Correction appended
In the fall of 1972, Dartmouth welcomed its first female students under coeducation. Around 200 women matriculated as freshmen along with over 1,000 men. Some women would later recall this day as the beginning of one of the most fun and exciting times of their lives. For others, however, memories are not so pleasant.
The progressive politics of the 1960s and 1970s had placed pressure on Ivy League institutions throughout the country to accommodate women.
"By 1970, it was very clear to me that this was not to be a men's world," John Kemeny, then-Dartmouth president, said at the time, according to a senior thesis written by Lucy Buford '00.
Despite opposition from many alumni, who feared that a move to coeducation would cause the College to lose sight of its old traditions, the College administration recognized that in order to keep up with other members of the Ivy League, most of which had already gone coed, women would have to be allowed access to the institution, according to Buford's thesis.
Nevertheless, the admission of women did not come without its share of challenges.
"I faced a major challenge to come up with plans that would be in the best interests of the College, and that could be approved by the Board of Trustees without jeopardizing the financial well-being of the institution," Kemeny said at the time.
In order to avoid sacrificing male enrollment numbers or drastically expanding resources, the administration proposed a year-round academic calendar the Dartmouth Plan to ensure that a fraction of the student population would be off each term. The selling point of coeducation for many alumni was to be a three-to-one male-to-female ratio, according to Buford's thesis.
Reading about the early years of coeducation in some of the archives at Rauner Library makes the College seem like a terrifying place for the first women of Dartmouth. Many of these women, however, do not recall feeling uncomfortable or unwelcome at the College.
"I felt very welcomed as a woman at Dartmouth from my freshman year all the way through to graduation," Elissa Von Heill Hylton '78 said.
Although she was aware of the debate about coeducation, Hylton said, it did not affect her personally.
"For some people, it took a while to get used to the fact that the decision to go coed was permanent and irrevocable," she said. "But we [students] were insulated from the debate, and I didn't pay much attention to it. I was living my life, involved with my own friends and my own academic course of study."
Hylton acknowledged that not all women had a positive experience, but added that she and her female friends "really treasure and cherish our experiences."
Martha Beattie '76, former president of the College's Alumni Council and the current Dartmouth women's crew coach, said that although she was aware of sexual discrimination on campus, she was not personally affected by it.
"I guess I was just thick-skinned about all that," she said. "I was so thrilled to be earning a place for women at Dartmouth."
The daughter of a member of the Class of 1945, Beattie was familiar with the male traditions of the school. She said that she came to the school with the knowledge that women would need to carve a new path in their time on campus.
"We knew we were going into an all-male college with all-male traditions, we didn't expect it to be perfect," Beattie said.
Sue Young '77, who now works in the Office of Alumni Relations, had two older brothers at the College when she matriculated as a freshman. Young said that entering Dartmouth in a time of transition was "intriguing."
"I sort of understood what I was getting into when I came as a freshman, that it wasn't going to be just hunky-dory, but that there were going to be some issues," she said.
A member of the women's Alpine ski team, which was formed in 1972, Young said that her affiliation with the team eased her assimilation into Dartmouth life.
"The ski team became sort of our family within Dartmouth, and that made my experience probably a lot different in some ways than other women who didn't have that kind of team experience," she said.
The administration's commitment to women's athletics was one of the key positive factors in the College's transition to coeducation, Young said.
"I honestly think that [the administration] realized that the women would have to be able to compete not only academically, but athletically as well," she said. "The women's teams started winning right off the bat, and I think that helped the transition."
Beattie was also a Dartmouth athlete, as a member of the women's crew team for four years. She was also a member of the Dartmouth Ski Patrol and the first female patrol leader.
Hylton said that, as more women assumed positions of leadership on campus, they made their presence on campus difficult to contest.
Scott Riedler '78 remarked that his female classmates "were very capable of holding their own."
"An awful lot of the women in my class seemed to love [Dartmouth] and have a good time," he said. "Our class got along really well."
None of the women interviewed for this article reported feeling unsafe on campus or in fraternity houses, though some acknowledged that instances of gender discrimination did exist.
"I almost felt like I had a ton of really great big brothers," Beattie recalled of her male classmates. "They would look out for us, all the time."
Many of these women said that they believe the Dartmouth administration handled the College's transition to coeducation well.
"[Kemeny] did everything he could to make the transition go smoothly," Hylton said, adding that his addresses to the students as "men and women of Dartmouth" made her feel welcome as a woman at Dartmouth.
Despite the generally positive personal experiences described by the women above, the College amassed a significant amount of negative press regarding women's issues while these women were undergraduates.
A 1979 issue of Esquire Magazine titled, "Hanging on (by a jockstrap) to Tradition at Dartmouth" painted the College as a veritable inferno for Dartmouth women.
"Women walking along Fraternity Row have to hear obscene proposals, especially after dark, and women at fraternity parties are physically intimidated. Brothers who take their dates to their rooms are often required later to give play-by-play descriptions of what went on," the article said.
The Esquire article also highlighted some high-profile incidents, including the rape of a middle-aged, mentally ill woman, who was sexually violated in three different fraternity houses before Safety and Security officers found her wandering down Webster Ave., wearing only a Dartmouth T-shirt.
Several women who were present at Dartmouth at the time felt that the administration's reaction to sexual assault cases may have perpetuated the behavior.
"We never got the sense that anyone got punished for that. The effort to quietly dispose of these things resulted in this sense that for students who wanted to engage in that behavior, they could go ahead and get away with it. There were no real repercussions," former history professor Judith Byfield '80 said, as quoted in Buford's thesis.
Another infamous incident cited in the Esquire article was the 1976 "Hums" competition. The Hums was a Green Key tradition in which each fraternity performed an original song to be judged by members of the faculty. That year, Dean of the College Caroll Brewster judged one fraternity's submission, "Our Cohogs," as the winner. The song, written to the tune of "This Old Man," featured ten verses of sexist and demeaning lyrics.
Young said that listening to the song was "definitely was not a pleasant experience."
"The rational part of you realizes that it was done in humor, but it was irritating," she said.
Some women were deeply hurt by the administration's reaction to the song. Hillary Smith '78 is cited in Buford's thesis as recalling that, after hearing that the song had been chosen as the competition's winner, "I burst into tears; I walked away. Apparently a lot of other women did too, but we didn't know it at the time."
There were other instances in which students perceived that the administration deliberately ignored overt displays of misogyny on campus. In Buford's thesis, Susan Ackerman '80, who now chairs the religion department at the College, recalled an occasion when someone hung a banner made of bedsheets from the dorm windows of Gile dormitory that read, "Cohogs go home."
"I think what's extraordinary was that it hung there all day. Now you can see Gile from Parkhurst if you stick your head out the window. And that no one marched over from the Dean's office and yanked the banner down ... is a kind of amazing thing to me. And I think it has become an example for me ... of how pervasive the misogyny was and how it was just accepted," she said in the thesis.
Many of the women interviewed for this article said that, despite these incidents, the negativity surrounding coeducation dissipated quickly. The men who were seniors when the first coed class matriculated had applied to an all-male school, and were some of the most vehement opponents of women's presence on campus, these women said. With each succeeding year, fewer of these men remained on campus and more women replaced them.
"It wasn't a very long transition [from all-male to coeducation] until the situation was comfortable," Riedler said.
Julie Kalish '91, a writing professor, said that much of the debate surrounding female issues was a manifestation of divisions between conservative, traditional factions of the campus and their more progressive, liberal counterparts.
"I definitely knew a lot of people who had much more conflicted relationships with Dartmouth, and they identified them as, It's tough to be a woman at Dartmouth.'"
Kalish recalled the controversy surrounding the changing of the Alma Mater's lyrcs from "Men of Dartmouth" to "We of Dartmouth" in 1988, her freshman year at the College.
"The conflict about the Alma Mater was definitely about the conflict between tradition and change," she said.
Young said that many people make incorrect assumptions about her undergraduate experiences based on the negative press the school received at the time.
"I think some people had horrible experiences, I think there were some instances that were totally out of line and inappropriate," she said. "But I think there were a lot of positives, as well, and sometimes I wish those were highlighted a little bit more than the negatives."
