Orient – Page 4 – Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

Orient: Geary Says We Could Do It

The Bowdoin Orient – Committee on Coeducation Report

The Bowdoin Committee on Coeducation launched the first draft of its report in the spring of 1970, presenting its goals for admitting women to Bowdoin over the subsequent years (Document SC, 13). Bowdoin became coeducational in 1971, as proposed by the Committee. Not everyone agreed this was the best time to pursue coeducation, however. For example, Dick Moll, Director of Admissions, thought it would be better for the college if women were admitted in 1972. The Committee decided that the advantages of coeducation overshadowed delaying the decision for a year.

The Committee acknowledged the changes that would have to be made at the College. They laid out a plan for the ideal number of women to be enrolled each year. In 1971, they planned on thirty “freshmen” (Bowdoin now calls all incoming students “first-years”) and thirty transfer students. They would do the same in 1972, effectively doubling the enrollment of women. They proposed to admit sixty first-years and thirty transfer students for the following year. By 1976, the goal was to enroll three men for every woman.

The Committee also took into consideration the potential majors women might claim. They predicted an increase in the number of humanities majors. They also anticipated the creation of Spanish as a major and classes offered in sociology, anthropology, and child psychology. These are all offered at the College today. They noted that with an increase of classes and students there would be a higher teacher to student ratio, but also that the faculty would eventually increase. Today Bowdoin has a nine to one student to teacher ratio and a student body that is forty- seven percent male and fifty three percent female. Bowdoin has more than reached gender parity in its admissions process.

SC13

Orient: Exchange Isn’t Coeducation

The administration at Bowdoin College believed that participation in the Twelve College Exchange would enable members of the college community to determine the viability of coeducation at Bowdoin. This article (Document 14, GB) from the student newspaper reveals that the program had significant limitations. One of the most significant problems with the Twelve College Exchange was the number of women who came to Bowdoin. In the first year, only 12 women came and there were 900 men already on the campus. Most men did not even attempt to make contact with the women. The placement of women in housed on Federal Street isolated them from everyday flow of the college.

Today, forty years later, not only are all dorms home to both males and females but each floor of first-year dorms are half female and half male as well. The ratio of men to women has also changed from the first years of coeducation and is now 47% male and 53% female. In 2010, Bowdoin made yet another housing accommodation: students can now choose to live with the opposite gender in gender-blind or gender-neutral housing.

GB14.1 - Orient: Exchange Isn't Coeducation

GB14.2 - Orient: Exchange Isn't Coeducation

“Tale of Another Gender” The Bowdoin Orient

On October 9, 1970, The Bowdoin Orient, Bowdoin’s student run newspaper interviewed two perspective first year students about Bowdoin College becoming coeducational. Titled “Tale of Another Gender” (Document GB, 16) the article discusses two women’s attitudes about Bowdoin becoming coeducational. Women were excited about the idea that Bowdoin was now admitting women students and responded confidently to issues that would arise due to being the first women admitted to this previously all-male institution. The two women interviewed in the article, Leslie Hastings and Shelby Hayden, are fans of this new coeducation and fans of Bowdoin as a whole.

Other colleges like Bowdoin were also pondering the question of becoming coeducational. Williams College and Rutgers University both began admitting women in 1971, and Dartmouth followed shortly after in 1972. Universities and colleges, along with Bowdoin were slowly beginning to make the change to becoming coeducational.

The picture above the article shows the image of changing times a Bowdoin, with women now applying for admission.

GB16 - "Tale of Another Gender" The Bowdoin Orient

Susan Jacobson Orient Article

Susan Jacobson: Bowdoin’s First Woman Graduate

The article “Bowdoin Graduates Its First Woman Student” in Bowdoin’s student newspaper, the Orient, from June 4, 1971 (Document EN, 21), highlights an important milestone in Bowdoin’s history. Susan Jacobson studied at Bowdoin as an exchange student from Connecticut College through the Twelve College Exchange Program during her junior year. She was able to return for a third semester in the fall of 1970, which happened to be the same semester that Bowdoin decided to become coeducational. Although women were not expected to graduate until the spring of 1972, Jacobson made a strong case for herself and, after conversations between Bowdoin’s Dean of the College, Professor A. LeRoy Greason, Jr., and officials at Connecticut College, it was decided that she would be allowed to transfer and then graduate from Bowdoin in 1971.

The interview with Jacobson reveals some of the intricacies of life for Bowdoin’s first women students. Jacobson recalls that in her first year at Bowdoin, men seemed unable to find the women’s house a few blocks away from campus, but that, having moved closer to campus her second year, the women had many more visitors. She stated that “‘Bowdoin men have gone out of their way to be nice,’” but also that some of the men “‘don’t know how to treat girls and often put them on a different plane.’” Jacobson’s experiences parallel those of other women from the first and early classes at Bowdoin, as the oral histories for this project reveal.

Sadly, Susan Jacobson passed away in the fall of 2010, so we could not interview her as part of this project.

EN21- Bowdoin Graduates Its First Woman Student

Orient: Men’s College with Women

The Newly Coeducational Bowdoin: A ‘Men’s College With Women?’

In the fall of 1971, 134 women arrived at Bowdoin as first year, transfer, and exchange students. This series of three documents explores the very early experiences of women at the newly coeducational Bowdoin. The September 17, 1971 article, “‘Men’s College with Women’” (Document EN, 23.1) from the college newspaper, the Orient, outlines some of the first problems that women faced. It expresses the sentiment that having such a small number of women does not make the College coed, but rather “a men’s college with women.” The article describes some of the earliest concerns of women at Bowdoin, and it recognizes the different experiences and adjustments of first years compared to transfer and exchange students, noting that the transfer and exchange students are already “accustomed to some form of college life,” but nevertheless “must confront such problems as adapting to a new academic environment as well as adjusting to their minority position as women.”

A second Orient article, “Bowdoin: ‘The Gracious Host’” (Document EN, 23.2) from October 8, 1971, and the accompanying letter to the editor from Caroline Boardman (Document EN, 23.3) from October 22, 1971, also reflect a concern that women did not occupy a secure space at Bowdoin. Boardman wonders whether an administrator’s use of the term “gracious host” to describe Bowdoin’s relationship to women “[betrays] a note of impermanence.” These concerns about the impermanence of women and especially the lack of preparation for women’s arrival at a newly coeducational institution are not unwarranted. With only a one to six ratio of women to men in the 1971-72 school year, and the goal of reaching a one to three or two to three ratio after four years (Pierce Report, 39), it is understandable that some women did not see themselves as claiming full citizenship at the College.

Such issues with the introduction of women into a previously all-male institution were not unique to Bowdoin. In Going Coed, Susan Poulson and Leslie Miller-Bernal remark that college administrations often had little idea as to what changes should be made to make women feel “welcome in the classroom and on campus” (312). They point out that colleges generally did not “prepare the campus culture for women,” instead expecting women to be able to fit right in without shifts in the “status quo” (312). These Orient articles suggest that the same may have been true at Bowdoin.

EN23.1 - The Newly Coeducational Bowdoin: A ‘Men’s College With Women?’

EN23.2 - The Newly Coeducational Bowdoin: A ‘Men’s College With Women?’

EN23.3 - The Newly Coeducational Bowdoin: A ‘Men’s College With Women?’