halls were segregated de facto, if not officially. One served heartier food and charged more. This became "The Trough." The other was known as "The Pinkie" - from the lifted pinkie.
Dartmouth's athletic programs had not fared well. With only 1700 men to recruit from, all the teams but the basketball team and fencing team had losing seasons. The only bright spot was the national champion girls' ski team. The girls had demanded "equal opportunity on the playing fields" and had gotten coaches for field hockey, tennis, synchronized swimming, golf, volley ball, and archery. But it was really only a gesture, since the Dartmouth girls were bookers not lookers, and brainy not brawny. At the end of the first decade we were playing Norwich again in football, and had one last burst of glory when we won the Little Four title, beating Amherst by a field goal. Alice Lazarowski '88, a well-rounded lass from Hungary, was the kicking specialist.
Dartmouth dropped' football and crew in 1992 and then all male sports except for individual team sports like tennis and golf. The girls' ski team kept up the old tradition and the mixed rifle team did well. One of the highlights of the year was the mixed Woodsmen's-Woodswomen's team. A pair of twins, Dorcas and David Skaggs, from Maine were undefeated on the crosscut saw for four years.
Of course the Forensic Union was the cream of all college debating teams for well into the 21st century. And intellectually the University was preeminent.
Socially, things never got any better. With girls in most of the key undergraduate offices because of their block voting strategy and vote-buying tactics, the men lost out steadily.
When no Dartmouth girl had been selected Queen for eight years, the girls elected a Yale man as Carnival King. The men retaliated by abolishing Carnival. The girls road-tripped to Harvard. Fraternities languished. It was cheaper for the men to hang around a sorority than to join a house.
The end was in sight when Miss Eloise Reich became President in 2010. This was inevitable and caused no ripples. We had had a woman Provost for 12 years. The Board of Trustees was still half and half. But the distaff half controlled 35 million between them. (Financially, the College was in good shape. As the female alumnae went out in the world they married into a lot of old Yale and Harvard money which eventually came our way.) The female trustees were not only rich, they were adept at getting what they wanted from men. They wanted Dartmouth, and they got it by default in 2011. Fewer and fewer men had been applying. Most of what once would have been our best prospects were going to Colby University in New London, which had recently become all-male. When the College appointed Elsie Schwedland Rand as Graduate Manager of the DOC, the last five males transferred. The remaining male trustees resigned in favor of their wives, and the Hopkins Center School of the Ballet began granting PhD's.
Good luck, Sara. I wish you well. If you do get some men into Dartmouth, do it gradually or they may take over.
Love, GRAMPS
Alice, kicking specialist in the 'Bos.
"Undefeated on the crosscut saw for four years."
