1983 – Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

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 from 1990

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.