1978

For the benefit of readers from other eras, we should recall that in a demonic inversion of the societal construct of Jan and Dean's Surf City the ratio in our class was three boys to every girl. Prison guards and other experts on human interaction could probably have predicted that lopsided ratios in closed social systems can produce unusual stresses.

And that s before you include the volatile atomic particles the Indian symbol, coeducation, the D Plan that were swirling and colliding in the post-Vietnam, neo-Animal House miasma of the late '70s. Taking the long view, who can be surprised that this era was followed by the period of The Dartmouth Review and the endless stream of wire stories about the emerging right wing.

For the proper tribute to the female '78s, we have reflections from AnneBagamery, the first female editor of The Dartmouth, now a successful journalist living in Paris with her five-year-old daughter Caitlin. From her office at the International Herald-Tribune, Anne writes: "A few years ago, I was back on campus for two weeks in the summer, teaching at the Rassias alumni language program. My colleagues were seniors or recent graduates, and over dinner they quizzed me and Christine Hughes about what it was like to be among the first women at Dartmouth.

"I went first: 'How would you like to have beer dumped on your head as you walked into a friend's dorm simply because you were a Dartmouth woman?'

"Chris picked up the ball. 'How would you like to have a professor make sexually suggestive comments in class, then look at you the only woman and wink?'

"How would you like to have your ass bitten at fraternity parties routinely?

"How would you like it if one of the most popular school songs ended, 'Send the bitches home'?

".. .rating cards in Thayer...

"...obscene songs at midnight under your window...

"... fraternity newsletters...

"...male friends ignoring you during big weekends because the Colby girls were in town...

"...people asking why the newspaper you edit looks lousy once a month...

"And, finally: How would you like to stand up at graduation and have to sing an alma mater called 'Men of Dartmouth...'?

"I still shiver when I think about those years, and not just because the experiences Chris and I shocked our young listeners with were so commonplace.

"What is chilling to me is that, for all the difficulty of those early days, I and many of my fellow women were so eager to love the College that we were willing to put up with almost anything just to be a part of it.

"It wasn't until ten years after our graduation, when I came back to campus to report a story on coeducation for the Alumni Magazine, that I faced how much the first classes of women had adapted to Dartmouth and how little Dartmouth had done to adapt to them.

"In the spring of 1988 there were more women undergraduates on campus than at any time to date. Women occupied more than half the positions of student leadership. Women athletes were out-achieving their male counterparts, if you judge by Ivy League titles and places on All-America teams. And yet and somehow this was symbolic the alma mater was still called 'Men of Dartmouth.'

"I still loved the place. I cherished the memories of my undergraduate years. I built daily on the education I received. I happily gave money and time and energy to alumni activities.

"But for the first time in my 15 some years as a member of the Dartmouth family, I couldn't sing that song. It didn't include me. It didn't even acknowledge that I existed.

"Now that we're 20 years out, I am glad that I still love the place. It represents a time when anything seemed possible, and obstacles were just something to make the hard work interesting. The people I knew there I still count among my dearest friends especially the women, who are really the only people who understand what it was like.

"But what I love most about Dartmouth now is that it has had the courage to change—to let time heal some old wounds. The place still looks the same, but there is a warmer feeling about it: There is less of that tension that as an undergraduate I used to mistake for a challenge, but which was really just institutional discomfort. I have been back several times on College business in the past two years, and I feel more welcome on campus now than I did between 1974 and '78.

"When I sing the alma mater now which I do, as I did at graduation, with tears in my eyes I am amazed at how easily the six or seven new words fit in among the old. As though they had always been there. They belong."

5317 White Horse Road, Knoxville, TN 37919-9344; fax, (423) 588-5388;

How wouldyou like to have your ass bitten atfrat partiesroutinely? Anne Bagamery '78