{"id":13,"date":"2011-11-28T18:07:24","date_gmt":"2011-11-28T18:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/researchbdev.wpengine.com\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/?page_id=13"},"modified":"2011-12-07T18:09:35","modified_gmt":"2011-12-07T18:09:35","slug":"social-life-and-fraternities","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/social-life-and-fraternities\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Life and Fraternities"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Coeducation complicated Bowdoin\u2019s social scene, which had been dominated by all-male fraternities. <a href=\"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/category\/social-life-and-fraternities\/\">Learn more about the particular social challenges and triumphs that women encountered at the College<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Coeducation presented particular challenges for Bowdoin\u2019s social life, which had been dominated by fraternities for much of the College\u2019s history. Women in the first coeducational classes were presented with the task of creating spaces for themselves within an already-established social scene\u2014and the very word \u201cfraternity\u201d suggests that this social scene was not entirely compatible with a coeducational student body.<\/p>\n<p>Some women students\u2014like their male peers\u2014readily joined the fraternities as brothers, while others chose to remain independent. The social experience for women was, naturally, varied. Different fraternities treated women students with varying levels of warmth and excitement during rotational dining, Bowdoin\u2019s version of traditional fraternity rush. Although many women had positive experiences with Greek societies, there were some allegations of gender-based harassment and hazing, and at least one fraternity clung proudly to its reputation as raucous\u2014and all-male\u2014\u201cAnimal House.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At first, many fraternities limited women to social, non-voting memberships because of the national organizations\u2019 restrictions; later, several decided to become local chapters, to allow women to join as full members. Notably, Psi Upsilon clashed with the national organization in 1972, when Patricia \u201cBarney\u201d Gellar was elected the fraternity\u2019s president and caused a stir at the national convention, whose organizers had not realized that Barney was, in fact, a nickname. In 1983, Bowdoin\u2019s only sorority, Alpha Beta Phi, was founded.<\/p>\n<p>The fraternities were an integral (albeit occasionally problematic) part of Bowdoin\u2019s social scene, but the Board of Trustees\u2019 1997 decision to phase them out was, in part, because of their incompatibility with coeducation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coeducation complicated Bowdoin\u2019s social scene, which had been dominated by all-male fraternities. Learn more about the particular social challenges and triumphs that women encountered at the College. Coeducation presented particular challenges for Bowdoin\u2019s social life, which had been dominated by fraternities for much of the College\u2019s history. Women in the first coeducational classes were presented [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398,"parent":0,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-13","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}