Orient – Page 3 – Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

Orient: Rah Rah Black and White

Bowdoin Cheerleading

Orient Article: November 17, 1972

The first classes of female students at Bowdoin in the early 1970’s were made up of a fairly diverse group of women. Women’s athletic teams, like field hockey and tennis, were taking shape and creating distinctly female spaces for women on campus. The need for such spaces had been articulated by other women in the early classes, like the founders of the Bowdoin Women’s Association, which started the group in part as a response to this absence. What, then, are we to make of Bowdoin Cheerleading?

Bowdoin Cheerleading became an organized group before the arrival of female students on campus. Records have not been kept that indicate exactly when the all-male squad was formed. However, records indicate that Bowdoin Cheerleading went coed the same year that the college began accepting female students as part of the 12-College Exchange Program. Trish Luther and Sue Alvano, both interchange coeds, are believed to be the first females that joined the squad in the fall of 1969.

Various sources suggest that the first squad of coeds formed in 1972. The attached article [DocumentAG, 38] is a clipping from The Bowdoin Orient dated November 17, 1972. Although the author of the article seems to have a less-than-favorable view of Bowdoin Cheerleaders, he makes an interesting point. He states that “the success of the cheerleading performance depends upon the success of the football team.” Given this, how is one to consider Cheerleaders as separate from their male counterparts?

The fact is that groups of Bowdoin Cheerleaders during the early 1970’s did not seek a separate place, but rather worked to integrate themselves into a historically male institution by becoming part of male tradition through sports, particularly football. Records from some of the cheerleading squads in this time period describe how integrated the two groups were. The cheerleaders would travel with men to their away games to provide morale and support. Most of the funding they sought was to cover the expense of travel and food during these trips. They also requested funding in 1973 to purchase new uniforms since most of the uniforms the Cheerleaders had at the time were homemade.

It is important to mention that Cheerleaders did in fact exist outside of football. In 1973 there were two separate squads of cheerleaders, one for football and one for basketball. Records suggest that the squads eventually merged into one group. The Orient article also makes reference an intra-fraternity cheering contest that Cheerleaders planned to “exploit”. This contest was in fact sponsored by football among fraternities and other groups on campus during homecoming. The prize? A keg.

Orient: Trials and Tribs in Tights

Bowdoin Dance

Orient Article: October 22, 1971

Is it any surprise that the origin of Dance at Bowdoin coincides with the presence of female students on campus? Prior to 1970, Bowdoin College did not provide male students (or the few female exchange students from the 12-College Exchange) the opportunity to pursue Dance on campus.

In the Spring of 1970, then teacher at Brunswick High School, June Vail and Marcy Playvin, a dance instructor at Bates at the time, teamed up to offer eight weeks of dance classes on a subscription basis to college –related people. Bowdoin did not officially sponsor the program but did provide a space in the gym.

The following year June Vail contacted Dean A. Leroy Greason about teaching Dance at Bowdoin on a similar subscription basis. In the 1971-1977 Review of the Bowdoin Dance Program, Vail recalls having said that such a course would “provide the women students arriving in 1971-72 with a program that satisfied a demand for recreational, physical exercise and a demand for dance as an art form”.

Vail was hired in a salaried position and taught three 90-minute classes in the fall semester of 1971. The classes were offered as part of the Physical Education department. Thirty five students enrolled in the first class, though most students were first-years or exchange students. The Orient article [DocumentAG, 39] is from the first year that Bowdoin Dance was offered to the student body.

The department eventually grew and secured stable sources of funding. This allowed for the purchase of dance related books and subscriptions to two periodicals, Dance Magazine and Dance Perspective. Today, dance classes are run out of the Department of Theater and Dance, which Vail helped to establish in 1994. Bowdoin currently only offers Dance as a minor.

Orient: Focus on Fine Arts and Letters to the Editor

After admitting its first female students in the fall of 1971, Bowdoin began to reassess the demands on departments, courses, and/or facilities that women’s presence on campus introduced. Specifically, Bowdoin sought to revamp its art facilities and to offer more arts and humanities classes. Faced with new or better course options within the realm of painting or dance, students responded in a variety of ways. The two Orient articles presented here, (Documents SW, 33.1, 33.2) illustrate how some students, e.g., Eric Von Der Luft, felt the “fine arts…are more comparable to football than to scholarly endeavor,” while others, e.g. Cathy Steiner and Paul Smith, assert that the fine arts are a crucial component to higher education, especially because they are “very oriented toward creativity, the recognition of aesthetic orders, and personal growth.”

As the opinions put forth in these Orient articles highlight, Bowdoin students, male and female alike, had much to say about the delineation of academics and academic credit, and how the College’s curriculum should meet them. With the advantage of 20-20 hindsight, we can definitively say that despite his strong and publicized opinion, Von Der Luft’s argument did not win out: starting in 1973 and continuing until the present day, fine arts courses have become an integral part of Bowdoin’s curriculum.

Pierce and Progress; Orient Article on the Pierce Report

This editorial, Pierce and Progress, from the October 3, 1969 issue of the student newspaper The Orient responds to the release of a Bowdoin student life report known as the Pierce Report. The writers of the Pierce Report recommended changes to the campus that included both coeducation and the continued presence of fraternities. While the authors of Pierce and Progress were completely dismissive of the Pierce Report’s evaluation of fraternities, they were supportive of coeducation but questioned what they considered prejudice in the report.

Pierce and Progress argues that the committee who wrote the Pierce Report did not represent all sides of the coeducation discussion fairly. They wonder if the committee was purposefully “ignorant about women” in order to prove Bowdoin’s need for coeducation (Document SB, 11). The Pierce Report, they argue, uses common female generalizations to present ways in which women would improve the campus. Interestingly, Pierce and Progress notes that “women often drop their fields after marriage,” which is a negative generalization the committee did not consider.

Pierce and Progress stresses the importance of continued discussion between Bowdoin students and staff about coeducation. At the time of the editorial, there was, they argue, “still a strong demand for all men schools.” Many of the male students who applied to Bowdoin while it was an all male school expected it to remain single-sex. After the admission of women, those were the men that were openly unwelcoming to their new classmates. Although the authors of this editorial seem to favor coeducation, the degree of criticism they launch against the Pierce report gives pause.

SB 11

“Coeducation Plan is Proposed” The Bowdoin Orient February 13, 1970

The Pierce Report attempted to anticipate many changes that coeducation would usher in at the college. The committee’s general plan included considerations of admissions, housing, facilities, and curriculum (Document GB, 12). One major decision by the committee was to admit transfers as well as first year students in an attempt to spread the women among the classes. In the first year, Bowdoin admitted 29 junior transfers and 39 exchange women to supplement the 66 members of the first year class of 1975.

This committee attempted to consider nearly every area of the college that would be impacted by coeducation. By publishing this excerpt in the student newspaper, the committee attempted to share its findings with the entire student body. Oral histories of women from the early years clearly reveal that even with this input, however, Bowdoin’s understanding of what coeducation would really mean. As women arrived, Bowdoin learned that additional changes were needed to make women feel more at home in this environment. For example, one demand by the early classes of women was to have working locks on every door of their residence. Other demands would follow.

GB12 - "Coeducation Plan is Proposed" The Bowdoin Orient February 13, 1970