Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

A Class Project of GWS 280 - Fall 2011

Alpha Beta Phi Sorority Page

This page is from the 1990 booklet that introduced the student body to the Greek Societies (Document SS, 53).  The Alpha Beta Phi sorority was the only single-sex female Greek Society that Bowdoin has had.  It was founded in 1983 after nineteen women decided to leave a coeducational fraternity.  They left because they felt that women received unequal treatment from the men.  They wrote in their mission statement that they existed specifically to provide a supportive and nurturing environment.  The group, including those who had been involved in fraternities, felt that they needed a space where women, not men, dominated the discourse, and where women could assume leadership roles.  They promise these things in their mission statement.  In this way the women of ABP sought to bring about some social change at Bowdoin in a way that would empower women.  Through experience they believed that this could not occur for women through the fraternity system as it existed on campus.

 

SS53 - Alpha Beta Phi Sorority Page
SS53 - Alpha Beta Phi Sorority Page from 1990

Memorandum on Integration of Fraternities

This memorandum (Document SS, 54), sent out on April 21, 1992, to members of the campus community, informed the community that the Governing Boards and the Student Affairs Committee decided to eliminate single-sex fraternities on campus.  The memorandum emphasizes that then president Robert H. Edwards, along with John Magee, then Chairman of the Executive Committee, agree with and support the Governing Board and Student Affairs Committee’s position.

The Student Affairs Committee believed single sex social institutions harmed the college.  One concern was that parents might not want to send their children to a school that supported organizations that discriminate based on gender.  Despite the important social role that greek letter societies had played on campus, the Committee felt that, because the discriminatory societies dominated the social scene, they limited the students’ freedom to make social choices.

The resolution voted upon by the Student Affairs Committee recommended that organizations that discriminated on the basis of gender should be prohibited.  It is important to note that this document was issued in 1992, twenty years after the implementation of coeducation at Bowdoin.  In another five years, in 1997, the college would eliminate fraternities altogether.

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

Saddie Smith ’75
Saddie Smith ’75 Yearbook Photo


 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

Women's Resource Center Focus Group
Women's Resource Center Focus Group

Trustees Focus Group

Several women from the first coeducational classes at Bowdoin now serve on the Board of Trustees. In a focus group, trustees Michele Cyr ’76, Ellen Shuman ’76, Ann Kenyon ’79, and Debbie Barker ’80 discussed their experiences as students in the early years of coeducation at the College, and as alumnae with strong attachments to the school. Click the audio link below to hear their reflections on their triumphs and struggles as undergraduates; the changes that took place in the campus’s academic and social life; and why Bowdoin inspires such fierce loyalty in its alumni.

Audio: click title below to begin listening

Trustees Focus Group - Shelley Cyr '76, Ann Kenyon '79, Ellen Schuman '76, and Debbie Barker '80
Trustees Focus Group - Shelley Cyr '76, Ann Kenyon '79, Ellen Schuman '76, and Debbie Barker '80