Didn't have a date for Valentine's Day? Imagine trying to get one before the school was coed, or in the late seventies when there was only one woman for every three men! And though that ratio may sound like it favored the ladies, it took awhile before Dartmouth daughters became 'date-worthy.' Eve Ahearn explores why.
Coeducation at Dartmouth was suggested as early as 1958, when an article in The Valley News noted that the College's "remoteness lead to frequent student weekend trips to get girls and the accompanying danger of highway accidents."
Basically, in the eyes of some, women were just seatbelts for Dartmouth men; for others, coeducation represented a chance to civilize the rowdy student body.
Before 1972, men found dates by traveling great distances or by importing girls from (relatively) nearby women's colleges by bus. The Dartmouth commemorates this curiosity every big weekend with at least one article devoted to this now-defunct Hanover-Amherst-Holyoke triangle trade.
Holiday, an early travel magazine, described Winter Carnival's particular popularity in a December 1948 issue devoted to winter sports. Journalist Carl Biemiller wrote, "The Carnival of course, was not designed as an elaborate amusement for the student bodies of Smith, Vassar, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Skidmore or similar girls' schools. It only looks that way."
The editors of the Smith College Sophian and Mount Holyoke News compiled a women's guide to men's colleges for such occasions. "Where the Boys Are" (1966) is a field guide to the college male, describing the traits of different boys depending on the school they called home. The section on Dartmouth begins, "The Dartmouth man is a masochist: he will regularly drive for three hours just for a chance to be shot down by a Smithie."
By description alone, "Where the Boys Are" sounds like a fluffy guide to finding a man, when actually it was a satiric response volleyed back at the boys' club -- "a stiletto of witticism," according to Time Magazine.
The Daily Princetonian had published its own pamphlet on dating, "Where the Girls Are," during the previous fall. A sample factoid? "Always keep in mind that a Smithie is looking at you not only as her date but also as the man who may some day be footing the bills to send her daughter to Smith."
Elsewhere, "Where the Girls Are" paints a picture of a college life decades ago, noting which women's colleges mandated open doors, ties on Sundays or an early closing time for male visitors. The Smith"Mount Holyoke counterpart, "Where the Boys Are," on the other hand, still contains some accurate information about the College.
"Still the Williams man is by no stretch of the imagination Dartmouth desperate," reads the booklet. "Marooned in the womanless wilds of New Hampshire, the Dartmouth man soon comes to appreciate the poignancy of his college motto: 'A voice crying out in the wilderness (Vox Calamantis in Deserto).' So when another voice (yours -- soft, charming, feminine) finally arrives, the timberwolf is ready to pounce."
WTBA tells girls that "at Dartmouth you are one of the boys, so slap them on the back and laugh from the diaphragm."
When women finally arrived on campus as fellow students, not just dates, they mainly did just become "one of the boys" instead of potential girlfriends.
Susan Ackerman '80, a professor and chair of the religion department, was among the first generation of women to experience the more lukewarm gender relations of a coed Dartmouth. "One of the ways that you could successfully fit into that [male-dominated] environment was to become one of the guys; however once you became one of the guys, you became someone that they wouldn't date," she said.
"There were certainly some women who were Dartmouth students who dated; my sister started dating her freshman fall the man she eventually married. My roommate dated her entire time at Dartmouth," said Ackerman. "There were a lot of women that didn't date at all."
As more all-male colleges became coed, "the adjustment from an environment where women visited campus for 'social' or sexual purposes to an environment in which women were viewed as competition in the classroom was a long and sometimes painful process," writes Mary Francis Donley Forcier in "Going Coed: Women's Experiences in Formerly Men's Colleges and Universities, 1950-2000."
Because there was a fixed gender ratio in the admissions process, "the mythology was that it was harder to get in as a woman, and for some guys that was intimidating," said Ackerman. "For those guys, they wouldn't have dated a Dartmouth woman." Unfortunately, there was no surrounding urban area to alleviate this inherently bizarre relationship.
Another oft-cited reason is the machismo that existed here at the time. Esquire published an article in 1979 entitled "Hanging On (By a Jockstrap) to Tradition at Dartmouth." Its subtitle? "The tradition, that is, of the male chauvinist pig."
In it, Andrew Merton wrote, "For the time being Judy Aronson is staying away from men [at Dartmouth] -- not because she is a prima donna, but because she is afraid."
After Merton's visit to Dartmouth, he noted that "women at fraternity parties are often scorned, ridiculed and physically intimidated."
The dating scene and gender relations have improved with time, little by little. Said one Tri-Kap brother to Merton, "When I got here, Dartmouth guys were looked down upon for going out with Dartmouth girls. Now fifteen of us [out of sixty-five] are going more or less steadily with them."
When Ackerman returned to Hanover in 1990, she was shocked at her first experiences back on campus. Driving through Hanover with a fellow Dartmouth alum, Ackerman's ride "stopped at the light and two people walked across. They were transparently Dartmouth students and they were holding hands. And we both gasped without looking at each other. It looked so alien and different to us -- it was a different Dartmouth."
So if you're still interested in dating a Dartmouth man, here's some final advice from the women of Smith and Mount Holyoke:
"He'll be lumberjack-ish; if you like you can be the same. "
