THE FIRST COED YEAR

Some judgments rounded up from faculty, students, and administrators

For years, it hazily lingered on the horizon, anticipated by some as rainclouds of new life and by others as dust from a dervish army.

Now, whether by storm or siege, coeducation is here - and nearly one year old.

Reflecting on the first year, President Kemeny enjoys relating an incident which occurred at a faculty discussion of coeducation in one large department on campus. After the meeting, a senior professor remarked to the department chairman, "You know, it seems like Dartmouth has always been coed." In the administration, that attitude seems to prevail - that the College has enrolled women without upheaval, without earthquakes, without losing the "Dartmouth mystique" (or even the Ivy football championship).

Dean Carroll Brewster says, "All we have really done is doubled the number of women students over last year ... and just as everyone expected, they have fitted easily into most aspects of Dartmouth life."

Aside from that, nearly everyone also agrees that a "gentling" of the atmosphere in Hanover has somehow taken place. "The mood on campus is different in a benign way. Dartmouth doesn't seem as hard-edged or angular as it was before," says Robert Graham, director of the Information Services.

Most students definitely concur that the "rowdy, wide-open atmosphere" has mellowed significantly since the arrival of this year's group of 250 freshwomen and 130 exchange and transfer students.

And if the women have gentled the rough texture of the men, it is no less true that the males have roughened the gentle edges of the women. Agnes Bixler, the assistant director of physical education for women's athletics, says, "Since coming here, I swear a lot more than I used to. At least, I think about it a lot more."

This general attitude of benign interaction is confirmed by the findings of a survey of Dartmouth women, conducted by Joanna Sternick, a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts graduate school of education. From the study, she concluded that coeds like the total environment much more than corresponding groups of male students polled in previous years.

This feeling also seems to hold for the female faculty and administrators whose number has grown to 75 from about 30 since the College filed an Affirmative Action Plan with HEW last year.

However, Vice President Ruth Adams, former president of Wellesley College, wishes more women held tenured professorships as well as positions in the sciences. Beyond the central issue of Affirmative Action, administrators and faculty have repeatedly expressed the need for women to act as role models for the present coeds, "so they won't end up thinking that men become faculty and administrators while women only become secretaries," in the words of President Kemeny.

The mood of the classroom contributes to the apparently smooth transition into coeducation. Men and women participate together in classes of art, music, drama, physical education, and other disciplines.

The President notes, "Many alumni are surprised that there has been no change in the academics because they expected that women would be reluctant to speak up in class. ... From my experience in Math 6 and what I have heard from other faculty members, there is no evidence of this.

"Also, women students do not choose courses markedly different from the men, for the choices of curriculum tend to vary with the institution more than the sex of the student.... Enrollment patterns at other Ivy League schools show that Princeton women choose courses more like Princeton men than like Yale women. We are finding the same thing here ... the women participate in class no different from the men."

On the other hand, some professors, such as Leo Spitzer of the History Department, get a different impression: "The talkers in my class are still mostly the guys, though the girls may be remaining quiet because they are in such a small minority. The same thing has happened in my small seminars, but there too, I have had so few girls that they may have been shy individually. ... As a group, academically the girls have done better than my male students; they seem better prepared."

Despite that, statistics for the entire freshman class show that women have received grades closely paralleling their percentage of the class. Although some expected the coeds to walk off with all the prizes, they are not "overly represented" among those '76ers who have earned all A's for fall and winter terms, according to Britta McNemar, assistant dean of freshmen.

With respect to academics, it may thus be the faculty which has more adjusting to do than the students. Cynthia Ford '76 tells the story of her fall-term English class in which she was the only female. At one meeting, the professor, with relish, began to relate an incident concerning Hemingway - only to remember that Cynthia was present and decide not to complete the anecdote. However, after she "offered to write home and get permission from my mother to hear the story," the proper pedagogue completed his tale.

Playing interscholastic schedules in field hockey, squash, basketball, and skiing against Smith, Keene State, St. Paul's prep, and Williams, the coeds enthusiastically entered the extracurricular life of the College. Despite a lack of recognition in athletics, Agnes Bixler says the female teams were very favorably received by the male teams and that one afternoon the entire football team came to watch the field hockey unit do battle with Smith and, tragically, lose. While noting the strong female participation in drama, Dean McNemar hopes that areas of music,' especially voice, such as the Glee Club and the Aires, will open for the women.

Here the matter of participation in all activities enters the question of change at Dartmouth. Admissions Director Edward Chamberlain feels, "It just isn't all that different with coeducation. ... Sure, we aren't getting All-American quarterbacks from the women, but they are swimmings skiing, playing in the band, working for the paper, doing social work in the community, - the same as male students."

Inevitably, this leads to the issue of social life, a matter which the Sternick report listed as one of the three major problems for women at Dartmouth. That may sound dubious, at first, for who can complain about the past year's 9:1 ratio?

One problem results because, through custom and resignation to the unfavorable odds, male students still road-trip regularly to women's colleges. The rest of the men bring up their "imports," as the coeds have humorously labeled their foreign competition. During Winter Carnival, the pages of The Dartmouth carried many letters from coeds describing the dateless dilemma of the Dartmouth Diana.

"There's a lot of sadness around here three times a year (the big social weekend each term)," says transfer student Karen Fagin '73. "But after Sunday, when all the imports are gone, there's a feeling that it's still my school, and I belong here." Vice President Adams goes so far as to suggest that "their noses get out of joint when all these girls are shipped in ... Beyond that, however, many girls are truly disheartened that the general social life focuses on fraternity row. Some girls are very articulate in identifying the need for an alternative focal point."

The other problem with the 9:1 ratio lies in there being too few girls, for only a greater presence of women will lead to "significantly improving the quality of life at Dartmouth," as President Kemeny stated in his inaugural address.

Evaluating the current ratio, he says, "I feel even this relatively small number of women has made a great impact. I think relations between men and women are more relaxed than before. Rather than a hectic weekend dating situation, I think men and women have begun to associate on a more normal, day-to-day level. Obviously, this still has a lot further to go because the number of women is so small. Next year the approximate ratio will be 5:1, and then 3:1 the following year.... At that point, men and women will certainly be able to form relationships not based on dating situations."

Given that it took three years of subcommittees, surveys, opinion polls, referendums, and polemical letters-to-editors to decide on coeducation, the prevalent attitude that Dartmouth has not really begun a metamorphosis seems superficial if not contradictory.

The current upperclassmen, more than sophomores and freshmen, express sentiments that Dartmouth has not, will not, and could not change significantly. However, Carolyn McQueen '74, an exchange student from Wheaton College, expresses a typical countering argument: "The freshmen have a good attitude about Dartmouth, about seeing it in terms of coeducation. I think their relationships with women are not as superficial as those of the juniors and seniors who are still looking at the coeds as potential dates."

Meanwhile, some faculty and students, particularly females, suggest that administrators and faculty seem eager to convince themselves, or at least the alumni, that Dartmouth has brought in the girls but not the feminism.

Professor Smith says, "It seems as though the College expected to stay the same after coeducation, as though women could be planted like trees on the Green, and nothing would change.... If Dartmouth is unwilling to accept and acknowledge the profound change that the female presence means to the institution, then women were brought here for the wrong reasons.

"Administratively, Dartmouth has done an excellent job of handling the transition, but we have not addressed the underlying questions of what it means to have women in Hanover.... That attitude that coeducation has not caused a basic change in Dartmouth seems to be one to placate alumni. Naturally, those alumni who oppose profound change in the College will oppose coeducation because it inevitably will change the school."

Evidence of this unacknowledged change lies in the conflict between elements of approval and opposition which have surfaced during this transition period. More than a few coeds have experienced incidents of broken windows, shouted obscenities, and other harassment as expressions of hostility. Female dormitories, particularly Woodward Hall, have been raided, and this spring a vindictively obscene letter was slipped under the door of each coed in that dormitory. More recently, Beta Theta Pi fraternity was placed on social probation for selectively carousing through the women's floor in Butterfield Hall.

Most women students, faculty, and administrators discount those major incidents as aberrations, but the small vocal minority of coeducation opponents have made themselves heard. And this does not even consider the problems of what Vice President Adams calls "the ultimate minority group, such as black women," who are young, female, and non-white.

The hiring of female faculty and administrators, under the Affirmative Action Office headed by Gregory Prince, who is generally considered to have done an excellent job, also concerns some as a possible instance of the "tree-planting-on-the-green" syndrome.

History Professor Spitzer says, "We should have many more women on the faculty. Some departments are very committed to this, as in the History Department where we try to have a sex-blind hiring policy. However, other departments are not trying as hard as they might.... The small number of women on the faculty right now carry a very heavy burden. They are drawn into all sorts of actions and discussions about the women's issue that demands much of their time. Then, too, since everyone wants women represented on all the College committees, the women have to put in much more time on committee work than any male.... The women here have given to the College above and beyond what is normally expected."

Perhaps the need for women faculty is best proved by the fact that of all those interviewed for this article only English Professor Brenda Silver suggested that women faculty should serve as role models for male students as well as female students: "It's just as important for the men to see that it's natural for women to be administrators, doctors, lawyers, and professionals in all fields."

After considering the campus atmosphere, extracurricular activities, the classroom, and Affirmative Action programs, one must eventually confront the basic variable in coeducation: personal relationships. This subject ignited the original push for coeducation and has proved the subject of most debate in the first year.

The fabled camaradarie among Dartmouth men seems strong and vibrant, despite the "gentling" of the atmosphere. Interfraternity Council President Jerry Bowe '74 believes that coeducation has not significantly affected the operation of fraternities. Numbers at rush increased markedly this spring while six houses voted to admit women and three sank female pledges. Unfortunately, the fraternity system has created some friction with females. Bowe says, "A lot of women avoid the fraternities because of what they have heard we are, without really bothering to evaluate us themselves. We have received much undeserved blame for the actions of small groups of students who may or may not have been fraternity members, and who could have represented only one portion of one house within the system.... A few days after the incident with the Woodward Letter, every fraternity president received an obscene reply in the mail, indicating that people immediately assumed we, the fraternities, were responsible. All the houses are diverse, and no one supports that kind of thing which had to have been done by a really sick person."

If the male bond is strong, then the female friendships still have far to go, for the Sternick report concluded that one of the major problems of Dartmouth women is the lack of female friends. Karen Fagin '73 says, "With coeducation, we have become first-class citizens, but this is still basically an all-male school so it's hard for us to find close girl friends with the few women spread over the campus."

"I notice the universal pleasure, pride, and satisfaction among women students about being a student at Dartmouth College," says Vice President Adams, "but the girls do feel like a definite minority and do have trouble arranging group meetings with just girls.... With greater numbers next year, this should be less of a problem and then eventually resolve itself."

As for the male-female bond, Tom Lane '73 states, "The male-female relationships on the campus right now are very unnatural, and that is because we don't have a 1:1 ratio. A 1:1 ratio is the most natural situation, and the further you get from the natural situation, then the further the male-female relationships are from being natural. Anything short of that is artificial. I don't think it was good to go into this step-by-step; we should have done it all the way or not at all."

Men and women from all parts of the College community have indeed expressed the desire for complete coeducation. Brenda Silver states, "As long as the coeds are in a minority, it will always seem that they are not equal, given their percentage of the population. Dartmouth cannot consider itself coed with a few girls at an all-male school.... A 50:50 ratio is the only way to show a commitment to educating women as well as men."

Currently, President Kemeny favors lowering the ratio to 2:1, but the issue will not actually be considered until the Dartmouth Plan is fully implemented in 1977.

At that time, the Trustees have promised to take a hard look and see where we go from there," he says, "It's important to note that the Trustees did not vote a 3:1 ratio for women. They voted that the number of men should not drop below 3000, with the rest of the places to go to women. The 3:1 ratio is actually not the lowest ratio, for the Dartmouth Plan allows for 1100 or 1200 women with our facilities, depending on the enrollment pattern of the students.

"By the time the Dartmouth Plan is fully instituted, however, there may be other alterations in the male-female ratio. Census figures show that after 1980 the potential college population is going to drop drastically.... At that point, a 2:1 ratio may be easier to reach, or even mandatory, due to the expected drop in college applicants."

In considering the final numbers, many different concerns arise: Can Dartmouth afford to build extra facilities to raise the number of the student body? Does the school even wish to raise the number of students at all? How will lowering the number of men affect the level of competition in the Ivy League, which many extrapolate to competition in other areas? With a smaller number of men, would the College sacrifice well-rounded students to recruit super-brains and super-athletes to maintain its reputation in both areas? How will alumni endowments be affected, since historically men give more to their alma mater than women? What will be the reaction of present alumni on whom the College certainly depends for support?

Director Robert Graham of the Information Services says, "For some older alumni, the change to coeducation was the last straw which forced them to withdraw their support from the College. But it has also prompted some younger alumni, who otherwise might not have given money so soon, to enthusiastically support the College with their gifts.... This year, we are ahead of schedule in the Alumni Fund, even with the goal at $3-million."

Meanwhile, applications to the College for last year increased over previous years and then jumped another 25 per cent for next fall's freshman class..

Admissions Director Chamberlain believes, "A lot of the Old Greens were against coeducation before, but now they're all for it. We receive many letters that begin: 'I never thought I would write a letter like this, but there's a girl in my neighborhood who is the greatest girl I've ever met, and she's applying to Dartmouth . .

The male: female classroom ratio will improve next year.

Bright orange knapsacks are "de rigueur" with the coeds.

"If the boys started coming to class with coats and tiesand their hair slicked down, then things would be different,but nothing has really changed in the classroom....Somegirls come to class just as scruffy-looking as some boys." - Math Professor William Slesnick

The debut of the Dartmouth women's basketball teamlast Tuesday afternoon was a very successful one, as thefemale cagers whipped Colby Jr. by the relatively lowscore of 27-20. - The Dartmouth, Feb. 1, 1973

"When we voted on coeducation I don't think any of usreally anticipated the social and psychological changes itwould mean to the campus.... You cannot remedy oneaspect of a society and expect the rest to remain intact; theinnovation will affect everything else as well." - Sociology Professor Joan Smith

"Can you imagine being one of 400 girls on this campusright now? They must feel incredibly self-concious and inhibited walking across the campus.... Can you imaginewalking across the Green and thirty guys are walking bysaying 'Hi!... Hi! ... Hi!' all the time - and each one ofthem thinking of asking you for a date and nobody doing itbecause somebody else has probably gotten there first....It must really be crazy." - Tom Lane '73

"It's very dangerous to generalize the ideas of all thealumni, although I know that some are disappointed atthis 'gentling' of Dartmouth and those are probably theones who feel that the all-male atmosphere made Dartmouth what it is.... Other alumni feel that the all-maleatmosphere had little to do with making Dartmouth 'Dartmouth.' Still others feel that the all-male atmosphere wasgood for a certain period of time, but now changing socialconditions demand a coed situation." - President Kemeny