Getting Better with Age

I suppose you are all familiar with, and perhaps sick of hearing about, the notorious social "situation" here at Dartmouth "where the men are men and the women are too," oftentimes pleasantly emended with "and the sheep roam free." I remember cringing the first time I heard those words. I glanced across the room at the only other female present, rolled my eyes, and feigned a laugh. It was the first party I ever attended at our beloved Big Green.

I couldn't say I wasn't warned. People had said things such as "You don't want to go up to that school in the woods with all those animals!" and "Good grief, there are hardly any girls there. Haven't you read Esquire lately?" when I first mentioned I might like to go to Dartmouth. My father, a member of the Class of 1959, gritted his teeth. He wanted nothing more in the world than to have one of his children attend his alma mater but his only daughter??

When I began applying to colleges my senior year in high school, I applied to Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Wells . . . nice, respectable girls' schools. I could have tea in the afternoon and they'd ring me in my room if I had a male visitor. My parents thought that arrangement sounded wonderful. I agreed; it sounded like the perfect place for a career-oriented young woman. I was always the kid who came home with a report card that said "Gayle is an excellent student, but she talks too much." In a predominantly female environment, at least my distractions could be minimized.

I carefully considered everything I had heard; but obviously it didn't carry much weight when it came time to make my final decision. Women had been at Dartmouth for some 10 years. It couldn't be all that bad. I'd been there many times myself and everything seemed perfectly normal. Of course those were the days when I was young and naive. I thought Hanover was just a land of football fields and fraternity houses. I saw men and women together at tailgate parties, and from time to time, my father would lead me into the nether reaches of his old fraternity house basement, the main thing I recall being the smell of stale beer and cigarettes. So I had firsthand proof that life was fun and "normal" at the College on the Hill.

But here I was at that first party hearing rude things about Dartmouth girls. "Wait a minute!," I thought. "I'm one of them and what you're saying simply isn't true. I'm not like that, honest." My defensive reaction was muted quickly. The girl across the room was a senior. She flashed a sarcastic smile which said, between the lips, "Welcome to Dartmouth, my friend."

There were many other memorable moments that first fall, though most weren't as unsettling as that party. I had been mildly surprised when I moved into my home away from home, Woodward Hall. I hadn't requested an allwomen's dorm, but it didn't seem to matter much. Woodward was flanked on each end by the all-male Ripley and Smith dorms. I'd enjoy being able to come out of my room in the morning in my ragged Lanz nightgown and make the trek to the bathroom. Little did I suspect, however, that as I started to get into the shower I would hear a knock from the Smith side of the room and a loud voice booming "Coming through!" Yes, folks, here it was. Probably the only all-female dorm in the country that had adjoining bathrooms with their male neighbors. My mother shook her head. I preferred to write it off as Dartmouth irony at its best.

The autumn of '81 marked another celebrated event: a decade had passed since the decision to accept women at Dartmouth. I went to see a studentmade documentary about the first years of women at the College. I left, let us say, somewhat distraught with the antics of the "Dartmouth male." Those had been the days when co-eds were called co-hogs and women were hassled, even in groups. I wasn't a feminist and hadn't come to Dartmouth to become one. I was a product of the 70s and 80s. My generation has the attitude "I already know I'm as good as any man. ... I don't have to march in demonstrations trying to prove it." Perhaps that was just my personal attitude, for I had grown up in an environment where females were not a bountiful commodity. I have two brothers, two who might as well be, 19 cousins (all male), and was one of just two girls in my neighborhood. I had never felt inferior to men and it puzzled me that I should feel that way now. The film was eight years old, I thought, so why worry about it? But somehow a feeling of uneasiness still haunted the way I felt about my place in the social scene at Dartmouth.

Meanwhile, my first two new friends began to make frequent visits to my room; both were male. I didn't give it a second thought. Freshmen aren't allowed in fraternities their first term and many hours are spent just "hanging out" in each other's rooms. One day a senior from across the hall wandered over. My two "buddies" had just left. "Gayle," she began, "Do you have a date with John tonight?" I laughed (she obviously had the wrong idea). "He's just a friend," I explained.

"You guys don't know how lucky you are," she answered. "It makes me feel so good to see the guys and girls in your class hanging out together. And I can't believe how many couples I've seen holding hands as they walk across the Green. It's so different now. You didn't see that kind of stuff when I was a freshman."

That conversation was three years ago this month, and I can now speak to others from my own senior perspective. The changes my friend noted were perhaps more noticeable, and possibly more substantial, but as I look back, the changes become painfully obvious. The simple fact is that I am no longer outnumbered two-to-one by men at social gatherings and in the classroom. The admissions office can take much of the credit for that. When my class entered, equal access began, and the numbers of men and women have moved towards parity with each succeeding class.

Add to this, several observations: the president of our class is a woman; roadtripping once a mainstay of the Dartmouth social scene has become something of a pastime rarely mentioned by my male friends; the number of sororities has grown from four to eight; and even Chi Phi (Heorot) fraternity had a formal dinner dance last fall at Bentley's of Woodstock. None of these things would have happened my freshman year. Then, you would never have seen a quarterback of the football team dining at Collis. It was a hangout for the artsy, granola types just three short years ago. Today, the small cafe is so crowded that an expansion should be in order, with students from every social circle mingling together over salads and quiche. No longer do I feel that I am at a meat market when I enter a fraternity house. I feel much more at ease, more comfortable, like I should feel at my own school.

To those of you who still cling to "the good ol' days of all-male Dartmouth," don't despair. I don't mean to suggest that the College you remember wasn't as good a place then as it is today. I only know that it is a different place, and changing all the time. I respect the fact that everyone loves the place as they knew it when they left, but I also believe that the College is like good wine; it only gets better with age.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that we should love Dartmouth because it has the ability to change with the times. It has its ups and downs, naturally, but if it didn't keep pace with the changing shape of America, it would simply have to drop out of the race. And it hasn't; not by any standards.

There is always someone eager to criticize the College, but where is the person who is willing to say "I really like the way things are around here."?

This is not to suggest that everything's perfect at Dartmouth or anywhere. The particular changes I have experienced have made the College better for me personally because I am a member of one group that has benefited. But I just don't happen to have much to complain about right now. I am a senior woman at Dartmouth College and I love it. When I graduate next spring, it is the Dartmouth that I leave that I will remember . . . and those things I remember that I will miss and love. But I will never stop loving it when and if it becomes a different place.

Gayle E. Gilman '85, an English major fromNewport, Maine, is a Whitney Campbell in tern for the Magazine. She is also a staffreporter for The Dartmouth, second vice president of Sigma Kappa, and an instructorat the Dartmouth Ski School.