coeducation

coeducation https://www.dailykos.com/news/coeducation News Community Action Copyright 2005 - Steal what you want Sun, 26 Jan 2020 13:10:02 +0000 Sun, 26 Jan 2020 13:10:02 +0000 Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Yale was like that, for this woman, in 1973 https://www.dailykos.com/story/2018/9/27/1799334/-Yale-was-like-that-for-this-woman-in-1973 Here’s one more data point. Yale began admitting female undergraduates in 1968, a mere half-century ago. I attended Yale from 1973 to 1977—exactly a decade before Brett Kavanaugh—and I can attest that the atmosphere for us early coeds was just as hostile, misogynistic, and even rapey as recent reports indicate. I was sexually assaulted at the very first “mixer” (dance) of my freshman year. Yes, I drank too much, and passed out; but fortunately, I woke up and got my clothes back together before things went “too far.” How we ended up down there in the steam tunnels, I’m not sure, but I’m fortunate that he was a scrawny youth who retreated when I started resisting. I can assure you that according to the mores of the time, the whole thing would be considered my fault for dancing with the guy and drinking too much. There was never even a thought of “reporting” the incident. We had no orientation-type counseling about sex or consent, or even about drinking (the drinking age was pretty universally age 18 in those days). Booze was available, even actively encouraged: my residential college had regular happy hours selling drinks in the common room at 3 for a dollar. I did tell a friend about it, occasionally, and even pointed him out, sniggeringly—an attitude of amused contempt was the only recourse I had (of course I never spoke to him again). Yesterday I finally googled him and was relieved to see that although he had been pre-med, he apparently never went to med school and had an apparent career in finance, a role with (I hope) less exposure to / power over women in vulnerable situations. I won’t go into the culture of misogyny that existed during those years—the jokes, chants, songs, and other manifestations that continually reminded us how unwelcome we were. I stayed there for several reasons: my first-semester (and subsequent) grades sucked, my big sister was cleaning it up over at Vassar—how could I quit?, and I had just managed to escape a Southern community that seemed far more repressive than New Haven. Those may seem like dumb reasons, but Mister, I was only a kid....however, I did learn enough to avoid being attacked again in that particular manner. Young people, old people, people who are historically uninformed: please understand that what only a decade or so ago was called “date rape” was NOT EVEN CONSIDERED A CRIME in those days—far less, an “incomplete” act of the sort I experienced one week into my first semester. So please, enough with the “Why didn’t she report it?” and “Why did she stay?” Even our modern civilization has been tough on women—why should Academia be an exception? rss@dailykos.com (Chantez les Bas) 1970s Assault coeducation Drinking IvyLeague Misogyny _1799334 Thu, 27 Sep 2018 21:53:44 +0000 Morning Open Thread: When Men Alone Decided What Was HISTORY https://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/3/27/1647481/-Morning-Open-Thread-When-Men-Alone-Decided-What-Was-HISTORY <hr> <div> <div> <div> <div style="text-align:right"> Welcome to Morning Open Thread, a daily post with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic for the day's posting. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum. </div> </div> </div> </div> <div> <div> This author, who is on Pacific Coast Time, may sometimes show up later than when the post is published. That is a feature, not a bug. Other than that, site rulz rule. <div class="align-center"> <figure class="image-captioned width-sm"><img alt="coffee_cup_icon.png" src="http://images.dailykos.com/images/316568/large/coffee_cup_icon.png?1477283398" title="coffee_cup_icon.png"> <figcaption></figcaption> </figure> </div> So grab your cuppa, and join in! </div> </div> <hr> <hr> This started when my husband handed me his copy of the New York Review of Books dated April 6, 2017, pointing out a review written by Linda Greenhouse of “Keep the Damned Women Out”: The Struggle for Coeducation by Nancy Weiss-Malkiel, who was Dean of Princeton for 24 years, and emeritus professor of history there. The title comes from a letter written by a Dartmouth alumni protesting allowing women to attend the school. <blockquote> My comment: The book is about how and why the Ivy League schools finally started letting women in. What happens at the schools that have one-third of all U.S. Presidents on their alumni rolls is obviously a key factor in who will be the nation’s leaders. Add Stanford University, the West Coast equivalent to the Ivy League, and the number of U.S. Representatives, Senators and Federal judges connected to these schools is also very long. </blockquote> Stories from “Keep the Damned Women Out”: <hr> When Harvard’s deal with Radcliffe, in which the two schools’ women and men shared some classes, began to lure away applicants that Yale and Princeton wanted, maintaining the status quo started to look like the road to becoming second-rate institutions. In 1967, Kingman Brewster, President of Yale, told an audience of Yale alumni that “our concern is not so much what Yale can do for women, but what can women do for Yale.” Harvard’s integration with Radcliffe was a slow process — even merging the two schools’ admissions offices proved embarrassing but enlightening: the highest-paid employee in the Radcliffe office was paid the same salary as the lowest-paid employee in the Harvard office. When Princeton gave tenure to its first woman professor, the letter was addressed to “Dear Sir” One of the first female students at Yale asking the head of the history department about offering a course in women's history was told, “That would be like teaching the history of dogs.” A Princeton English professor responded to a woman student who wanted to write a paper on women writers: “I’m interested in auto mechanics, but I don’t try to bring that into the curriculum.” <hr> The ‘Separate But Equal‘ doctrine that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education was only applied to racial segregation, but I think the reasoning behind the Court’s ruling also applies to gender separation. Barring women from the elite schools that regularly turn out our national leaders not only deprived us of the opportunity for an MBA from Harvard or a Yale law degree, it also kept us outside the social circle forged by Ivy League alumni during their college years — the connections they call on for the rest of their of lives for information, introductions and support. And what did they learn about women during those years? That we didn’t exist in history, and we had made no cultural contributions. And something else: <blockquote> A Yale undergraduate wrote to the Yale Daily News in 1968, explaining why he favored coeducation: “You get entangled in a weekend-to-weekend existence, and you become a product of it. You lose sight of the simple fact that girls are people, just like you and me. Instead they become things to play with on allotted days. Things.” </blockquote> Donald Trump went to Fordham University from 1964 to 1968. Fordham was founded by the Catholic Church, and became a Jesuit-affiliated independent school under a lay board of trustees. It didn’t become coeducational until 1974. Prior to that, he went to New York Military Academy, a boarding school. It didn’t admit girls until 1975. In 1966, the year I graduated from high school, I already knew about Anne Hutchinson, Abigail Adams, Deborah Sampson, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Blackwell, Lucretia Mott, Emily Dickinson, Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I knew that American women were a critical part of the Abolitionist movement, and that their participation made them reevaluate their own lack of rights as citizens. I knew that realization had launched the Woman’s Rights Movement, and the long battle for the right to vote. <hr> <div class="align-center"> <figure class="image-captioned"><img alt="M_J_Gage_Divine_quote.jpg" src="http://images.dailykos.com/images/382476/large/M_J_Gage_Divine_quote.jpg?1490567793" title="M_J_Gage_Divine_quote.jpg"> <figcaption></figcaption> </figure> </div> <hr> How could anyone say that a movement to get the full rights of citizenship for half the population of the nation wasn’t an important part of U.S. HISTORY? That women gaining property rights, having control over their own wages, and being able to vote made no important changes in our country? That sex education and access to contraceptives didn’t have a huge impact on society as a whole? And yet men at the top of the educational heap did say it, over and over again. If I could get this information and understand its impact as a 17-year-old student at a public high school in Arizona, then it was willful ignorance on their part, that they made not only acceptable for their students, but imperative to maintaining their perception of superiority, and which has played no small part in bringing us to the current Occupant of the Oval Office, and his coterie of privileged white males. <hr> <blockquote> “The most common characteristic of women's history is to be lost and discovered, lost again and rediscovered, lost once more and re-rediscovered — a process of tragic waste and terrible silences that will continue until women's stories are a full and equal part of the human story.” — Gloria Steinem </blockquote> <h3>She also said:</h3> <div class="align-center"> <figure class="image-captioned"><img alt="Gloria_Steinem_-_Truth_quote.jpg" src="http://images.dailykos.com/images/379227/large/Gloria_Steinem_-_Truth_quote.jpg?1489855737" title="Gloria_Steinem_-_Truth_quote.jpg"> <figcaption></figcaption> </figure> </div> <hr> G’Morning MOTlies! Nothing like starting the day with a harangue. Hope your beverage of choice is strong and hot. <hr> “Keep the Damned Women Out”: The Struggle for Coeducation, © 2016 by Nancy Weiss-Malkiel, Princeton University Press rss@dailykos.com (officebss) coeducation Feminism History IvyLeague KeepTheDamnedWomenOut LindaGreenhouse MorningOpenThread MOT NancyWeiss-Malkiel WomensHistory _1647481 Mon, 27 Mar 2017 10:30:40 +0000 Kitchen Table Kibitzing 6/14/2016: The Women's Table https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/6/14/1538151/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-6-14-2016-The-Women-s-Table <figure class="image-captioned align-left"><img alt="entry sign" height="240" src="https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7163/26905733473_5ee99290e5_m.jpg" width="188"> <figcaption>Bright College Years, Part 2</figcaption> </figure> Good evening, Kibitzers! I could go for weeks showing you photos of cool stuff at Yale. I probably won’t (not weeks in a row, anyway). But before I wander away from New Haven for now, I definitely want to show you a piece by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Lin" target="_blank">Maya Lin</a> (BA 1981, M.Arch 1986) that sits on campus outside the main library. You’d most likely know Maya Lin as the winner, at age 21, of the design competition for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Veterans_Memorial" target="_blank" title="">Vietnam Veterans Memorial</a> in Washington D.C. Please join me below the granite slab to see an entirely different work. rss@dailykos.com (belinda ridgewood) coeducation Community KitchenTableKibitzing KTK MayaLin Recommended womenstable YaleUniversity _1538151 Wed, 15 Jun 2016 00:01:00 +0000