Deke – Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

In the years following coeducation, the presence of women students raised many unanticipated questions for the College. These ranged greatly in scale, from large issues, like gynecological health and coeducational fraternities, to much more quotidian matters, like intramural sports.

This Orient editorial, which appeared in the April 27, 1973 edition (Document AW, 48), illuminates some of the unexpected complications that accompanied coeducation—specifically, the implications of coeducational fraternities on interfraternity athletic competitions. Having women on a fraternity’s track team, it argues, gives an unfair advantage to the coeducational fraternities; however, not allowing women means an unfair disadvantage. The author suggests that a separate White Key competition should be established for women, just as there are less competitive leagues for male athletes who do not have varsity-level skills.

Although the tone of the article is light—its title comes from a tongue-in-cheek joke—it does bring up some of the questions that coeducation raised for the Greek system, besides the obvious ones of membership and housing. As trustee Ellen Schuman ’76 said, Bowdoin’s administration “in some ways they had no idea what they were doing” when they began the process of coeducation, and often, issues were confronted and solved on an ad hoc basis (Trustee Focus Group, 3:20-3:54).

In addition to administrative and practical concerns, coeducation at Bowdoin presented complications for campus social life, which was, at the time, dominated by fraternities. Even though women had been on campus, and were often bused in from women’s colleges across New England for parties, they now had to be incorporated into the College’s residential system, as well.

In the early years of coeducation, women students were permitted to join fraternities as local “social members” of the organizations, who could attend parties and some (though not all) meetings. Many women readily joined the fraternities as “brothers,” but some chose to pledge as a matter of necessity: at the time, the only dining hall on campus was Moulton Union, and students by and large relied on the fraternities for meals.

By the 1980s, however, women had been far more integrated into the College’s fraternity system. In this 1985 photograph (Document AW, 52), two female members of Delta Kappa Epsilon pose at an annual “boxer shorts” party. Some fraternities disassociated themselves from their national chapters so that women could join as full voting members.

In the mid-eighties, when this photograph was taken, fraternities continued to dominate the social scene for both men and women, although the fraternities continued to be, themselves, most often dominated by male students.