'... A whole pool of frustration, anger, resentment...'

Our cohogs They play one. They're all here to spoil our fun. With a knick, knack, paddywack Send the bitches home Our cohogs go to bed alone.

THE brothers from Theta Delt weren't singing about thick-shelled clams at the annual fraternity hums competition last spring. They were singing about the women of Dartmouth, those who in a later verse were said to have "ruined our masculine heaven."

The corrupted nursery rhyme surfaced again this fall as the opening of YouLaugh, a controversial play written by seven women portraying the status of women at Dartmouth. You Laugh was no laughing matter. The play, which grew out of a philosophy seminar, was performed before three large audiences and, in the words of one of the authors, it "brought out a lot of tension from under the surface."

"We disagreed with each other as often as we agreed," commented Melanie Graves '78 in The Dartmouth, "but a common tie seemed to be a dissatisfaction with the situation of women at our college." They agreed that a sexist and hostile atmosphere pervades the campus and they wanted to stimulate discussion and, perhaps, action. "We wanted others to know they weren't alone in feeling these tensions and anxieties," said Elizabeth Epstein '77.

The scenes of the play, from crude jokes, insults, and sexual stereotypes to vignettes of loneliness, came from what the women said were actual experiences at Dartmouth. "Not every woman could identify with all that was in the play, but each could identify with something," Epstein said.

The women's frustrations with crudities, with the "Dartmouth Animal myth," and with the "unnatural and destructive" male-female ratio were recurrent themes. They complained that the tone of the College remains overwhelmingly male despite four years of coeducation and said they were tired of being treated "as an unsuccessful experiment in the education of the Dartmouth man."

The women decided to write the play after discussions in their "Feminism and Revolution" seminar highlighted the frustrations they felt as Dartmouth women. "We wanted to act somehow, as well as talk, and so the idea came to us to write a play," Graves explained.

The idea grew as they worked. "We wanted to sort out our feelings about the place," said Penny Kurr '77. "There was a whole pool of frustration, anger, and resentment in me. I didn't know what to do. Writing the play made me examine the causes of what I didn't like about Dartmouth."

You Laugh exceeded all their expectations. The women originally planned to stage it in a classroom or perhaps on the College Green, but they actually performed it once at Hopkins Center and twice at Rollins Chapel. Their first performance was given exclusively for Dartmouth women, primarily to air the play and their sentiments in front of a sympathetic audience before entering an arena they expected to be full of lions. Yet YouLaugh was aimed at men as well as women, and both men and women attended lengthy discussions after the final two performances.

"We wanted to make people question what's going on here on campus," Kurr said. "Legally and economically the College treats women and men equally, but psychologically it doesn't. It's really disconcerting to go into a classroom and see that you're the only woman there, and it's difficult to deal with the maleness of the place."

Epstein, like Kurr, is the daughter of an alumnus, and she was attracted to Dartmouth because she liked the heartiness of Dartmouth life. "But," she said, "I didn't expect to be treated as a guest here."

"When I came to Dartmouth I was naive - that's for sure," Kurr said. "I knew Dartmouth was coeducational and I thought I'd be treated equally. The women started to be treated as an experiment and as scapegoats for all the problems on campus. Guys even complain that the washers are full because the coeds are always washing their clothes."

Predictably, reactions to You Laugh ranged from highly sympathetic to openly hostile. Although one cast member said a student told her his fraternity had decided she and the others in You Laugh "should never set foot in our house again," the women were astonished at how well their production was received. "We expected a much more hostile reaction. We didn't think Dartmouth audiences would take this criticism kindly," Epstein said. "I was surprised to see that so many people, including fraternity members, said the play made them think. That's what we wanted."

The women have moved to harness the energy released in You Laugh. The Women's Center on the second floor of Robinson Hall has become an informal meeting place, and women have begun organizing weekend coffee-houses as alternatives to fraternity house parties.

"The important thing now," Graves remarked, "is to conserve the momentum generated last term in order that women here will come to do those things for themselves that up to now have not been done for them."

Spring of 1974: the men of Russell Sage give the women of Dartmouth a message.