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Web Exclusives:
Under the Ivy April
9, 2003: Petticoat
Junction In April 2003, when a female president is leading Princeton, a substantial number of faculty members are women, and the male-female undergraduate student ratio is near 50-50, it's hard to recall (or imagine, for those of us born after a certain year) the attitudes that once existed toward women at Princeton. But in 1961, the idea of female students was so preposterous as to be laughable; any suggestion of women in a classroom at Old Nassau was treated as a joke. During Alumni Day that year, the college offered for the first time a number of precepts open to alumni and their wives. PAW class notes editor Pat Hartle was one of the lucky women who had a chance to participate — and to tell her story, when PAW editor John Davies '41 spied a copy of a C.P. Snow book on her desk. According to Hartle's account, when Davies heard why she was reading Snow, "The Princeton man was temporarily subdued, the editor terribly excited. He rushed around the office looking for the telephone book. 'Call [photographer] Betty Menzies. Will there be other women there? It's a great day when the campus is to be invaded by women ... Now it will be known as Alumnae Day. Historic occasion. Call Betty Menzies.'" Though Davies, one of PAW's legendary editors, was supportive, it must be said that his tone comes across as patronizing. In an editor's note, he explained that Hartle was chosen to "chronicle that historic moment when monastic Princeton crashed through the petticoat curtain and officially went coeducational. ... While she is too modest to say so, every single professor she canvassed emphatically felt the ladies added wit, charm, and acuity to the discussions." Hartle, too, was a product of her times. While she explained that she was intellectually drawn to Snow's writing and theses, she was compelled to add, "My thoughts turned to more feminine matters: What should I wear? Green wool suit? Too wintry for a dark cotton?" She chose the suit, we learn, and before the start of one-hour seminar in Firestone enjoyed two cups of coffee, "black, hot, and good." In the end, the "experiment" was deemed a success. Hartle writes — perhaps to convince skeptical alumni readers — "It was a fascinating and lively hour, gone all too quickly. No one seemed hesitant or self-conscious, we strayed from the subject now and then as even as all-male undergraduate precepts sometimes do (I am told); we argued, laughed, explained why we were there." Indeed, she reports with a hint of surprise, "we were on our own as adult students interested in the give and take of one of the central, important parts of a Princeton education — the precept system." Forty years later, we wonder what was expected: the ladies would
faint, perhaps, or suffer from the vapors under the weight of lofty
intellectual discussion? Talk would turn to C.P. Snow's tailor or
haberdasher or hairdresser, or devolve into a recipe exchange? Thankfully,
though, women like Hartle and her contemporaries were smart and
thoughtful; they paved the way for women in real precepts less than
a decade later.
Jane Martin ’89 is PAW's former editor-in-chief. You can reach her at paw@princeton.edu
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