Extracurriculars – Page 2 – Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

Bowdoin Film Society Flyer, Awards and Kaster’s Film History Class

The implementation of coeducation at Bowdoin College undoubtedly changed the social scene at the time, challenging long held fraternity traditions and practices. Coeducation also changed Bowdoin academically. The presence of women faculty at Bowdoin created new possibilities for academic pursuits. Professor Barbara Kaster came to Bowdoin with a position in the English Department. She accepted the position on the condition that she be allowed to teach Film as well. Kaster taught Film History and made filmmaking a mandatory part of the course. The Bowdoin Film Society (BFS), founded in 1974, grew out of Kaster’s Film History class.

Student films were screened in the spring during the Annual Student Film Awards Night. The BFS co-sponsored the event and awarded an Oscar-replica statue to the Best Film. The event was by no means small. Some students dressed to the nines, some even renting a limo for the event. In a phone interview, Kaster recalls that tickets would be made available at a given hour and would sell out within fifteen minutes. The campus support for student filmmakers was substantial.

The flyer [DocumentAG, 42.1] announces the Fourth Annual Student Film Awards Night held in 1977. Current filmmaker, Liza McElaney ’77, made her first film, Pattern Grace, in Kaster’s Film History course and won Best Film at the student film festival her senior year [DocumentAG, 42.2]. In 1978 and 1979 the Best Film award again went to groups with women on them [DocumentAG, 42.3 and DocumentAG, 42.4]

AG42.2 - Bowdoin Film Society Awards 1977

AG42.3 - Bowdoin Film Society Awards 1978

AG42.4 - Bowdoin Film Society Awards 1979

The BFS allowed women to claim a space on campus where male membership did not predate their own. Kaster encouraged students, male and female, to take what they learned in the classroom and engage with the material in an interactive manner. Also, as one of the few female faculty members at Bowdoin in the early 1970’s, Kaster served as a mentor and role model for female students. She and the BFS celebrated student achievements in a positive way, encouraging some women to pursue film as a career. [DocumentAG, 42.5]

Interview with Saddie Smith ’75, by Stephanie Bond ’13

An African American Female Student Perspective on Coeducation at Bowdoin: A Discussion with Saddie Smith

As a member of Bowdoin’s first class of admitted women, Saddie Smith had to balance being both a female and an African American student. Failure at Bowdoin was not an option for Smith, a first-generation college student, so she put her nose to the books. Smith credits Bowdoin for the confidence that led her to impressive heights, from a Sewall Latin Prize at Bowdoin, to a degree at Columbia Law School, to the influential VP position she now holds at Consolidated Edison Co. of New York, Inc. To hear Smith tell her story about how she established herself as an African American woman in the first class of women at Bowdoin, listen to the audio links below. You will see how she uses humor to her advantage.

Audio: click tracks(s) below to begin listening

Intriguing Pieces:
Section 1-

Time: 00:21:56

Quotation: [In reference to the practice of bussing women from other schools to Bowdoin for parties] “It was a carryover, cause I was a freshman, so that’s kind of what they did. That was part of the whole social thing is bringing, I guess, busloads of women to campus and they kind of, like, forgot about—well I guess it’s kind of good because they saw us as, like, just one of the guys.”

Section 3-

Time: 00:11:32

Quotation: [In reference to difference between HBC and Bowdoin]“I think it was easier for me to fit in at Bowdoin than it would have been for me to fit in at say, Spellman, because at Bowdoin it was obvious that I was different; a woman, a minority. But in a Historically Black College I think I would have, there would have been more pressure to try to fit because I was one of them.”

Time: 00:16:00

Quotation: [In reference to being both an African American and female]“Black women, we kinda get rolled up into one or the other. Either black or either woman and we never get our little, like, standalone kind of thing and I think it’s a very different dynamic, and a dual personality, and you’re always balancing the African American verses the woman.”

Citation: I, Stephanie Bond, interviewed Saddie Smith ‘75 on Sunday, November, 20 2011, in New York, New York. We discussed how Saddie Smith’s experience as a member of the first admitted class of women at Bowdoin College was shaped by her status as both an African American and female student.

Women’s Resource Center Focus Group

This discussion brought together four Bowdoin women who all played important roles in establishing Bowdoin’s still vibrant and active Women’s Resource Center. Jan Brackett and Bridget Spaeth ’86 each served as directors for the WRC, and Linda Nelson ’83 and Laura Barnard ’83 were early members of the Women’s Resource Center Collective that founded the WRC in 1980. All four women share stories of triumph and love in the face of adversity and discrimination. Their discussion offers unique insight into what it was like to be a woman at Bowdoin in the late 70’s and early 80’s – the good, the bad, and the unexpected.

Audio: click title below to begin listening

Interview with Lisa McElaney ’77, Trustee, by Emma Nathaniel ’12

Improving over Time: Lisa McElaney’s Thoughts about Bowdoin since Coeducation

A graduate of the third fully coeducational class at Bowdoin, in 1977, Lisa McElaney is not afraid to admit that her relationship with the College has not always been exclusively positive. However, Lisa returned as a visiting faculty member for a year in the 1980s, was granted the Common Good Award in 1996, and served on the Board of Trustees for ten years in the 2000s. After a not-so-perfect beginning at Bowdoin, what brought Lisa back over the years? Click here to find out!

Audio: click below to begin listening

Intriguing Pieces:

Time: 6:11

Quote: [In reference to her first years at Bowdoin] “In retrospect I think of myself having lost my voice for a while in that first period of time at Bowdoin, a lot of my student experience there the first two years I flailed more than I ever had in life up until then. Things had gone pretty smoothly for me. I’d done well, I’d fallen into the right relationships, and I think it was a question of timing, but when I arrived at Bowdoin, that pattern went in another direction….”

Time: 36:27

Quote: [Describing her junior year as an exchange student at Wellesley] “[My roommate from Bowdoin and I] have come to Wellesley with ten other Bowdoin students as part of the Twelve College Exchange- all of them are male. We are these weird two girls who want to go to a women’s college, and the Wellesley students think we’re weird, too. You know, ‘what are you doing here?’ And I get into this dorm where I have a single, so this is also really exciting…My dorm is comprised of mostly African American, Latina, Native American women, and I am on a floor where I am in a minority…”

Time: 52:20

Quote: [Discussing the Board of Trustees] “My sense is that really great organizations like Bowdoin, and I think the leadership of Bowdoin is really terrific, is cognizant of building a board that is diverse, and I mean diverse in a lot of different ways…”

Citation: I, Emma Nathaniel, interviewed Lisa McElaney ’77 at her office in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Friday, October 21, 2011. We discussed her time at Bowdoin both as a student and later as a visiting professor and trustee.

Interview with Linda Nelson ’83, by Coral Sandler ’12

Claiming Space for Bowdoin Women: A Discussion with a founding member of the Women’s Resource Center, Linda Nelson ‘83

As one of the founding members of the Women’s Resource Center and the Gay Straight Alliance, Linda Nelson helped claim new spaces for Bowdoin women in the early 1980s. To hear about how she entered Bowdoin as an out lesbian, experienced active support and real harassment, and persistently worked for social change at Bowdoin (and in the world), listen to the audio.

Audio: click below to begin listening

Intriguing Pieces:

Time: 00:07:44
Quotation: “Somebody tried to burn it [the Women’s Resource Center] down at one point. Um, we did receive threatening phone calls kind of on a regular basis. Some of us were followed around campus.”

Time: 00:14:28
Quotation: “And I think what we realized was that especially with the fraternity structure in which you had this physical structure of houses, that women really needed a space here. So that’s where the idea for the Women’s Resource Center came from. Needed a space, needed a collection.”

Time: 00:24:53
Quotation: [Linda on the message of a lecture she attended by Audre Lord]“Stop feeling guilty about it [privilege]. You know, those of you who got a good education, who have the privilege of being white, who have the privilege of being educated get out there and do something and make a difference with that. And I firmly believe that and I think everybody that helped to found that Women’s Resource Center as a collective really, really believed that.”

Citation: I, Coral Sandler, interviewed Linda Nelson on Saturday, October 14, 2011, in the Nixon Lounge of Hawthorne Longfellow Library at Bowdoin College. We discussed Linda Nelson’s experience at Bowdoin as a student and founding members of the Women’s Resource Center.