1 Occom Ridge

Dartmouth women now have a "place of their own."

A social-residential facility known as 1 Occom Ridge and home to eight women opened its doors to upperclass students this fall. All dressed up and with lots of places to go, the old yellow clapboard building, located a short distance from the President's house, is also a social center for other interested women students.

The house is an official College residence and occupants are determined by lottery. It is not, current residents insist, a sorority. According to Marilyn Baldwin, assistant vice president in the Office of Student Affairs, the women are not making "an anti-male political statement but a pro-female act." Their living arrangement is patterned after the College's four-year-old Co-op House at 23 East Wheelock Street, where the cooking and cleaning duties are shared, and the students - both female and male — set house rules and are responsible for the upkeep of the facility.

Although the sentiment behind 1 Occom Ridge had been evolving among Dartmouth women since the beginning of coeducation, not until last year was the proposal for the living arrangement made to the Office of Student Affairs. In December, Leslie Embs and Diane Granzow, both now seniors, called for a place "uniquely designed to promote camaraderie and identity outside of the classroom, sports activities, and the traditional dormitory." The women wanted a place where, as Marilyn Baldwin says, they could be "hostesses and not always guests."

The proposal was subjected to a battery of committee scrutinies, including one made by the College's Environmental Impact Committee, and was finally approved in June by the executive committee of the Board of Trustees.

The cost of renovating 1 Occom Ridge and a sister component next door now occupied by three women graduate students has been placed at about $69,000, which is to be amortized by room charges over a 20-year period. Proponents say that both the women and Dartmouth are getting a good deal; the women because room rents, $262 per term, are less than for most dormitory quarters and Dartmouth because it has taken a building too large for a faculty family and renovated it at less cost than constructing a new dormitory.

Reaction among the current occupants is enthusiastic. Leslie Embs says the living arrangement "means more responsibility, like being quiet in the morning and night due to the creaky floors and thin walls." Barbara Gilson '78 appreciates the "privacy and intimacy," and another junior, Barbara Dow, while noting the "brisk walk" to town, likes the location for jogging and cross-country skiing. The women confess that the kitchen has brought out a "domestic streak" among them.

Intended as a solution to some of the social riddles facing Dartmouth women, 1 Occom Ridge appears to be fulfilling what Marilyn Baldwin says is the aim of the Student Affairs Office: to have "lots of different possibilities" in living at Dartmouth, which is "part of the rest of one's education."

Towering pines and peaks form a fit backdrop for a towering Man of Dartmouth as hetalks with friends at "his place," the John Sloan Dickey Area of the College Grant.