Volume 17 - Issue 5

CLASS OF 1971 • MARTHA ALISSON • MARGARET ANDERSON • ELIZABETH BALLENTINE • PATRICIA BEGLEV • FRANCES BEINECKE • KATHRYN BENNETT • SUSAN BENNETT • JUDITH BERKAN • JANIS BIDERMAN • BARBARA BLAINE • MELINDA BLAUVELT • SUSAN BOYD-BOWMAN • SUSAN BRENNER • MARCIA BRICK • SUSAN BRIENZA • JO ANN BROOKS • STEPHANIE BROWN • DIANA BULLARD • MARGARET BUTTENHEIM • NANCY BYLOFF • SUSAN CHE' E CITRON LINDA CORWIN • C • MARY CREIGH • SUSAN CURTIS • MARY DALY • E PEYSTER • • LAURA DOBSON • • EMILY EASTMAN • ADELE EDGERTON • uo::.ou•"""•n CORNELIA E FAIRCHILD • LEN • AVA FEINER • SH FISHER • KATH OLGA • VER KAUFM CATI ELLE'. ,. .~~~~jij~~ijj~~~ijijM~~ji-.~~~~~ MARK:> \fof~ lf'JR~~~~IAM MILLS • ROSLYN MELSTEIN • BARBARA NORTH • NANCY NOYES • ELAI O'ROURKt.-DI:'BORAH'PA'roS'el>"CiNRA PATTERSON • LiSE PEARLMAN • JESSICA PEAS • MARY PHILLIPS • ANNE PLIMPTON • E PORCELAN • DOROTHY READ • VIVIAN REZNIK • BARBARA RICH • ELAINE RIVMAN • JENNIFER ROBERTS • LUCINDA ROFF • MERCY ROSEMAN • LISBETH ROSENBLATT • KAREN ROSENBLUM • CATHERINE ROSS • MERLE ROTH • DEBORAH ROTHMAN • NANCY RYAN • LAURIE SACHS • JESSIE SAYRE • SUSAN SCHAIER • EVELYN SCHEUCH • MARY SCHVETTE • ELLEN SCHWARTZ • ANDREA SILVERBERG • DIANE SIMON • ELENI SKEVAS • LINDA SMITH • PATRICIA SMITH • DARA SORGMAN • LAURA STEEL • DEENA STEINBERG • YVONNE STILL • LILLIAN TCHANG • JOHANNA TREGEL • CAROL TROYEN • BILLIE TSIEN • ANNE TUOHY • BARBARA TWIGG • JANET WACHTEL • ANNE WAGNER • MARGARET WALDMAN • DARCY WALKER • ELISSE WALTER • MARGARET WARN ES • MARTHA WASSON • LYDIA WEGMAN • LILLIAN WEIGERT • ALICE WELT • FRANCINE WELTY • NANCY WESTNEAT • JOYCE WILDER • CAROLINE WILLIAMS • NANCY WORGAN • MEREDITH WRIGHT • JOANNE YEATON • SUSAN YECIES • ALICE YOUNG • DORIS ZALEZNIK CLASS OF 1985 • JENNIFER ALLEN • DEBORAH AMORY • SARAH ANDERSON • SUSAN ASOMANING • MARGARET BAER • CHRISTINE BAEUMLER • GWEN BAGGS • PAMELA BAILEY • RUTH BAKER • EMILY BALLEW • ALEXA BARNES • ALISON BARRY • MARY BARTON • MARY BEBEL • NICOLE BECKER • BECKY BECKETT • KATHLEEN BEHAN • ERIKA BEKO • KIRA BELKIN • LISA BERGMAN • LUCY BERNHOLZ • CHRISTINA BERTI • KELLY BETHEL • SARAH BINDER • HILARY BLANC • ANNE BLANKENBAKER • LEEN N • KATHARINE COOKE • BOBER • • SARAH BOOCOCK • R• JOY BOCHNER • DONNA BODNAR • ALEXA BRADLEY • JULIE BRADLOW KAREN BRANDT • Ell CAROLYN BURNS • MARIA • HILLARY CALLAHAN KAREN CARMICHAEL • SUSAN • FELICIA CHAN CONNIE CHEN • ELIZABETH CH CHIN • ""'""~·•uu CLARK • JANA CLARK • JULIA COLLINS • SUE CRECELIUS • N • TRELLA COOPER • KARIN SARAH DANIELS • ROBIN ES • NORMA DAVILA • DAY • JOAN DEA • • AMY DELOUISE • JEANNINE DOMINY • • PAMELA DICK • A EARLE • ERICA EHREN • ELISABETH FARNUM • NANCY FIELD • • CARLA FREEMAN • VIVIAN FUH • JULIA GILDEA • MI::LC•M. .

GOODM HELAINE GREENFELD KATHARINE HADOW • DEIRC,RE JANE HARWELL • MIRIAM H HIRANO • ELINOR HIRSHHORN • HUMPHREYS • LAURA HUNTER • SHIHO ITO • MISA IWAMA • DORTE JENSEN • LISA J CAROLYN JULL • KAREN MADELINE KATZ • ANGELA KE JULIA KILMAN • CHYHE KIM • H MAUREEN KLINE • SUSAN KNIG EMILY LABER • ANDREA L,.•u- · LEE • JUDY LEE • JUDY UNG • STACEY LINWOOD LOPEZ • HEATHER LOUGHR. M J MACE • ANNE MADDOCK • MARCHAND • ERIN MARCUS • MELISSA MARVIN • JULIE MARX JOY MCDOUGALL • TERESA M MARGARET MCNUTT • KELLY M CHRISTINA MILBURN • SARAH AUCE MITINGER • STACY "'"Juo~LL " JEANNE MULLER • CORIN DEBORAH NELSON • REBECCA N NA NOEL • REBECCA NOEL • MARIA OOT • MANUELA ORJUELA • CAROLYN PASSLOFF • ALEXANDRA PAXTON • M INNE POOLE • RANDOLPH • PAM POPIELARZ • MAUREEN DES • MARIA ROSEANNE REARDON • RH RIASANOVSKY • DEBRA RIDING • • ALEXANDRA ROCKWELL • OLGA RODRIGUEZ • ROSENZWEIG • MONICA ROSITOL • MARGARET ROSS • ROTH • KAREN ROTH • REBECCA • RINA RUB • CANDACE RUDDY • LEI RUMMEL • MARGARET RUSSELL • ALLISON RliTLEDGE·PARISI • SHARON RUWART • CHRISTINE RYAN • TAMAR SADEH • MARILYNN SAGER • N NA SAINT • KIMMIE SALZ • ANGELA SANTORO • EMI SATO • SONIA SAUL • CATHY SAVAGE • DEBORAH SCHACHTER • SUSAN SCHEER • • EMILY SCHIFRIN • ELIZABETH SCHINDLER • MARJORIE SCHLAIKJER • MARGARET SCHRIEBER • GAIL SCHROEDER • RUTH SCHUBERT • NINA SCHULMAN • STACY SCHUSTERMAN • MARGO SCOTT • SALLY SCOTT • ELIZABETH SCOVILLE • DIANA SENECHAL • FLORENCE SHARP • LORETTA SHAW • ALISSA SHETHAR • HILARIE SHICKMAN • HELEN SHORTAL • JANINE SHOWELL • LISA SIEGEL • AMANDA SILVER • KAREN SIMMONDS • KATE SIMPSON • ELIZABETH SINGER • STEPHANIE SINGER • BARBARA SKINNER • JENNIFFER SKURNIK • SARAH SLOVER • HELEN SMITH • SARAH SMITH • HEIDI SOKOL • M NN SONG • SAMANTHA SPARKS • TOULA SPETSIERIS • KATHRYN SPIER • HELEN SPOFFORD • KATHLEEN STANDIFORD • LAURA STEIN • RACHEL STENN • MARY STEPt1ENS • DEBORAH STOVER • MARTHA SULLIVAN • FELICIA SUMMERFIELD • GRACE TAIRA • KATHERINE TAYLOR • ELIZABETH TEARE • LAURA THOMPSON • THERESA THORNTON • JENIFER TIRNAUER • CHRISTIANNE TISDALE • SALLY TITTMANN • CORINNE TOBIN • RENEE TOLCHINSKY • EDNA TORRES • ELLEN TOWELL • LESLIE TREIGER • LINDA TRENTACOSTE • JEANNIE TRIZZINO • DONNA TROGLIO • CYBELE TROYAN • EMILY TRUE • KAREN TSUJIMOTO • JESSICA TUCK • ARZU TUNCATA • LIZA TUTTLE • JULIET TYNDALL • VANESSA TYSON • JAN UHRBACH • LISA URIBE • LYDIAVAGTS • JANE VAN VOORHIS • JESSICA VAPNEK • JENNIFER WADSWORTH • ELIZABETH WAHL • FRANCES WALKER • LISA WALLS • GRAIL WALSH • ROBBIN 'IIALSH • LEA WARD • LELIA WARDWELL • JOAN WAUGH • PATRICIA WEBSTER • EVE WEINBAUM • LAURA WEINBERG • REBECCA WEINER • DANI E NSTEIN • ELIZABETH WELCOME • PAMELA WESTERFIELD • MOLLY WHALEN • ROSEMIND WHITE • LANE WHITNEY • MARY WIDE BERG • LISA W ELAND • BARBARA WILL • SALLy WILLCOX • AMIE WILLIAMS • CHRISTIANNA WILLIAMS • JACQUELINE WILLIAMS • SUSAN L WILLIAMS • SUSAN S 'W LLIAMS • LYDIA WILLS • RUTH WILLSEA • ANNE WILSON • CAROLINE WILTSHIRE • RACHEL WISEMAN • ARBELYN WOLFE • WENDY WOLFF • JULIE WoNG • SUSAN WONG • CAROLINE WOODS • MARY WOOLOMES • MARGARET WRINKLE • MARGARET WYNNE • SHARON YAMADA • lYNNE YAO • DINA YAZMAJIAN • ALLISON YENKIN • MONONA YIN • CAROL YOON • JANET YORK • CONSTANCE YOWELL • USA YUN • SARAH ZACHOS • BETH ZARKIN • DEBORAH ZARUN • WENDY ZAROFF • ELIZABETH ZIMMERMANN • RISHONA ZIMRING • DEBORAH ZLOTSKY

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2 The New Journal/March I , 1985

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1 TheNewJ.ourna ~~~c~e1 , ~9~~mber rl

Letters

5

Introduction

6

Features

8

Special Issue 1

5

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15 Years of Evolving Coeducation. By Tina Kelley When Yale Needed "Girls" After 10 years of plodding discussion, Yale sudden{)! de&Ukd to admil. women.

Yahes, Yalettes and the instiJution tluJt housed them would never be the same.

By Tony Reese.

18

Three Sisters Three of Yales first undergraduate women recall the ear{)! days of coedua:ztWn and iJ.s infoence on their lives. By Tamar Lehrich.

24

YALE ·

Breaking the Silence Women of color spealc of their differences and the contradictions of life at tradilionally whil.e, male Yale. By Ali.ron Cardy.

28

36

Feminist Voices Yale feminists discuss the problems of misperception and mislabeling they face, while reflecting upon their commil.ment to womens issues here and beyond Yale.

By Anne Applebaum.

Seeing with New Eyes Academically and geographically peripheral, Yale's Womens Sludies Deparlm.enJ struggles to maintain iJ.s status while questioning the t:taldemic tradilion tluJt the University represents. By Pam Thompson.

44

52

Y1Js +· Lf.t./ J{,' S' ~opy

I

Shared Obsessions

Part of the dra:rruztic increase in college age women wiJh eating disorders, lhr« Yale women find the source of their problems wiJh food in themselves, in the University and in modern ~· By Tina Kelley.

A Different Ballgame SJwoting the winning goals and sprinting the lost fifty yards, women athletes puJ in as much effort as their male counterparts-and demand recognilion.

By joyce &nnjee.

58

The Compleat Cartoonist

Sandra &yniJJn, 74, looks bock on her experience as one of Yales first undergraduoJe women and looks forward /Q conJinuing her CtlT«r drawing clwcolaleloving pigs and heartbrokn ewes. By Rich Blow.

The New journal/March I , 1985 3

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Tom McNulty Mike Sonnenblick Pam Thompson Corinne Tobin Karen Yashar Dan Waterman

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M embtrs and Directors Edward B. Bennett • H e nry C . Chauncey. Jr. • Pe ter B. Cooper • Andy Court • Brooks Kc.-lley • Peter Neill • Mich elle Press • Thomas Strong Board lif Advisors Gerald Bruck • John Hersey • R oge r Kirwood • Elizabeth Tate • Peter Yeager

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4 The New Journal/ March I. 1985

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The First Rabbis To the Editor: Although Tamar Lehrich's recent article on Orthodox Jewish students ("Within Two Worlds ," TNJ, February 1, 1985) was quite illuminating, some aspects of the author's historical portrait require correction.

RabbiJames Ponet is not the frrst Yale graduate to become a rabbi. Rabbt Solomon Kohn was ordained even before he t'nroUed at Yale. He received his bachelor's degree in 1876. Rabbi Wolff Willner was graduated from Yale in 1881. He was ordained in 1887-the same year that Yale granted him a master's degree.

Ac; for the assertion that "three fundamental changes have occurred durin~ the last decade enabling the Orthodox Je~ to attend Yale," the author is wrong.

Thts statement unfairly ignores the accomplishments of people such as Hillel RaJ:>bi Richard Israel ( 1959-1971 ), Umversity Chaplain \\'illiam Sloane Coffin (1958-1975) and Yale President A. Whitney Griswold (1950-1963).

Sincerely, Dan A. Oren. '79

~itors' Xote. Accordmg to uhrich's story, Ponn. as far as he knows IS th~first Yak grodualt lo btcom~ a rahbt • R~gardmg /sr~l.

CA.ffin and Griswold, for th~ most part thm wo~lc did not tak ploc~ in th~ recmt dtead~, wh~eh rna) hmx btm an arbttrar; cut-offpomt It wa.r not our intention 1o t!(T!Or~ th~ u.:ork of art)' ~arl> rupporters oif Orthodox Judaism aJ }Qk. •

Rabbi James Ponet

Congratulations Tht Ntw Journal is pleased to announte the elections of Tony Reese as Publisher and of Joyce Bam·rjee as Ediwr-in-Chief cOcctive :0.1arch I The}' -.,ilJ be joined bv Rich Blow as t:.xccutiw Editor. Tonv joined the magazine in 1983 and has bee~ Managing Editor for the past year. H e was Production Manager before that.

For this issue he wrote the story on the history of coeducation. Joyce has been an Associate Editor since last April and wrote the stor> on women's sports. Rich has been an Associate Editor smce September and he proftled Sandra Boynton for this issue .

Tony and Jo>·cc will continue the leadership of graduatinlo{ Publisher Peter Phleger and Editor-in-Chief Tina KcUn. Thev are now pl<ulnin~ for thetr first issue. which -.,ilJ appt·ar in April Wt· \,ish them the bt''-t of luck .

I Ju \ ",u. fourno~ t'IH uur.IKt !'\ It tt<·r... to du t·<htor ._tnd (_omm«tnt un '\ .th tnd :"t·,, Htt' t·n 1'" ...' \\ nu· 10 Tina kdln l.dotnn.•l•. ~·H2 ' ,th• St.t• "''" ~··" H.t"·n . C I llh'i:?ll \II ht"''' for puhh< .uion nHI't an< ludl' addrc ........ and ''~r1.1ttnc• /1u .\m f{)urntJI u·-c.-n '"' th<' ru::ht to .-.ln alii••· tt·r~ for pubht'atlon

Tht Nm• Journal thanks Mary Arnstein Barhara Bonnardi Pam Boynton Sandra Boynton Carter Brooks Carol Cofrancesco Jean Anne Dickson Mattlww Ernst Sarah Fishman Dar<y Gilpin Michael Gordy Thomac; Hardy Yonina Helman David Hoffman Maria Hong Pearl Hu Meredith Hyde Eric Levengood Zoe Anne MacKenzie Hank Mansbach Manuscripts and Archives Robert Moore Ms. Foundation for Women Bert Orlov Letty Cottin Pogrebin Christine Rvan Lori Sherm~ Jennifer Skurnik Patty Stark Juliette Steadman Strong Cohen Graphic Design Timothy Dwight Dean's OtliuMax Tucker Garry Trudeau Eve Weinbaum Sharyn Wilson Dean Rachel Wizner Mary Ann Woodward jartf't Wu The Yale Doily News Yale Sports Information Yale Women's Center

Th.- ;-.: ....... JoumaVMarch I, 1985 5

15 Years of Evolving Coeducation Tina Kelley

"So dear, how do you like being a woman at Yale?" He was kindly and concerned, this member o f the Class of Long Ago. It would have been neither polite nor politic to explain how I considered myself a woman and a Yale student, but had only a vague idea of the Yale Woman and the intrinsic value of being one. A more pertinent question would have been, "So dear, do you feel discriminated against as a woman here?"

No, I don't. In some ways I should, but I don't. I am getting the same education as my male classmates. I use the same facilities. I speak as frequently in class. I go to the same university. I may be an exception, however.

"I'm a woman who loves men, but to each his own." This appeared in pen on a freshly-painted wall in the women's room of Cross Campus Library. Someone has circled his.

An arrow from the word leads to several question marks and exclamation points. The only sexual discrimination I sense is in such inaccurate figures of speech, which exemplify Problems in Society.

This may be because I am not an active supporter of many of the causes these writers on the wall express. U nfortunately, less than half the Yale population ever reads their freestyle words, ever looks at this blatantly honest and spontaneous demonstration of the issues concerning Yale women.

Fifteen years ago, after more than ten years of debate, 588 female undergraduates arrived in New Haven. The quality of life for women has improved greatly since then, from the pretty paint on Vanderbilt bathroom walls to the end of the quota for women students, from the founding of the Women's Studies Department five years ago to the clerical and technical workers' historic unionization.

But in 1985 I still hear classmates described as "real finger-down-the-throat types;" I still hear complaints of 6 The New Journal/March I. 1985

,,

sexism in the classroom. I have watched the scrawled words become increasingly adamant. And I recognize the futility of saying sexual discrimination is the world's, not the University's problem.

In this issue of The Ntw journal we bring you the bathroom wall. First, the history of how Yale became not a brothel, not a week-long mixer, but a better center of learning after the advent of women. Next, three female graduates from these early years describe their experiences at the cutting edge of coeducation, often sensing disaffection similar to what women of color continue to feel today.

As more women arrived, feminism gained a voice on campus through Aurora and the Women's Center, and improvements occurred slowly in the area of academics, although the need remains for significant improvement in the number of tenured women professors. Women have brought other unique concerns to Yale, including eating disorders, which affect a majority of female students here.

Deficiencies in the women's sports program also merit the University's increased attention. On the lighter side, we bring you cartoonist Sandra Boynton, one of Yale's most illustrious illustrators.

For four years, we have no other world than Yale. It's a malleable place when one considers the relative speed of its evolution from a bastion of masculinity. In several years we may realize how few other institutions can move so quickly.

The coeducation of Yale is not yet complete. Although we can blame the slow pace of societal advancements, that fact remains. If change is to take place. let it be here.

â&#x20AC;˘

Tina Ktllty, a smior in Morst, is Editor-in- Chit] of TN].

' I h<" Ne"' Journal/March I,

198~

7

8 The New JournaVMarch I, 1985

When Yale Needed "Girls" Tony Reese Men walked through Payne Whitney Gym nude. They ate dinner in roa.ts and ties. They drove to the Seven Sisters schools on weekends, and a few died in car crashes each year. They stared across dining halls at busloads of women who had come for a Yale mixer. For the Harvard game, their girlfriends came to New Haven and stayed in the Taft Hotel.

Women were dates, seen on the weekends; men were friends and comrades who lived, ate, played and studied together.

Yale in 1960 closely resembled the 18th-century college that preceded it. By the decade's end Yale had undergone some radical changes and set others in motion. "The University was dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 20th century," said Henry'Sam' Chauncey, Jr., '57, former University secretary. The decision to admit women marked the era's most fundamental transformation.

It took the Admissions Office only a week to begin considering women applicants in 1968, but the decision to roeducate took over 10 years to evolve. The earliest serious mention of the idea came from then-Dean of Admissions Arthur Howe, Jr. at a September 1956 closed faculty meeting. "I became increasingly aware that a sizable number of people I was interested in for Yale did not apply or considered Yale their second choice because it was single-sex," said Howe. "And elements of social life here were incredibly distorted without women. So I spent the last 10 minutes of my annual report on the glory of the entering class suggesting Yale consider admitting women. There was a thunderous response, very !POSitive enthusiasm.

•nean William DeVane, however, was of a more temperate mind and recommended forming a committee to study the idea. That was it. An hour later I walked through my front door and the babysitter said, 'Gee Mr. Howe, I think it's great.' I didn't know what she was talking about.

That Yale's going coed,' she said. Some moonlighting scoundrel had apparently given the story to a local radio station. The next morning 77ze New York Tunes printed it."

President Griswold immediately declared Yale was "far from being ..u:Jnvu·_,... that it would be the right course of action. There is not the pmotest possibility of its taking place at Yale within the foreseeable future.• The Yale Daily News (YDN) responded enthusiastically to ~s denial. "'h save us!" the days editorial read. "Oh save us from giggling crowds, the domestic lecture and the home economics dasses of female inflltration. We will not spend our 25th reunion drinking with overweight matrons and their husbands who went to Hofstra. And the library stacks will not be indoor lovers lanes, and Mory's on Friday afternoons will not be the seen~ of chattering bridge parties."

"I just started seeing a Yale co-ed and I see her constantly. I've gotten no work done whatsoever and this has got to stop ."

The New journal/March I, 1985 9

"We knew this would be a pioneer class facing pioneer-type problems."

Women's applications for 1969 in the Admissions Office 10 The New Journal/March I, 1985

•1 think the way it got out did more than anything to postpone coeducation by 10 years," H owe said. "The President's Office was swamped w ith letters from disgruntled alumni. The only significant development that came out of my suggestion was an increased awareness of the possibility."

Other changes were already taking place, though. "Yale in the 1950s was overwhelmingly prep school, wealthy and Eastern," Chauncey said. "In my class I remember one student from California and one black student. It's extraordinary how parochial it was." In 1965 R . lnslee 'Inky' C lark, Jr., '57, the new dean of admissions, aimed to change that. "I wanted to strengthen and deepen the applicant pool to secure stronger representation from groups not traditionally in it," C lark said. "Then the Admissions Committee would be able to find the strong applicants needed to diversify the student body."

•Inky beat the bushes in areas Yale not really approached before," said Kingman Brewster Jr., then Yale's president. The number of publica:bool, minority, and non-East Coast ltudents at Yale increased as a result. ~ile only 44 percent of the Class of !1963 attended public school, 61 percent the Class of 1971 had gone to such ools.

The possibility of including women this diversification arose in March 1966 when the Yale Corporation declared its interest in establishing a coordinate college for women separate from Yale College within the Universi~· similar to arrangements between narvard and R adcliffe and other Ivy :League universities. Brewster's desire to a link between Yale and Vassar all.lcilleges apparently spurred this move . ._._:Brewster and Vassar President Alan --.Jp80n dreamt .the whole idea up," Chauncey said. "In the mid-1960s the bwo became personal friends through · wives. Simpson once remarked aaar had no future as a small men's college in the face of other lchools' coeducation and mounting fmancial pressures on quality. The two proposed the Vassar campus move to Yale.• ·

r

In December the Yale Corporation and the Vassar trustees formally agreed to study the project's feasibility. At Vassar the study's announcement met with frenzied jubilation . Students serenaded Simpson with "Boola, Boola" and "The Whiffenpoof Song," draped their windows with banners reading "Beat H arvard" and "For Sale" and changed Vassar's "Wisdom and Purity" motto to "Wisdom and Men" and Yale's to "For God, for Country, for Yale and Vassar." Vassar alumnae and faculty were less jubilant. T hey did not want to give up their campus and tradition and feared the college would lose its independence in a large, highly respected research university like Yale.

In New H aven the proposal m et favorable but subdued reaction. A YDN poll the year before had found students felt four-to-one that women "would improve Yale," while faculty agreed by nine-to-one. Rumors circulated that freshman physical education had been dropped that year as part of a plan to abandon the gym and convert it into Vassar's New Haven campus. The Yale Precision Marching Band divided into "'¥" and "V" formations and tried to consummate the relationship prematurely during a halftime show. Each residential college affiliated with a Vassar house a nd held numerous joint events. (Lathrup H ouse's 14-7 defeat of Berkeley in touch football may have raised second thoughts among Yale students.)

According to the study committee's tentative plan, Yale would build a new Divinity School behind Pierson ("The Div students wanted to be downtown where the action was in poverty and social activism," Chauncey remembered) and Vassar would move into the Divinity School and surrounding area.

•we trooped up Science HiU with the Vassar Board of Trustees to show them the trees," Chauncey said. "They considered Vassar's beautiful trees an important asset and we had to find a similar site here." Despite intricate plans for coordinating classes and preserving each college's independence, Vassar ultimately rejected the proposal in November.

bull tales

~I

The New JournaVMarch I, 1965 II

/

Yale was stunned when the engagement turned out to have been only a courtship, but the experience raised student expectations for coeducation. "The Vassar episode was very useful, very helpful to Yale," Brewster said. "The purgatorical period when we were negotiating with Vassar got the trustees and alumni used to the idea of undergraduate women at Yale. I favored the plan at the time, though in retrospect I'm glad they declined." He began to look into other options almost immediately, becoming convinced coeducation was an important part of Yale's future.

Alumni support strengthened Brewster's resolve. "I consulted with two very generous donors," Brewster said. "They said to act first and make financial adjustments later because they felt the commitment should be unambiguous."

According to Chauncey, "John H ay Whitney, probably the University's largest single donqr, was very encouraging, and if the largest donor jumps on the bandwagon it is easier to handle complaints from those alumni who send $5 to $1 0 a year and threaten to cut off their support."

In September 1968 Princeton released a study indicating 80 percent of the nation's top high school students thought coeducation made a college ~ore attractive and only four percent thought it made it less attractive.

Princeton appeared headed rapidly toward coeducation, a blow to the pride of Yale students, who feared the ~niversity would at best end up followIng Princeton's lead and at worst become the only all-male Ivy school if Princeton and Dartmouth admitted women. "Healthy competition between Yale and Princeton was an immediate, driving force," said Elga Wasserman, fir:st chairman of the University Commntee on Coeducation. .

"We thought we'd be left out of the parade," Brewster said. "To be a singlesex institution at a time when all kinds of schools were going coed meant a more and more difficult time attracting s!udents." The students may have conSidered it a question of honor, but the

Elga Wasserman ran the Coeducation Office for two years and is now a lawyer in New Haven administration saw a potential crisis of quality.

The Corporation unanimously decided undergraduate education for women would improve the quality of Yale College and in October directed the administration to develop a plan of coeducation or coordination. Student debate shifted focus from whether to coeducate to how and when. Students for a Democratic Society demanded immediate full coeducation. The Class of 1969 claimed they would withhold their class gift until the administration formalized a plan.

In early October the campus-wide Committee on Student Life put up posters urging students to push for coeducation: "The answer has to be coeducation. There is no middle road.

Yale needs girls and girls need Yale. To dramatize this issue, we suggest that students arrange for geodesic domes to be placed on the Cross Campus as temporary living quarters. Then, invite a few hundred girls from surrounding colleges to Yale for a week." The idea caught on. "To make a valid decision about what women want in a coeducational school, it seems logical to talk to women about it," Aviam Soifer, '69,

wrote, proposing to invite 500 women to Yale between November 4 and 11.

Over 2,000 women from nearby colleges expressed interest in participating.

The organizers scrapped the geodesic domes when the adminstration agreed to let the women stay in dorms, recruited students to host women, raised money to pay for meals and selected 700 women to stay for two halfweek shifts.

Coeducation thus arrived earlier than expected, though not to stay. There were speeches, teach-ins and film festivals; women attended classes, ate in dining halls and stayed in men's dorm rooms. A rally of 750 Yale and women students marched to Brewster's house demanding coeducation. Over 1, 700 students petitioned f~r equal num~rs of men and women m the next class, women transfer students for the upperclasses and an increase in women faculty members. The YDN carried an ad for "Quality Aphrodisiacs for Coed Week."

Reactions were mixed, though largely favorable. "Coming from an all-girls' school, I didn't mind being appreciated all week long," one woman wrote. "This is one girl from Wellesley who would The New journal/March I, 1985 13

like to transfer to Yale. 1:'\t•xt l<tll. Next \~('('k ." Yale studc·nts commented, ·They\t' H·allr brightt•ned thts pia• e up," and ...Ibt• plan~ srneUs niC"er • Some r('(ognized tht• arlilin.llity of ~m~le-scx schoolin~ . "What happens when you go 10 a men's school is vou fi>rgt·t hm~ rt·ally good girls can lx·. You ~c·t c·ntangled in <l wt'<'kt·nd·w·wn•kt·nd c•xi~tenn·, and you bt·cnrnt· a produrt of it. You lose sight of tht• simple l:trt that girls .ut• pt•ople, just likt• you and mt•. lnste.l<l tht·y bt·romt• things to play with on allotted days. Thin~.ts • t\tost prol(:s~ors fch wonwn\ part it ip.uion broackned cla~s discu~sion, though one commented, "I li·l'l ,, gn•at<'r sense· of ar· mmplishmt•nt wht•n I direct Ill)' dforts toward tho-.e who "''II one dct)' haH' a ~reater rolt• in <Ot ictr-men." \\'ithin da>:. Brewster .mnounccd

Yale \\Ould begin limitt'd rocdtuation immediately and prombt:d full co· education as soon as possible. •J "as slow to come around 10 the• notion that just admittin~ women to Yale Collegt· would be as good as having a wonwn's collt'ge," Brewster said. "I "·"' \Hong and happily I changed Ill\ rnincl, hut I dul so slowly." On 1\:overnbt•r 14 thr• Yale faculty accepted his plan, but students were still unhappy. Bu·wstt•r ga\"l' them '"hat thev wanted but tilt' cost ''as too high: h~ tailed liH· admit· ring 250 women transfer students "ho would live off campus (but allili,ttt·d "ith six of the colle~e~) and 250 \\ mncn fre,hmt•n who \~ould lh t' in Trumbull, while Trumbull students w<mld be dtstnbuted amon~ tht· otht·r collegt•s.

Bre\\Ster spoke to ~tudents for four hours the next ni~ht in the Trumbull

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hall. Most opposed the housing plan; Trumbull students did not want to sacrifice their college to coeducation, others fl-It women should be affiliated with all wlleges and live on campus to ~t·t tht· full Yale experience. Brewster rewnsidt•reci his housing plan; about 20 upperdass women would live in one entryw<ty in each college and Vanderbilt would house all the freshmen women.

With the internal squabble largely settled, two tasks remained: admitting the wonwn and justifying it to the alumni.

The lallt'r took longer. ~\\'e .tre now confronted with a furtht•t ema,<·ulation of the Yale tradition. h it a lair qut•stion to ask whether the contemplated 500 female undergradu.tt\.' candidate~ wish to be enrolled at Yale mereh- lor an academic education or for other, less intellectual pursuits?~ \HOle George Pierce, Jr .. '23. Another su~t:t·steci, ~A~ Yale surrenders her identity, it seems appropriate to me that she •hould also chan~e her name. Do "hat 'ou "ill but don't call it Yale. Mv 0\\ n ~uggcstion would be Brewster In·stitute." ~ton· favorable reactions also ap· llC•In·d ·'\l'xt vear some of our nation's linc•st worm n .will benefit from Yale's m.m}' .uh-anta~es, and their male rlassmatt·s "ill finallr have the oppor· tunity to bel·ome whole men, men for whom wonwn can be trusted friends and rt•spt·ned co-workers as well as sex· u.tl objech and status symbols," wrote Gordon Goldber~. '65. -Yale cannot afford to tkny women the opportunities of a Yale education onlv because thev nrc more likely to beco~e housewi,·e's than college presidents: another wrote.

"On the ''hole alumni thought it was a ~ood idea,~ Brcw<>ter said. ~It wa~n't ju t old fottie condemning us and \OUng turks con~ratulating us: there \\ere \'oun~ fogie" and old turks. One \CT\ old alum called me up and said, 'It' 60 \Cars too late!'" Chauncev ex· plained, "Citimatelr, "ith the exception of a handful of chronic complainers. the alumm oven' helmin~ly accepted coeducation for one reason: thev ha,·e daughters comin'! to Yale. I di5c~vered carl\ on Hell hatn no furv like an alum·

"You could see ooeducation as the fmal, culminating step making the student body more representative." nus whose daughter has been rejected.

They were more protective of their daughters than of their sons; th ey equated rejecting their daughters with accusing them of being women of ill repute."

T hose daughters were considered for adm ission by Chauncey, whom Brewster had appointed director of administrative planning for coeducation, and Wasserman, who had been an assistant dean of the Graduate School and prospective master of the female T rumbull CoUege. Together the two were in charge of making coeducation happen in September 1969, beginning with the admissions process.

"Sam and I read all the women's applications," Wassserman said. "We had slightly different criteria for the women.

We knew this would be a pioneer class facing pioneer-type problems."

Chauncey elaborated: "We believed it would be hardest on the upperclass women who would be in small groups in the colleges among men who had spent time at an all-male Yale. We tried to d etect stability, strength, toughness."

Over 4 ,000 women applied for the 588 openings, while men had a much higher acceptance rate o f four-to-one. This selectivity would eventually surface in the consistently higher grades women received during the first few years.

The weekend before acceptance letters went out Tht Ntw York Timts Magaziru reported, .. Many late-night buU sessions at Yale today reflect a certain nervousness over the confrontation with next fail's superwomen." The article increased this tension when it characterized the admitted women as "female versions of Nietzsche's Ubermenschâ&#x20AC;˘ and described some of them: "?ne girl panned b y her alumni interVIewer for her "lack of openness" not only earned aU A's throughout high school but received 800s on her SATs and four

Va nderbilt Hall which housed all the Bla dderball in 1969. achievement tests. She had great recommendations."

Many applicants read the article and despaired. "What difference could it have made to Tht Ntw York Timts whether they published that article a week before or a week after our notification? How insensitive could they be? I spent a hellish week just waiting for news. I was so nervous. I'd given up hope," commented one ¡woman who was later accepted.

Those whom Yale accepted and who accepted Yale faced great difficulties in the fail, mostly stemming from the eight-to-one ratio of men to women ... In retrospect, I view the housing situation as the major problem," Wasserman said. "The small number of women caused practical problems in rooming.

Women roomed in fours, and out of 20 to 25 students in each college it was

freshman women was the target for hard to get congenial rooming arrangements. The situation emphasized the women's minority status as if they were in a fishbowl." Media coverage treating coeducation as a "freakish experiment," Wasserman added, intensified the sense of being under observation.

The ratio also caused problems in the classroom. "Manv classes had very few women," Wasserman said. "If a woman was absent, everyone noticed. Some professors asked their female students for the 'women's point of view.'

Overall, it just made for a more selfconscious presence than would have been ideal." One professor complimented a Directed Studies student for having worked so hard and finally reached the academic level cf the men in the class.

Upperclass men who had grown acThe New Journai!March 1, 1985 IS

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cw customed to an all-male Yale felt most

uncomfortable. "There really is a dichotomy in my mind between friends and women. Women are dates," one student commented in Women at Yale, a book compiled by two women sociology graduate students. "I've never been in a situation before where I could have a girl as a friend. All the girls you'd meet were on weekends in this compulsive date situation. And you didn't hav~ time to be friends with them. So I don't really relate to the girls in my college. I don't feel I need to." Such attitudes were reinforced by the survival of the weekend dating system as a means of coping with the lopsided ratio. "H appiness is not Importable" protested banners hung from some windows.

Men often had trouble integrating their sexual/social life with the rest of their college life. "My freshman year was beautiful," a sophomore said.

"Really beautiful. I was never d istracted during the week and I had this great weekt>nd social life. This year has been different. I don't get much work done. I wish I did, but I don't. I just started seeing a Yale coed and I see her constantly, constantly. I've gotten no work done whatsoever and this has got to stop. I mean , something has really got to be done about it- I've got to get some work done, I really do!"

"The group which turned out to be most opposed to the situation was the secretaries and female dining hall employees," Chauncey said. "In an allmale institution, the men at least found sisters and mothers in these women and occasionally even dated them. Some of these people showed real hostility to the women students. Master's wives, for example, were used to having 400 'sons' who adored them and would talk to them and now they didn't come around anymore."

"May D ay 1970 marked a big turning point," Wasserman said . "Suddenly, the focus of student energies was external.

The women participated as equal members on a common project. A fterward they were never as self-conscious as before. The novelty of coeducation now had a replacement."

16 The New Journal/March I , 1985

"Yale was dragged, kicking and screaming into the 20th century."

M u ch progress was made simply by the passage of time, with people getting used to having women at Yale. Some problem s took longer and even persist; both Sterling Library's Linonia and Brothers' reading room and Mory's did not admit women until the mid-1970s and three senior societies still exclude women. In the case of at least one society, the exclusion of women resulted from a change of the organization's charter in 1969 from calling for the selection of "15 leaders of the junior class" to "15 male leaders."

The Coeducation Office, run by Wasserman, coordinated the University's official efforts to facilitate integratio n , including resident graduate affiliates in each college, a special career advisory program and efforts to increase the n um ber of female role models and to equalize the male-female ratio.

Most activism after 1969 focused on the ratio. The controversy concerned Yale's plan to increase the number of wom en by building new housing, rather than by reducing the n umber of men.

The debate rallied around Brewster's alleged guarantee that Yale would produce "1000 male leaders" a year.

Brewster denies saying this, and there is scant evidence to the contrary, but the original plan d id call for ma intaining the n umber of men at its precoeducatio n level. When New H aven rejected Yale's plan to build two new colleges, many students and administrators called for the elim ination of the quota of 1000 men. In December 1972 the Corporation voted to admit studen ts to the Class of 1978 without regard to sex, overcoming the last official U n iversity obstacle to complete coed ucation.

Henry "Sam" Chauncey served as coeducation planning director.

"The' problems of women at Yale to· day are the problems of women in society, especially in academic society " Chauncey said, and two of the fir~t three heads of the Coeducation Office agree with him. They believe the specific difficulties growing out of Yale's 267 -year all-male tradition are gone.

Other problems have replaced them, but these are shared by society and other universities, although Yale still bears responsibility for trying to solve them. " Wasserman does not fully agree.

We've made progress. But there is still an all-male quality at Yale that is more overwhelming than in society at large. I don't think it is prevalent within the student body, but in the University. A lot of institutional expectations still have to change. The tenure structure hasn't changed at all; promotion still coincides with child-bearing year s. Yale is geared to a male lifest5'le more than elsewhere.

It shows up in the expected role of the faculty wif~-the whole career of a faculty member is based on the wife washing his shirts, taking care of his travel plans and so forth. There are a lot of very interesting cultural issues which Yale has not addressed; it simply expects everyone to muddle through."

. In the 1960s the most clearly articulated reasons for coeducation were a need to attract high-quality students an~ a desire to improve the quality of socaal and extracurricular life. Faculty also felt coeducation would improve classroom learning by broadening perspective. Others, like Clark, saw a larger issue. "Yale is one of the greatest in~titutions in the world, and to determane that its facilities should be limited to half the population by an arbitrary rule seemed to me illogical. You could see coeducation as the final culminating step in the process of mak~ ing the student body more representative," Clark said. "There is a certain consistency between the two," Brewster said, "but it was not plotted. I'm not a very good planner."

Wasserman suggested two other reasons Yale coeducated. "Overall, the 500 to 800 women students brought money to the University. Little new housing was built, virtually no new faculty were hired , but Yale got 500 more tuition and room payments.

Traditionally, schools in trouble increase enrollment. Yale achieved a financial goal and got credit for being farsighted. Also, the whole climate of the times helped . This place exists in society and it mirrors outside changes.

It can't get too far out of date without getting into trouble."

"Innately the single-sex Yale was wrong," Chauncey said. "A lot of us felt very strongly about the ethical and moral questions, including Brewster .

But Kingman is the ultimate pragmatist. Coeducation was the second greatest thing he did for Yale, right after getting it through the turmoil of the times with positive goals. Initially he began without even realizing he believed in it, just seeing a practical end. He d idn't preach great and noble thoughts. Getting there in the end was what interested him. It was a matter of achieving something that if you took the moral high-road you probably wouldn't have achieved."

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The New Journal/March I, 1985 17

Three Sisters Tamar Lehrich

8t.rbar.1 :\lasters Riley. Affilia路 tion T tm o thy Dwight. Maiden . 路 m e Barbara Masters. Bor n: Aug. 5 . 1948 in Gary, l n. A t 路 t#.nded : Edina-Morningside H ig h School. Edina, Mn. Major: American Studies. Wife of J ef路 ferson B. Riley. Home Address: 194 Stony Creek Rd., Stony Cnek, Ct. 06405

18 The New journal/March I, 1985

To get to Barbara Riley's house, fmd $1.15 in change and take the "S-Clinton" bus from the city down Route One, past the Montana Horse Ranch and Cozzi's Turkey Farm. While the jour ney to Guilford takes only 25 minutes, this small, densely-wooded town looks nothing like New Haven. Wander through the Country Dairy Store, past the American flags and white colonial homes, and 'when you see the sign advising "15 miles per hour" on a lane no more than 10 feet wide, you've probably reached Dunkrock Road. Barbara Riley lives here in a bright red, allwood, solar home her husband designed and built. The property borders on 2000 acres of state hiking trails. Nearby there is a pond for ice-skating and fishing and a grove of raspberry bushes where Riley's three children spend afternoons.

Riley, '73, is one of the 230 women admitted to Yale's first fully coed class. Though a few of these first women have achieved fame and fmancial reward, most still search for their own defmitions of success and satisfaction. Riley belongs to a small group of women wh o, more th an a decade after graduation, live and work only minutes away from the rooms they occupied at Yale. The women and their perceptions of their college experiences defy generalization, and each has her own story to tell about her time at Yale.

Riley was one of a handful of transfer students admitted in 1969. H aving grown up in a suburb of Minneapolis, she attended Minnesota's Lawrence University for two years. "I got married at age 20, which I still can't believe," Riley said, helping her four-year-old son Nathaniel p ull on his boots and ushering him outside. When Riley's husb~d was admitted to the Yale School of Architecture, the couple moved to New Haven, and she worked for three years as administrative assistant to the dean in Timothy Dwight. Once she and her husband felt fmancially secure, Riley applied and was accepted to Yale.

Drinking tea in her kitchen, Riley explained how her experiences as a married 23-year-old junior entering Yale were very different from those of her classmates. "I was able to come into Yale, take what I wanted and leave. It never was a social world for me, though at times I did feel selfconscious about being older than most students." Because of her work experience at Yale, Riley easily established a diverse circle of friends composed of undergraduates, architecture students, fellows and faculty. "My three years of working gave me time off to crave being in college and really to appreciate Yale. I was a little more aloof than most other women, but no one reacted in a hostile or negative way towards me just because I happened to be married."

~"Having

women i around was probably i a relief after dealing ~ with boys and ~ fraternities-Yale became more civilized."

Barbara Riley in 1973, far left, and today at h e r son's violin lesson The New JournaVMarch I, 1985 19

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Riley didn't encounter any of the sexism or separatism she said many women from the C lass of 1973 felt.

While others were most offended by paternalistic attitudes among Yale's faculty and administration, Riley said · she felt more empathetic and accepting.

"I never felt diminished or threatened by the men. I just couldn't get angry at professors for their old-style mannerisms, for they weren't intentional; it wasn't representative of their complete philo~ophy." She paused. "Having women around was probably .a · relief after dealing with boys and fraternities- Yale became more civilized."

An American studies major, Riley continued at Yale as a graduate student. Though it has been e ight years since she started her dissertation, a nd though she has not yet chosen to seek employment outside the home, Riley does not view her life as static. "I treasure the time I've been at home with my kids," she said softly, "but if I ever defmed my life by theirs, I'd feel upset and sick . I know at one point it will be the right time to finish, to write the dissertation and to teach on a college level."

Riley sees a dramatic difference between the students she knew in the 1960s and today's students at Yale. An advocate of New Deal social policies, Riley disagrees with much of President R eagan's philosophy. "At Yale I became politicized and intellectually excited for the first time. I thought being political was a lasting legacy from Vietnam, but I was wrong. I assumed everyone from age 20 would be aware and active. It's scary, but maybe by the time I'm teaching, I'll have to begin by defining liberalism for my students," she said, handing dried apricots to her eightyear-old daughter, Gerun. "Students now are more distracted. In a sense they are truly out in the world because they have already imagined themselves there ." Riley placed her teacup in the bright red kitchen sink. Wearing purple pants and a blue sweater, she seemed to blend in with the colorful room. "I may be 36 years old, but I'd give anything to go through Yale again. At the time I never thought it was wonderful, be20 The New Journal/March I, 1985

remembered. "It was totally bizarre. As the women entered the dining hall, the guys would hold up napkins rating them from zero to 10. The guys also claimed they could tell a Yale woman from the others solely by her sloppier at· tire." New H aven's Albert us Magnus College was a major, pervasive presence at Yale during this time. "At a mixer , if a Yale guy knew you went to Yale he'd turn around and walk away, looking for , a girl from another school," H orowitz 1 explained. "My female friends and I had to bring a group of our male friends with us to mixers as security blanketssomeone to dance with. I felt as though my role should be as 'one of the guys,' cause I didn't imagine it ending." Bar- everybod y's best buddy. The women bara Riley watched as her daughter bused in were the exciting, hot lovers, rolled a handful of dice o n the kitchen while I was just 'comfortable.' Now it's table . "Those years are a magical time," beyond belief." · Riley said. She looked at her daughter, Horowitz perceived herself to be and they both laughed. more the victim of subtle discrimination Nina H orowitz, '75, took a far difthan blatant sexism. Several times she ferent path from Riley's. A doctor and a found herself the only woman in a surgeon, H orowitz practices in an office seminar. "The professor would turn to on Church Street. On the wall next to me and say, 'Nina, as a woman, what is her diploma from Columbia University your view on this?' That really offended Medical School hangs a certificate prome," she admitted. "But the most claiming Horowitz "a member of discriminatory, biased group was the Calhoun College on the roll of the com- alums. They'd sit in the Calhoun dining pany of scholars." A black chair en- hall and tell the women they had stop· graved with the Yale crest faces her ped giving money to Yale because we desk. Now in her early 30s, H orowitz were admitted." has jet-black hair and smoky-grey eyes.

Following the pre-med route, She glanced at the chair and explained, Horowitz frequently felt singled out. , "It's brand new. All the surgical While women at Yale were not entirely residents at Yale-New H aven H ospital absent from the sciences, there were get them." She hesitated. "I know it s ignificantly fewer than in the looks pretentious, but it's comfortable. I humanities. "I never chose a science wouldn't want it in my own home, but course where I'd be totally visible. It's hard to believe, but I never had a for the office it's O.K." H orowitz calls herself one of the first female lab partner at Yale," she said, leaning back in her thick leather chair. female Yale boosters, but ironically, when she applied to Yale 14 years ago Horowitz also recognized signs of favoritism and reverse discrimination in from an experimental high school in her classes. "In one of Wolfgang Maryland, it was in response to a dare.

Leonhard's courses, I could predict who Once she was admitted Horowitz had my T A would ·call on and who would no qualms coming to an institution where women were a minority, for she get A's just by the number of 'thin felt prepared after g rowing up with lovelies' in the section. H e was absolute· three brothers. Still, there were a few ly e nthralled by a few of them," she remembered. A lack of female role surprises. "My freshman year, women from Smith, Mt. Holyoke and Vassar models at Yale became another area of were being bused into New Haven contention for Horowitz. "I can count every Friday afternoon," H orowitz on one hand the number of women I

was taught by at Yale. It angers me that even those women never got tenure."

By her senior year Horowitz came to accept and appreciate her Yale experience with only a few reservations. A freshman cotâ&#x20AC;˘nselor, a master's aide and a member of both the Slavic Chorus and the senior society Elihu, H orowitz felt women were increasingly integrated and "no longer an oddity ."

She explained, "It gives me a sense of pride that Yale made a commitment to offer opportunities women should never be deprived of having," H o rowitz confirmed. In stark contrast to Riley, she believes, "Being one of the first women grads can make you feel obligated to be an outspoken leader and achiever.

Many Yale women felt as if they were wasting their time if they didn't get super, macho jobs."

H orowitz and her husband , a Yale graduate student in psychology, now live on the corner of Orange and Humphrey Streets. A decade after graduating, she admit~ to feeling like just an other "old blue on the eve of her 1Oth reu nion." Yet, only with time did H orowitz develop that sense of familiarity and comfort in being a Yalie. "Today Yale is probably a more normal

place to be," she said reflectively. "It must be nice to go to a college where being a woman doesn't have to be an issue."

Emily Fine, '73, a close friend of Horowitz, sat in her office in the Community Health Care Center (CHCC), down the road from the Long Wharf Theater. Fine may be only a few miles away from Yale and her friend, whom she met when Horowitz was a resident, but the symbolic distance between them is greater. Like Horowitz, Fine became a doctor and lives in the New Haven area, but she herself admitted, "Nina is much more :Joe College' than I'll ever be."

The Obstetrics/Gynecology Department lies hidden in a labyrinth of hallways and nurses' stations on the second floor of the CHCC building. The waiting room there is filled with pregnant women, young children, infants and a smattering of men. The receptionist reads Your Daily Horoscope For '85. . Dr. Fine, one of seven women and two men in the division, receives a chorus of greetings when she steps into the waiting room. Wearing a black skirt which falls above the knee, high black boots and a furry sweater, F ine looks

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Dr. Nina H o r owitz in her Church Street office The New joumaVMarch I, 1985 21

young enough to be a student. Her curly, light-brown hair bounces as she walks into her office, shared with a female colleague. On a shelf sit family photos, an ET doll and a couple of stuffed frogs.

"I ended up coming to Yale for all sorts of no ndescript reasons," Fine said between bites of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Her two primary interests freshman year were music-she played the french horn with the Yale and the New H aven symphonies- and . medicine. Yet Fine's experiences in science courses and her perceptions of Yale's attitude toward women became increasingly negative. By the end of her sophomore year she decided to move ofT campus and to forgo he r medical school aspirations. "It was devastating being one of 10 women in a lecture hall with 200 aggressive, intimidating men from intense prep schools. It was equally intimidating not even knowing those nine other women," she exnlained. Fine feels

Yale made no effort to create a support system for the first women undergraduates. "The arrival of women provided a lot of news for The Ntw York Times, and I had a sense we were being evaluated on an ongoing basis," Find asserted. "Yale thought painting the bathrooms in Vanderbilt pretty colors and putting up full -length mirrors was adequate, but it was really more subtle than that."

Fine believes sequestering all the women in Vanderbilt Hall on O ld Campus only served to create feelings of insularity and alienation. "There was a funny dichotomy. Yale placed a guard under the Vanderbilt arch 24 hours a day, but the man was usually inebriated. We felt like Rapunzel in her tower, but Yale assumt¡d our needs to be identical to any previous students'," Fine said strongly. "We were goldfish in a bowl. It was easy to feel sort of special, but it was very difficult to develop a sense of female camaraderie. Faculty

Dr. Emily Fine in her Comm unity Health Care Center office 22 The New JournaVMarch I, 1985

members didn't stop reminding us they couldn't walk around naked in the gym anymore."

While she admits to having been "a little on the stuffy side politically" during high school, Fine embraced some controversial issues at Yale to a much greater extent than either Riley or H orowitz. "Students really carried a feeling of responsibility to address the world's woes," she remembered. "The , , â&#x20AC;˘ L' h desire to provide a serv1ce 10r t e community-to be a teacher-was respected in the 1960s. Then, if someone said he wanted to go into banking, he'd probably be stoned." Fine's extensive involvement in the Yale Women's Center and the Women's Abortion Referral Service rejuvenated her interest in medicine. "It was virtually impossible for women to get abortions in Connecticut. Our group was composed of Yale undergrads and New Haven women who were concerned with feminist issues," Fine observed. "I finally

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discovered a group of women to talk and share ideas with."

Fine spent senior year fulfilling premed requirements and in the fall she entered the Yale School of Medicine.

"I've always been interested in gynecology, and the feminist movement helped me get in touch with those interests," Fine said, finishing her sandwich. "It's really important now for women to enter this field. I've been able to remain involved in feminism from a political point of view as well as dealing with women's health issues." Fine currently teaches Yale medical students and works with new residents.

Living in Hamden with her two children and her husband, a surgeon who works with H orowitz, Fine is slowly coming to terms with her critical perceptions of Yale. "In some ways Yale is a microcosm of the real world," Fine asserted, glancing at her watch. "There still remains an elitist quality at Yale, and part of that elitism is sexism. Even today when people hear the word Yale, there is on some level the image of a male institution.,. A pregnant woman holding the hand of a small boy peeked through the doorway of Fine's office.

"Well, it looks like it's back to patients," Fine said, smiling as the mother and child entered the room .

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I've had enough I'm sick of seeing and touching &th silks of things Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody Nobody Can IL1lk to anybody Without me Right?

I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister My littk sister to my brother my brother to the whi~ feminists The whiu feminists to the Black 7:hurch folks the Black church folks To the ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Block sepaTatists the Black sepaTatists to the artists the artists to my friends' paTents ...

Then I've got to explo.in myse!f To everybody

-"The Bridge Poem" by Donna Kate Rushin from This Bridge Called My Bock, a collection of writing by women of color

Breaking the Silence Alison Gardy

24 The New JoumaliMarch I, 1985

At first glance, you don't think the woman walking to a remote comer of Machine City can see herself in these words, nor do you assume she coordinated a conference last year tl}~t brought many writers from This BrUJ.ge to speak at Yale. She dresses inconspicuously in a blue sweatshirt and jeans. People do not look up as she moves with an easy yet determined stride towards a clean table and slips quietly into a seat. Ahna Ayala, CC '86, clears her throat and begins speaking in a voice wrique for its rhythmic balance of words and silence.

"It's a definite cultural shock when you come to a place like Yale, so you want to hold on to something within you," she said. "But sometimes people think if you want to hold on to your cultural background you just want to stand out and you don't want to learn the 'American way.' Of course I believe we should learn English and the skills needed to survive in this culture, but at the same time that doesn't mean we should give up everything that means anything to us- forget our Spanish, our music, everything else. I've heard people say, 'No speaking Spanish,' and to them it's a joke, but it's nor."

Although Ayala's parents came from Puerto Rico, she was born and raised in the United States. Having lived in several cities, Ayala attended schools with varied ethnic populations. Despite the diverse student body here, she feels alienated from most of the Yale commwrity.

"When I came here there was a lot I had to get used to. A lot of what I was taught was very different from what I frrst experienced here. I sat down with some of my friends who were white, and I'd try to explain to them I felt alienated and I hadn't heard of many of the customs here.

But my white friends couldn't understand what I was talking about."

Although the Class of 1988 is 17.3 percent people of color and 41.4 percent female, many women of color perceive Yale as still very male and very white. They feel it on an academic level in the number of white male professors, the courses and majors offered, the methods of teaching and the literature and interpretations of history students read. Most importantly they feel it on the social level in the way whites and people of color at Yale commwricate or rather, fail to communicate.

Unable to explain her experiences to her white friends, Ayala frequently visited her floating counselor, a Puerto Rican woman. "!be only escape we have is among ourselves, because we understand what we're feeling, and we know we're not imagining. We can get together and talk about it and help each other get through this kind of place," Ayala said.

"But if you go up to somebody who doesn't understand and they ask you, 'Well, do you think racism is everywhere?' and you say, 'Yes, it is every¡ where,' they say to you, 'Oh, you're just feeling persecuted. You're just letting your imagination run away with you.' ¡

The New J ournaVMarch I , I 985

~5

"If you were the only white person at Yale and you found another white person, I guarantee you'd be very excited and you'd want to get together and share your experiences," Ayala continued. "A lot of the Puerto Ricans here have shared the same experiences and understand where you're coming from. So you're going to be around people who support you. Jocks hang out together, gays hang out together, actors hang out together.

But we arc conspicuous."

When people of color sit together in Commons, go to their cultural houses or speak a language other than English, they appear separatist. To many people of color, however, this perception reveals deep, widespread misunderstandings about their involvement in the Yale community. Through their organizations and informal gatherings people of color believe they are preserving, sharing and nurturing a special bond. A more serious misunderstanding arises when people view racist acts as only harmless pranks.

Even more subtle and yet more frustrating is the 'color blindness' of many whites who try not to notice racial differences. The need to ignore differences implies 'differences' mean 'inequalities,' and people of color see 'color blind courtesy' as subtle racism that ignores their cultural and personal history and trivializes thetr oppression.

"Subtle racism is so tricky, because frequently it comes out of a sincere desire to be less racist than those who came before you," said Caroline Jackson, '74, director of the Afro-Americar Cultural Center and one of the first black undergraduate women at Yale. "The person who has not grown up in an oppressed group frequently winds up tripping all over herself trying to demonstrate sincerity which in and of itself becomes offensive."

Karen Porter,JE '86, a first generation Jamaican American who attended a mostly white high school, thinks Yale students avoid racism to an obvious extent. "You feel like you're working on a very superficial level and you're not sure how liberal Yale is. It seems you're not truly hearing what's going on and getting a false picture because people don't communicate straightforwardly. Comments are covered up in some way to look good, not conservative or uninteUigent."

Subtle racism often betrays itself in the way people speak-their tone, word 26 The New Journal/March I, 1985

choice, the things they choose to talk about. Sometimes people introduce a person of color as "my Mexican friend" or "the black roommate."

"Some people try to figure out what race you are by your eyes, and you think, 'Why don't you just ask me?'" said Amy Yamashiro, ES '87, co-coordinator of the Asian American Students' Association (AASA). "Sometimes you feel awkward because when they fmd out what nationality you are they have to teU you how interested they are in it. If they are really interested, that's one thing, but when they feel like they have to talk about it because it's part of your heritage, it comes orr as really patronizing."

Sometimes people of color see scorn in someone's eyes. Other times they go ignored in public by a white person who talks with them in private, or,just the opposite, they are shown off in pubHc as a white person's "minority friend." "You can teU when someone is sincere," Ayala said. "Sometimes you get the feeling people are looking at you as if you're a subhuman, or people will come up to you to talk about something, and you'U feel it like an undercurrent, like there are certain things they're not saying in their questions. It's ridiculous! We know we're people! We're not asking to be treated better than anybody else. We're asking to be treated with respect and looked upon as human beings."

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The major cultural houses on campus- Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA), Despierta Boricua (DB, the Puerto Rican house), AASA and the Afro-Am Center-provide essential support for people of color at Yale. The houses attract speakers, show ftlms and exhibits, put out pubHcations, have meals where they prepare foods of their cultures and throw parties where people generally dance more and drink less than at SAC parties.

"The Afro-Am Center is the only place where black students come and don't feel in the minority," Jackson said. "A white person coming here feels in the minority, but imagine Hving your daily life like that.

After a while maybe you quit noticing it, but it doesn't stop hurting, exhausting and debilitating you. The Center energizes and resuscitates people. They can take leadership roles here and be creative. Their cultural experience is primary and not secondary and does not need to be explained. The Center is meant to afftrm ourselves, not to exclude t.vhite people, but I think that's the only way some people can deal with it, sadly enough."

The cultural houses serve as haveris of warmth and strength for many people of color, but women of color must make special efforts to cope with a w~rld that imposes both racist and sexist stereotypes upon them. Yamashiro explained people are surprised when an Asian American male breaks the stereotype of passivity and quietness, but they usually attribute his success to his self-assured qualities as an American male. "Asian women are seen as extremely passive, submissive, nondescript, following two or three paces behind their husbands," Yamashiro said.

"Most of the Asian American women I know consider our identity distinct from the Asian woman stereotype, because of our level of education, our involvement in the women's movement and our drive for independence and personal fulfillment.

Yet when we assert ourselves people react even more strongly to us, because we are opposing the stereotyped picture."

Some white men believe the stereotypes portraying women of color as passive, exotic or sensual. Women of color, nonetheless, often remain closet girlfriends . Michelle, '86, an Asian woman who preferred not to use her real name, recalled her relationship with a white student at Yale. "I went out with this real jock who thought I was someone he could see just every so often. He didn't want to show me to his white friends . I felt as if I was dating two people. On the outside he was real jocky and one of the guys and with me he was fme, really sweet and considerate. After months of dealing with this I felt I had really hurt myself. I told him, 'Look, you really have a problem because you're white and I'm Asian and you can't deal with it. I'm not

here to teach you and rm not going to take you through it .' I told him one day he would have to choose which person he wanted to be and he said he really felt he had to be tough for people to accep t him.''

Black women, who far outnumber black me n at Yale, fmd the dating situation frustrating. Yet if they date white men they r isk the label "mallomar"- a chocolate covered marshmallow, white on the inside. Asian women in the same situation are sometimes called "twinkies" or "bananas." Many women of color must come to terms with the "brown paper bag syndrome" in which the woman believes she is more beautiful if her features are European and her skin lighter than a brown paper bag.

Women of color use many different strategies to handle race and gender issues. When Yamashiro flrst went to AASA it was a predominantly male organization. A group of AASA women had difficulty finding a means of expression and left to form their own support group. "This year as editor of The AsU:m Ammcanjournal aJ Yale I encourage Asian women to express their views in the magazine," Yamashiro said, "because a lot of Asian men need to be sensitized to f~minist viewpoints. The AsU:m American Journal is more neutral than Aurora, which most men won't touch."

While Yamashiro works within AASA, some women of color have formed support groups separate from the major, cultural organizations. The Black Undergr aduate Women's Group, ~ated in 1981, serves as a strong support network for about 15 members.

Latina Perspectives, active in the '70s. has periodically tried to revive itself, but some Latina women wor ry that the group will further fragment an already small Latin population on campus. /., N4

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silena:, women of color often feel more reluctant to speak out because of a conSJ>icuousness they sense in social situations

and predominantly white classrooms.

Take the example of a Women's Studies class which had a section on women of color. R eferring to a novel, the professor asked, "How does this black woman feel?"

M any people turned to look at the only black woman in the room. Of course she could not speak for all black women, but many women of color feel pressured to act as spokespeople for entire races.

Silence can paralyze a woman of color in her daily life. When asked what silence meant to her, Ayala replied, "It means being choked. It means not being heard even when you do open your mouth and words come out. It means my existence.

It's what we are, and not always by choice.

When it is my choice, usually it's a means of survival. Sometimes it's giving up and saying, 'I'm not going to make a difference anyway.' Sometimes it's just trying to stay alive with your mind intact."

Former editor of Aurora, Catherine Liu, BK '85, an Asian woman who comes from a wealthy, predominantly white suburb, tries to fight silence as best she can.

"There's so much to be done. There is racism and sexism on every front- in the media, filin, literature, everywhere-and you can really begin to despair," Liu said.

"But you have to try to fulfill what is possible for you. Don't try to shoot the moon, because I don't think that's politically effecti...-e. J ust affUTn what you ha\.'e and what you can do. You may think, 'Okay. m y friend has made a racist comment. Should I say anything or do an>'thing? I mean, that won't change the world.' But it's available to you! You have a mouth , you can talk! This is what you can do and you've got to do it."

Liu has worked actively in the Women's Center, unlike many women of color who believe women unsympathetic to their concerns dominate the Center. "There are many women there who don't realize a lot of things they do are based on the privilege of being white and wealthy," Liu said. "It's been incredibly frustrating and after a certain point you think, 'Am I committed to sticking around here despite the fact I know there are all these things wrong with it?' Then you realize you've made a commitment and you're going to stick it out. Maybe by just being there you've made a statement."

Women of color can break the silence not only in campus organizations, but also in classroom s and social situations.

Unfortunately, all people of color will probably have to continue explaining themselves to the dominant white culture, but if the white community does not listen, then voices fade in silence and misunderstandings continue.

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poetry copyright 1983 Kilchm Tahk: Women of Co/Qr Press The New JournaVMarch I, 1965 27

Feminist Voices Anne Applebaum ÂŤTalJc to mry worrum a1 Yale andyou'U. hear a sflJry, a sflJry ahout being a worrum a1 Yale, and how thai isn'tlik being a rrum at Yale. The more women you talJc to, the more sflJries you'U. hear."'

"A discu ssion of sexu al politics has to go beyond the question of who you sleep with."

Feminism at Yale does not exist in one place in the way the Philosophy Department resides in Connecticut Hall or the H istory Department in the Hall of Graduate Studies. Noli can it be defmed as one unified ideology or set of beliefs. Yet because feminist politics and activism do not have an official voice in the University, cliches and stereotypes are often employed to describe the opinions and positions of Yale feminists.

The two most visible women's organizations, Aurora, Yale's feminist magazine, and the Yale Women's Center, have suffered from particularly harsh characterizations. Although neither claims to represent all feminists or all women at Yale, both have been accused in the past of taking a crudely ideological approach to women's issues. They have been called monolithic, extremist and too radical for Yale to take seriously.

Yet one can hear as many reasons for participation in Women's Center activities as there are participants and as many reasons for editing and writing for Aurora as there are editors and writers. Nadia Tchao, OC '84, who is co-editor of Aurora this semester, asked, "I wonder whether we shouldn't stop talking about feminism and start talking about feminisms."

It would have been difficult for Aurora to have indoctrinated Tchao, and co-editor Minona Yin, DC '85, into any specific set of beliefs, because neither had been heavily committed to the magazine before this semester. Yin had never been to an Aurora meeting, and Tchao had been to only a few. Both, however, had previously been involved in publishing Diakcts, an Asian American women's magazine that appeared as a supplement to Aurora last spring. Because of Aurords non-hierarchical, cooperative structure, such personnel changes are not uncommon to the magazine and are even encouraged. Tchao says her decision to edit Aurora stems in part from her desire to inject it with new ideas. She explained, "An integral part of feminism is its constant reevaluation of itself and constant redefmition of its own terms. Feminists have to question themselves in the same way they question the assumptions of others."

Tchao recognizes her desire to bring new perspectives to Aurora may not necessarily lead to a new reception for the magazine on campus. She explained, "Both the community that does read Aurora and the community that doesn't already think they know wh at Aurora is. It's hard to struggle out of that kind of framework." Since its first appearance as a supplement to Zirkus in 1979, and its fll'st official publication in 1980, Aurora has been labelled a "dyke magazine" and an extremist publication.

One article it printed four years ago provoked accusations that the magazine's editors were "man-haters."

28 The New JoumaiiMarch I, 1985

Sylvia Brownrigg in the Yale Women's Center The New journaVMarch I, 1985 29

Tchao believes people resort to these harsh characterizations because "It's easy. It's easy to write something off as extremist, to label it and dismiss it, since then you don't have to listen to what it's saying." Aurords art editor, Liz Schindler, DC '85, added, "It's especially easy to ignore something that looks on the outside like it doesn't have a lot of power or money behind it."

Tchao and Schindler dislike placing strict definitions on their own feminism just as they dislike the glib defmitions so often assigned to Aurora. Tchao explained, "I'm always hesitant to use the word radical because it might not mean the same thing to the person l'm talking to as it does to me." Instead Tchao prefers to think of fem inism as a process of questioning traditional assumptions, both her own and others. "It comes down to the problem of understanding power hierarchies, and recognizing your place in them," she stated. "To realize the way the world works is to realize where you fit into tha t world in te rms of power , and who's controlling the structure of things.

Then you might want to ask if that structure is one you really want to be a part of."

Since the magazine's inception, one of Aurords main objectives has been to maintain a constant process of questioning both itself and the Yale community.

J essica Peaslee, DC '86, has been on Aurords staff for two years and observed, "The magazine's tone changes every semester, because the magazine's philosophy gets redefined eve r y semester." Susan Moon, DC '86, who also works on the magazine's staff, explained , "A urora is very conscious of the information it puts out, and of how people will read it."

T chao offers her Yale ed ucation as another example of how one m ight learn to reexailline assumptions. "Yale has exposed me to what is possible in the world and yet a t the same time has shown me what is not possible for m e because I'm not wh ite and I'm not male. Yale has made me painfully aware of who I am and who I am not." Schindler has a different memory of becoming a feminist.

30 The New journal/March I, 1985

She explained, "I never questioned that I had the same opportunities as a man, and becoming more 'radical' hasn't been that b ig a shift; I've just gained a better understanding of things. Feminism has made me aware of how people's lives have been shaped by roles that have already been set up, and I don't want my life to be regulated by a series of preexisting standards. I want to direct it myself, and maybe to go beyond the structure of society as it is already set up.

Paradoxically," she explained, "Yale has given me the language to criticize the values that it stands for as an institution."

Unlike Tchao, Sylvia Brownrigg, SY '86, began working for Aurora at the beginning of her freshman year. By the second semester she had become one of the magazine's co-editors. Brownrigg explained that her original attraction to the magazine "had to do with the strength and powerful convictions of the women who were involved. I saw people working hard to communicate their ideas. and beliefs to other people." Brownrigg does not believe the women running Aurora and the Women's Center are less committed now than they were three years ago, but does agree the magazine's tone has changed in that period of time.

"When I f1rst carne here," she said, "I perceived the lesbian feminist crowd as being pretty formative of a lot of the feminist politics around here, and I don't think that's true anymore." Brownrigg attr ibutes this change partly to the fact that gay issues have become more familiar to the Yale community than they were in the past. "It's not so unusual to be gay now, whereas I think five years ago the lesbian community was very set apart from the rest of the student body."

Brownrigg does q uestion how deep this acceptance runs. "I heard recently that a group held an anti-GLAD dance this year; so there continues to !:>e a need for a lesbian feminist voice at Yale."

Brownrigg r id icules accusations that Aurora was ever an exclusively lesbian publication. She points out that although the staff has always consisted of gay and straight men and women, the magazine's re¡adership persists in defming the entire

magazine by its most radical articles, often not even reading the others. In the Fall 1983 issue, Brownrigg and the magazine's other editors consciously attempted to present a broad range of issues and ideas aimed at many different men and women at Yale. A subseq uent review in the Yale Daily NewJ panned the ¢Jltire issue. Brownrigg recalled, "The author implied that th e inclusion of a vocal lesbian politics in one part of the magazine meant Aurora would be interesting only to lesbians and that straight women would be too th reatened to read it.

"People fmd what they want to fmd in Aurora. In one editorial I talked, metaphorically' about skin touching other skin; the article was making a point about race. A friend of mine asked me why I'd had to write so explicitly about lesbian sexuality-which was not at all the point of the article.

"In any case," Brownrigg continued, "there are some ways in which I'm vulnerable as a gay woman that are not the same as for my straight friends, but the broadest range of feminist concerns apply equally to straight and gay women.

A discussion of sexual politics h as to go beyond the question of who you sleep with and begin discussing the exchange of power that goes on between any two people who are sexually involved." She agrees with Tchao and Schindler in observing, "People seem to want to link Aurora to lesbianism because th en they think it doesn't apply to them. Fe m inism encourages both men and wom en to make changes in their everyday lives, and I think people are afraid of that."

As for accusations that Aurora excludes men, Brownrigg replied, "I don't feel feminism excludes men any more than race politics exclucle wh ite people. I think some men may feel th reatened by feminism because it's trying to change the status quo. On the other hand," she added, "there are men who are sensitive to feminist issues on an individual level who fmd that feminist politics on a m ass level excludes them. When someone starts talking about masculine values or masculine structures~ they feel im-

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mediately implicated, which isn't necessarily true. Men don't have to be trapped in roles they don't want any more than women do."

Karin Cope, BK '85-, remembered being afraid to go into the Women's Center her freshman year. "I had this abstract fear that if I walked in, something was going to happen. I don't know what," she said. "Maybe they would just ask me some · hard questions." Cope is the 1984-85 co-coordinator of Women's Center activities, which this semester include investigations into the problem of sexual harassment and the lack of tenured women faculty. The Women's Center also schedules time for meetings of the Women's Political Caucus, Yalesbians, the Feminist Film Society and Aurora. It publishes From the CeniD, a biweekly newsletter, and Cope plans to organize coalitions among the various women's groups on campus and other organizations. Last semester's strike closed the Center, but Cope hopes it can begin "maintaining a feminist voice on campus," by bringing in speakers, holding forums and writing editorials in campus publications. Cope adds that the Center contains a library of books relating to women's issues and provides a place where anyone can fmd people who have thought a lot about feminism and about the kinds of effects it can have on their lives. Cope believes the Center also fills a more symbolic function: "Most of us need to go back only one generation to realize the huge difference between what our mothers did or thought they could do and what we expect in our lives.

So there's a need right now for institutions that both preserve the memory of the past and do something towards fulfilling those new expectations."

The Yale Women's Center has not always been a familiar fixture on the Yale campus. It dates back to the early 1960s when it was called the New Haven Women's Liberation Center and had offices in a small Yale-owned building on Park Street. The University terminated its lease in 1972, Cope alleged, because the women who ran it engaged in too much activism and protest. In 1976 six undergraduate women petitioned the

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The New Journal/March I, 1985 31

The members of Local35 and Local34 at Yale deeply appreciate the support of the community in our recent struggles. We could not have been successful without that support.

Fair settlements would not have been achieved without the concern and hard work of so many Yale students, faculty members, managerial and professional employees, alumni, parents, chaplains, and others in the Yale community, and so many in the labor movement, community organizations, the clergy (especially the Association of New Haven Clergy), the women's movement, and many members of both the New Haven Board of Aldermen and the state .legislative delegation from the Greater New Haven area. literally thousands of people from all walks of life, locally and nation-wide, helped in large and small ways. We hope that we do not offend those thousands if we mention by name, because their behind-the-scenes efforts toward a settlement have not been publicized, Congressman Bruce Morrison and his staff, who worked tirelessly to persuade both parties to compromise, and Senator Lowell Weicker.

We believe that our success benefits the entire community. Everyone, including the Yale administration, is a winner when an important part of the community gains new respect.

In Local 35, the achievement of strong job security, and preference for hiring and subcontracting at Yale for minorities and women, will contribute to the economic

progress of the people of Greater New Haven.

Yale, as New Haven's largest employer, has historically set a low salary standard for clerical and technical employees, and so the significant beginning Local 34 has made toward economic equality will benefit many in this area, and perhaps nationwide. The substantial increases for both Unions in pension benefits, and in medical protection for retirees, will help end Yale's role as a contributor to poverty among the elderly in New Haven.

The whole community is also a winner if the Yale Corporation finally sees the need to develop a constructive labor relations policy and a fair approach to collective bargaining. If that turns out to be true, the community can be spared the incalculable costs, and the turmoil and division, of the 16-year history of labor strife at Yale.

Nationally, our success will provide hope to the millions of others resisting the anti-worker offensive by managements today, and especially to working women and minorities determined to end economic discrimination in America.

We are using this way of thanking all those who supported us directly, and all those who contributed to ensuring that the strike would not resume, because we cannot 'hope to thank each of you individually.

<> Locals 34 and 35, Federation of University Employees, AFL-CIO 88 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511 865-3259 paid advertisement

32 The New J ourn aV Ma rch 1, 1985

To all of you: thanks!

Hartford Courant, January 27, 1985

Women's Work at Yale Wins Respect By l u d nd a Finley The contract ratified last week between Yale University and Local34 of the Federation of University Employees n•pres4mts one of the mos: successful forays to date by the labor movement into women-dominated sectors of the white-collar work force.

Most unions have devoted msufhcient attention to organizing wh•te-collar workers. and when they have attempted to do so they have often failed to adapt their message to the needs of women.

They have also met with resistance from white-collar employees who do not want to be assoaated w1th a male-and bluecollar oriented orgamzation The Yale un•on adopto:d from the outset a grassroots. democratic appro.>ch. w1th the seeds of the orgamzabon coming from wllhm rhe Un•on's agenda came from the workers, so the union was sens1t1ve to the concerns of the largely female work force.

The clerical workers felt that they were not getting the respe<:t or recompense that they deserved for their contribution to the educational enterprise at Yale.

This low status was evidenced by wages far lower than the male blue-collar workers' wages and insuffic•ent to support a family. a salary structure that kept women clustered m low labor gradcs and gave no rewards for longev•ty of service, a meager pens•on plan and often diSdamful treatment by admm•strators and supervisors.

The contract addresses each of these concerns, through an across-the-board wage increase, a system of salary step mcreasc for years of service at Yale, sign•f•cant •mprovement m the pension formula. and procedures for reVIeWlng Job class.Jic.,bons. promotions and layoffs.

The contract is the culmination of a un•on's efforts to address the issue of comparable worth At Yale, admm•strahve assistants who ran entire departments and lab techn•c•ans responsible for experiments conducted under valuable grants often eamed Jess than the mostly male workers who drive trucks and perform maintenance services for Yale.

According to the union, the salary disparities existed, not because their jobs were less important or entailed less responsibility, but because their jobs have traditionally been v1ewed as women's work.

Economics professor Raymond Fa.. performed a statistical analys•s that suggested salary d•spanties across JOb rankmgs between women and minontiesand other workers. dispanties that could not be explained away by facto .... ~uch as d1fferences in educat•on. years of sen;ce, and JOb respons•b•hty Not only will the across-the-board o;alary mcreases m the Yale contract bnng the sa lanes 1n male and female JOb categories closer together, but the provision for annual mcreases •s designed to bring the salaries of currently undervalued workers more in hne with their actual responsibilities and profess•onal development.

All of this has been achieved witho ut re ducing th e salaries in the predom inantly m a le job categories.

All ol th•s has been ach1eved Without reducmg the ~lanes m the predonunantly male JOb c;ategones. thus calhng into question the stock retort that any companble worth "age ga•n for women workers Will have to come at the expense of m('n But could the deb1htating lO·weet.. stnk~ ha,·e been avo1dcd' U, after weeks of msistmg that u could not spareanoth,•r penny, Yale finally found more to g•ve m the wanmg da~ s tx>fore th .. dcadhnc for a second stnke, whv couldn't 11 have made these proposals m September?

Some members of the un•on negotiating team testified to a ma rkedly different attitude d•splaycd by th(' unJVers•ty negotiators 1n the past few weeks. an attitude evmcang a palpable desuc toach1eve an agreement Oesp•te publiC pronouncements bv th~ Yaleadmm•stratlon that the educational process was not bemg hampered. many uf us who are an mtegral part of that process know that the contra~· •s true Manv classes. mcludmg most at the law school, were mov._.d off campus to locations of varv~ng mcom en•enc~ Class time was l~t as students shuttled around town

My classes in labor law and torts. for example, were held in an office building near the Palace Theater on College Street in New Hav~nwith construction noises outside the window. l also taught in the hVIng room of a peace organization, complete with chairs in vari~us.stages of l_osing their springs and stuffing and two large cats that tns1stcd on chmbtng on my shoulders every time I wasaboutto make a serious point. We qu•ckly moved out of there.

Those whose classes remamed on campus found that some students would not attend rather than engage in thc cns•s of consc1ence of crossing a p•cket hne Thus. some students had a ~mester On tape, a divers1ty Of VIeWS WaS MISSing from the classroo~, and classes were polanzed along largely political lines.

The mterchange o f 1deas. formal and mformal, that is so •mportant to the scholarly and educational process. broke down Speakers and workshops were canceled W1th no dining halls, a nd classes scattered, opportumties for students to see each other and to see faculty, were limited The few hallway or streetcorner encounters with colleagues that did occur focused on thc s trike, rather than on scholarly ideas.

In some departments, junior faculty and teaching assistants reported that they had been pressured not to take actions that could be Vlt-wed as support•ve of the un•on Many faculty members now doubt whether Yale 1s senously comm•tted to to thc princ•ples of open exchange of ideas and academ1c freedom that it espoused m •ts pubhc commumcatlons dunng the stnke One can only hope that the adm•n•stratlon learns from the demorahzmg expenence of thc stnke As a professor of labor relations law, I wassometimesd1smayed by the way the process was conducted.

At the outset of negohatlons, the rumor was that the umvers•ty team was not takmg the workers' concerns ~cnously, and was not makmg much of an effort to respond to proposals.

I attended several negotlatmg sess•ons last spring and summl•r as a faculty observer, and what I saw verified the rumors. 1\t thc first session, I detectcd an aud•ble expre~ion of relief rom some members of the university negotlatmg team that there were no faculty members in attendance That day the observers' chairs were •II occup•ed by women The negotiators' faces looked startled when. at the day's end, l•ntroduced myself as a Jaw professor and two other you ng women •dent1fled thl'mselvesasfaculty members Throughout other se~"on-. thl' unl\ers•ty team met every umon proposal not w1th d•scuss1on. but w1th "we'll have to get back to you on that.• They d1d not get back on most •ssues Th•s 1s not toosurpns•ng. ~mce th~adm1mstrat1on d1d not send anyone mto thc negotiating room w1th the•uthontytocomm•t Yale un•tl the last few weeks Th1s •~ a cud1nal m1stake 1n labor ncgot•at•ons. In order to ach•eve a contract each sidc has to have at the table a representative who h.ls the authont)· to agree and to offer comprom•ses or to make countl'roffers that can be fulfilled.

The admmistration comm•tted another labor negotiations mistake by takmg a st rong pubhc stance aga•n~t bandmg arbitration. Yall• al!><> pubhcly comm•tted Itself to •ts lite September offer as 1ts final offer When e1ther s•de m a labor negollat•on takes 1ts pos•tlons beyond the table to the pubhc as an • bsolute,•t •soften left w1th httle or no room to comprom1st> Sav1ng fac~ can somet1mes become mor" •mportant than set1hng • contract One can only hope that th~ ~~~ns karned from the stnkt> will be lasting and that )alt>'s o;orrv h"tor~ of <ankcs to ac:h1eve labor contracts Will end Un•ons do not nc-cess.anlv mean an end to •tab•htv productiVIty and harm.•ny m a "'ork force. Indeed. recent scholarly empmcal work demon~tat~sthat 11 1S often management's response to umons that IS more dl'termmat" e of work-place dynam•cs than the mere prescnce of the umon A management that IS d1sdamful to un1on representatives. that fa1ls to explam ots concerns and deal w1th the1rs, even after a un•on has won an election. mayonlyproducdnr•tselfanemb•ttered wurk force that •s all the more w1lhng to use «onomJC pressure Yale, however, can be cons•dert>d a wmner '" th1s labor d1spute Indeed. the un•ver~uy sh••uld be proud. as an •nstltutlon Sft'lung new solution~ to soc•etal problem-. to have concludt>d a contract that repr.·<ents ~a'"''" d•gn•tv. wage comparab1hty and power o•er theu o-..n workmp; II\<.'S for tradJIIOnall) underappr~Jated and under-valu~d wumen wh1te-collar workers l.tton.ta Frn/,'1(

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University for a "women's space," which was fmally created in the basement of Hendrie Hall. The Women's Center moved to its present location on Elm Street only five years ago, the same year Aurora ftrst appeared as an independent publication.

When Cope reflected upon her earlier reluctance to become involved in women's issuesLshe concluded her change pf heart came from encountering intellectual and social obstacles at Yale she had never run into before. Like many Yale women, Cope said, "I used to be a feminist without labeling myself that way, because I had feminist expectations about what was possible for me to do in the world. Now, my feminism has to do with a certain attitude, a coming to terms with my right to be angry, my right to fight for what I expect." She has talked to many alumnae who had nothing to do with the Women's Center when they were here. "When they left Yale, tried to get jobs, tried to get paid, tried to buy cars, tried to get credit, but couldn't because they weren't married, they changed their m inds and called themselves feminists."

Cope is often asked what the purpose of the Women's Center is and has no trouble simply stating, "Yale gives women a superficial and sometimes false sense of equality, but women have the same problems here they do anywhere else. Women at Yale are beaten, sexually harassed and raped.

Someone has to make the University deal with these problems. If there wasn't an advocate for women's issues on campus, a lot of those questions would be allowed to disappear." She also described some more subtle reasons why women at Yale might need a space dedicated solely to their needs. "There are whole systems of protection set up for men here where women don't neces~arily have a place , institutions here that women cannot be a part of. Actually, we have a joke that goes, 'the University is the men's center."'

Bernice Hausman, TC '84, now cocoordinator of the Women's Political Caucus, had a different kind of first encounter with the Women's Center.

Hausman became involved in Women's Center projects her freshman year because she was impressed with the discussions she heard there. "I had never before come into contact with people talking so honestly about sexual, personal and political issues." Hausman ran the ERA task force for the Women's Political Caucus her sophomore year but remained dissatisfied with the atmosphere she found at Yale. She took the next year ofT, "mainly to get a sense of myself as a woman outside of a male place like Yale."

Hausman had been frustrated with the absence or paucity of women in some of her courses and disappointed with the classes she took that did deal specifically with women. "There are some very superficial ways of discussing women's issues, ways that overlook some of the real problems. Sometimes everyone's so willing to agree, real discussion peters out."

H ausman remembers one class in particular where she observed "bad feelings between the white women in the class and the women of color, feelings that were never expressed until the last day of class."

Hausman thinks her m isunderstandings about the problem of race in the women's movement confused her own defmition of feminism. She now believes, "It's easy for white women to say we should all organize together,

because we want everyone in our group, and it's hard for us to see that a lot of the concerns are very different for women of different backgrounds and racial identities." . Since the beginning of the women's movement, the issue of race has initiated much controversy. Brownrigg noted, "In the early days, women's rights activists believed we had to present a united front to get anything done. Now I think we've come to the point where we can afford to question ourselves on that issue, and this has recently become a very important concern for feminists at Yale." Hausman recognizes that the Women's Political Caucus consists predominantly of white women, but she believes, "The thing to do is to form coalitions around certain issues we can work on together, while recognizing that our existence and status at Yale are very different. One has to respect that difference, understand that difference and state that difference constantly in order to remain aware of it."

This awareness of difference, not a consciousness of ideological or personal similarity, is ironically the most obvious link between different kinds of feminist beliefs and politics at Yale. Thus Nadia Tchao believes feminism is destined to become a "sometimes uncomfortable plurality." Bernice Hausman believes feminism will have to learn to provide

"more guidance, more understanding of what it means to be a woman at Yale.

There aren't any models out there, and there are never going to be any that everyone can use," and Karin Cope speaks about helping women to fulfill feminist expectations. At Yale, women's organizations have been haunted by stereotypes and condemnatory labels, and yet the women who write for feminist publications and who give their time to women's political and social issues share no unifying principle, not even a simple definition of the word "feminism."

But even if feminist politics now holds itself responsible for an enormous range of issues, from sexual harassment to racial discrimination, Liz Schindler still believes, "There's something we can do besides sinking into despair after we realize how remote are other people's experiences from our own." Along these lines, Sylvia Brownrigg concluded, "I don't know how much of what goes on in the Women's Center has an outside effect or changes people's opinions, but by being visib le we show the rest of the Yale community that problems exist, and people exist who are very willing to devote time and effort towards eradicating them."

â&#x20AC;˘Anne Applebaum, Managing Editor

a junior m Pierson, is

of TN].

The New Journal/March I, 1985 35

Seeing with New Eyes Pam Thompson "There are huge silences, great yawning gaps in our knowledge of women's place in history."

36 The New joumal/March I, 1985

Tucked in the corner of a parking lot between College and Temple Streets stands a small yellow building. Across its walls an unknown graffiti artist has scrawled "there is no justice, just us" in red spray paint.

Despite its nondescript appearance this little building has a name-Corbey Court-and a functi6n. It houses Yale's Affirmative Action Office and the Women's Studies Program.

For most Yale students, women's studies is as peripheral academically as its office is architecturally. Many probably have not reached the back of the Blue Book to examine the department's listings. Many more have never thought of women's studies as a discipline and, if pressed, reveal they do not really understand its purpose. But for those professors and students involved in women's studies it is not at all peripheral, it is of central importance. Liz Carver, SM '85, a Women's Studies major, suggests it means "reorganizing the entire way you look at the world." According to Helene Wenzel, director of undergraduate studies (DUS) of the program, she and others have viewed women's studies as "an epistemological revolution within the hallowed halls of higher education."

The history of the development of women's studies at Yale is not, however, one of sudden revolutionary change, but of gradual academic institutionalization. "When women arrived at Yale, feminism and women's studies were beginning to be very visible political and academic concerns," said Margaret Homans, acting chair of the program. During the first five years of coeducation, departments responded to the pressures of student demand and current scholarship by offering scattered courses focusing on women. At the time, half of the fewer than 10 courses directly involving women's concerns were offered through the Residential College Seminar program. In 1977, Yale College sponsored its first interdisciplinary, introductory course in women's studies. During the following summer term, the College offered 10 courses as an experimental Women's Studies Program. That year the Yale College Committee on the Education of Women (successor to the original U niversity Committee on Coeducation) proposed the permanent establishment of the program .md the faculty approved it in May 1979. With the program's inception the number of courses focusing on women in other departments almost doubled.

According to the program's grant proposal, the founders of Women's Studies at Yale conceived it to be a response to the intellectual needs for both more information about women's lives and contributions and the revision of existing theories which make sense only of men's experience.

Five years after the program's establishment these basic needs are still evident. ¡

Corbey Court , which houses the Women's Studies offices. Above, Helene Wenzel , DUS of the program The New j ournal/M arch I, 1985 37

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At a feminist colloquium in February, Assistant Profesor of English Patricia Joplin told an audience of over 100, "There are huge silences, great yawning gaps in our knowledge of women's place in history."

Joplin organized the colloquium as a response to the structure of Directed Studies, designed to acquaint freshmen with fundamental ideas of Western civilization. "According to the Directed Studies syllabi, it seems women do not become human until 1927 with the publication of Virgin~ Woolfs To tht Lightho~," said Joplin, who teaches literature in Directed Studies. The Women's Studies Program seeks to fill the yawning gaps of which joplin speaks.

"Introduction to Women's Studies and Feminist Thought" is the program's most basic course and a prerequisite to the major. "It demands that we reexamine the way we approach everything," saidjackie Raphael, a sophomore who took the course last term. Helene Wenzel, who teaches the course, begins the term with a unit on literature. She asks students to think not only about how people use language and create literature but how this language and literature influences their lives and thought. The course also includes units such as "psychology and sexuality" and "feminism, class and race."

This course, like many other Women's Studies classes, aims not only to reexamine traditional subject matter but also to change the traditional method of teaching and learning. Students and professors are often on a first name basis; lectures often become discussions.

"Dialogues, not lectures, are the norm in Women's Studies classes," Carver explained. Associate Professor of Psychology Faye Crosby said of her experience teaching a Women's Studies intermediate seminar entitled "Men, Women and Power," "The Women's Studies students were often more radical than I. My assumptions were challenged and I really learned." "Women's studies presents ~ methodology of teaching which tries to expkxle ideas of hierarchy.

The teacher and student seem closer," said Raphael, now taking her second Women's Studies class. Wenzel even re-

quires students in the introductory course to keep personal journals of their growth inside and outside the classroom.

"It all becomes so personal," said Neena Malik, TD '88. "You really process what you learn instead of just assimilating knowledge."

Both the reexamination of traditional subject matter and the transformation of traditional educational methods make wbmen's studies "the epistemological revolution" Wenzel describes. The addition of women authors to syllabi like those in Directed Studies or "The European Literary Tradition" necessitates not only reading women authors but questioning the very nature of a literary canon. "Learning about the arbitrary and historical construction of a canon should be a valuable part of an education in the humanities," Joplin asserted. The inclusion of women in the subject matter of a literature class, a history class, a psychology class, or any class where they have been absent, logically leads to a d iscussion of why they have been traditionally excluded. "Women's studies makes people reconsider what actually is scholarly," said Assistant Professor of English Harriet Chessman. "Should academia really be life in a tower?"

"When you begin to learn about the gaps in traditional scholarship, you start thinking about power- who creates reality as we know it?" Carver asked. Questioning the notion of the literary canon or the idea of history requires an examination of the power structur~ that held them static for so long. When discussion runs to power, it becomes political.

Carver commented that she often hears, "Why women's studies? Isn't it too narrow, too political to be academically viable?"

People connected ~ith women's studies dismiss this argument by replying that the entire world of academia is political.

Carver elaborated:¡ "The word political has often been used as a derogatory term about women's studies. But everything about Yale is political-the way it is structured and run, the way faculty appointments are made and curricula created. I think Women's Studies is just acutely aware of this." â&#x20AC;˘ Despite the political implications of the

r

iThe Tenure Gap When Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature Margie Ferguson served as a resident advisor in Morse in the early years of coeducation, she heard many complaints from women students who felt part of a minority on display. "I think it was partly through hearing them articulate their problems that I came to understand how one feels as a minority on the faculty here," said Ferguson, who earned a graduate degree at Yale.

If, as according to some, the quality of life for tenured women professors is satisfactory, why have over 20 percent of the women given tenure by Yale left for positions elsewhere? Yet if women comprise half of the new term appointments in the humanities, is this evidence of sexual discrimination?

Since the release of last year's Crothers Report on the status of tenured women at Yale, debates regarding the female faculty continue.

The report stated that in the past six years the number of tenured women faculty has increased by one position. while a total of 17 tenured positions were filled. Of Yale's 32 academic departments, only 12 have tenured women. If current trends in the humanities continue, the number of tenured women would not match the doctoral pool until 2024.

"At the moment prospec ts are nil [for more tenured women) in our department, and there probably won't be any for another three to four years unless the University grants new tenured positions," said Sophia Simmonds. director of undergraduate studies in Molecular Biology and Biophysics.

"Every place I've been tenured. I've been the only woman," said Ruth Marcus, professor of philosophy . She recalled graduate schools with a total of three to five women students. "You couldn't even compute the percentage of them," she said. "But it could be 50 percent in another few years." The pool of women graduating with Ph . D's is used to gauge a reasonable figure for women in tenure track positions. Marcus mentioned that as of 1984. 43. 1 percent of doctoral candidates in comparative literature were female, while Yale had no tenured women in that department.

For Yale's tenured women, increased TeSPQnsibilities and job security · are

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closely linked. According to Ferguson, the first woman professor promoted from the ranks of her department, "If you're a man you can afford to say, 'No, I don't have time to serve on this committee,' but if you're a woman and the dean calls and asks you to be on a c.:ommittee, often you want the woman's point of view heard." She described the time restrictions resulting from "being somewhat overcommitted to committees" and advising the many graduate students who want to work with her.

"It's striking they're all women at the moment. There's some sexual channeling there," she said.

Linda Colley, a Cambridge graduate and one of the few female associate professors in the History Department, noticed another form of channeling.

"People are more likely to assume that because I'm female I tend to do women's history."

"The really nasty thing about this system is that the years from the late teens until age 35 are taken by establishing oneself in the profession. Those are the childbearing years. One of the main accusations from men who don't think women should have more numbers is that women don't produce as much because they have more dis· tractions."

According to the Crothers Report. in the next six years 60 tenure spots should open in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The Report's major recommendation was to increase the number of tenured women to 30 by that time, doubling the present number. Recently the number of non-tenured women on the faculty increased , while the total size of the faculty decreased. Professor of English Marie Borroff, who received tenure in the early 1960s, spoke op· timistically about the results of the report. which she helped present . .. \\'e're all aware of the problem in the department, and given the quality of the nontenured women coming up. more and more women ought to get tenure.'"

Simmonds, however, offered a word of caution to women planning to teach in her field: "The main thing I think women have to realize is, equal oppor· tunity laws or no, they've got to be a lit· tie bit better than their male <·om~ti­ tion."

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current Women's Studies Program, its founders de-emphasizerl this element at its inception. According to Sarah Wilson, a graduate student who has researched the development of Women's Studies at Yale, the program was established with language expressly academic rather than political. "The rationale was always made along academic lines- no explicit connection was made between Women's Studies and the feminist movement." Wenzel affirmed this: "When Women's Studies started to happen here, it was deliberately not made a political enclave. Students who came into Women's Studies classes wanted a distinction between women's studies and feminist politics." And yet this type of separation is almost impossible. When in 1938 Virginia Woolf wrote in Three Guineas about the need for a new kind of education that would incorporate women, she linked the old male education to the perpetuation of war: ". . . the education of the old colleges breeds neither a particular respect for liberty nor a particular hatred of war ... " Today on this campus, Margaret Ferguson, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and other feminist professors have linked women's studies with changes in the economic and class structure- an issue during Local 34's strike. At the feminist colloquium, Ferguson asserted, "It is not enough to change the formal curriculum-we must change who has access to it."

The political nature of the department often offends people outside of Women's Studies. When Neena Malik decided to take the introductory course in the fall , she was warned by other students it would be a "hostile" class. She took the course anyway. "It was not hostile per se, but there was an assumption that everyone in the class was a feminist."

Tom Ascheim, JE '85, an American studies m~or who shopped the course, found the assumptions unreasonable. "I didn't feel particularly welcome and I was tired of the atmosphere of moral correctness." He decided against enrolling in the course.

Homans expressed concern that the reputation of Women's Studies among undergraduates like Ascheim and Malik's friends does not .at all match with

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I n the academic treatment of art, women cannot easily create their own traditions and follow new philosophies. Men exclusively have defined art is tic standards. The question then arises; with What artistic standards should the work and opinions of women artists be 'analyzed?

"I was always encoura~d to look at past an, but none of the artists inspired me. ;rhey were all male. It has always bothered me that women artists have been overlooked. It bothers my art. It's hard to be inspired by a tradition that doesn't speak to you," said Dominique Dibbell, DC '86, a discouraged art m~jor who has taken the semester off to rethink her plans.

She feels women artists do not necessarily subscribe to traditional views Of art. For instance, female and male painters approach painting the female nude in entirelv different wavs. \\!omen painters do oot depict the' archetypal female as their male counterparts might-but the latter's portrayal sets and follows tradition.

Both Dibbell and Karen, '86, an artist who preferred not to be named, expressed frustration with the Art Department's painting program and its llack of focus on women in art history. Art fhistory books seldom acknowledge women artists, and frustration increases (because professors here very rarely 'address that conspicuous absence. Stu· Clents are not referred to the work of women artists. "It would be impossible to talk to a teacher about how women's unagery might differ from men's or the difference a woman's consciousneo;c; might make. Most professors would be skeptical of making any such distinction," Karen said. Dibbell remembered when History Of Art Professor Robert Herbert took the time to research works of women artists in hia course "An in the Machine Age." re Dibbc.-11 gained inspiration from the work of an artist, a woman artist.

These women assert the technical Philosophy of Yale's painting program is traditional and sometimes stifling. onnalism, the traditional approach, emphasizes the "grammatical" struc:ture Ol a painting over its subjecti,·e content, aid Roger Tibbets, director of undergraduate studies in the Art

Department. Formalism stresses expn•ssion through the relationship of spc:cific colors and shapes rather than an explicit illustrative approach. "The overriding formalism here can be a bias against women artists who are conscious of themselves as such. If you're a woman artist in this time you have to be aware of yourself as a woman. You're deceiving yourself if you're not," Karen said.

"Formalism stifles those who are feminillts and want to say something in their art because it concentrates so much on form that the content in the end is different from what one could get if the message were presented explicitly. The teachers would rather not discuss the content of the: work if it's political."

However, according to Tibbets, formalism is not insensitive to concontent, but creates the basis for its prest•ntation. He also does not view the art produced by '"umen as inherently different from that of men. But Karen objects to this belief. "There's not much spa(e to create S('lf-conscious women's art, but there's not much initiative on the students' part either," she said. "The issue doesn't arise because there is no reference to the• fact that you are a woman."

Subtle bias~s imposed by an O\ crwhelmingly male faculty are im rnt'diately obvious but difficult to overcome...The teachers can empathize with their male students better because in them they see themselves when they were student<:," Karen said. Some professors hold to traditional gender expectations and may expreo;s them in sexist language in lectures.

One othetv. ise ambitious and enthusiastic sophomore architecture major's dissatisfaction with the program stems from the language she hears in the: majority of her architecture classes.

In them professors refer to ..man" as the "molder of space, the designer of space." wV\'ords conjure up images and the images are of something 111 never be: a man ," she said . "As a woman. it is very hard to imagine myself in the position of 'man the dominator of space.' I feel out.,ide the image created for me."

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her pe rceptions of the program. Accord ing to Raph ael, "Women's Studies should n't have to justify itself. When you study things in a traditional way you make assumptions too." A perpetual debate goes on within Women's Studies as to how far the program should bend to explain itself, to make itself acceptable to the mainstream. "I feel there is a danger of simple assim ilation, of losing its power as being a d ifferent vision of things," Chessman said. "But it does seem important to have ways of putting that power into effect."

This debate extends to a familiar one for people connected to Women's Studies: is it better to be autonomous or integrated into the rest of the University?

Autonomous courses are not cross-listed with other departmems and deal specifically with women, such as the introductory course. Integrated courses are offered within other departments and include or focus on women. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH ) 1983 to 1987 grant given to Yale to develop a women's studies curriculum currently funct ions primarily to integrate Women's Studies courses into other departments.

The NEH grant has provided funds to establish, within departments outside of Women's Studies, 10 new courses focusing on women and to revise 11 other courses to include feminist perspectives and women. T h e new courses are ones such as Bryan Wolfs American Studies class "Freud, Feminism and the Arts," and Margaret Ferguson's literature and English class "Renaissance Women of Letters," which English Department DUS Patricia Spacks said, .. includes

material which has probably never been taught before anywhere." R ich ard Brodhead, associate professor of English, teaches one of th e new courses a senior seminar entitled "Social H istory of American Fiction." H e feels his course is an exceUent example of the way women's studies challenges traditional disciplines. "Instead of just stud ying works of literature we study them in relation to a culture. In 19th -century America the largest group of readers were women. You can't study the literature of this time period without studying women." Most of the courses proposed for revision were large, popular classes, such as Gaddis Smith's "The Maritime H istory of the American People," J onathan Spence's Chinese history course and English 129.

"I'm delighted with the results," said Yale CoUege Dean H oward Lamar, speaking of the NEH grant. "The NEH people tOld me that when other people ask for women's studies grants they use the Yale model." Some majors and faculty, however, are concerned the integration emphasis of this grant may lead Women's Studies to become complacent.

The student advisory committee to the Women's Studies P rogram sees a need now for more autonomous courses, like classes in feminist theory.

Another primary con cern is th e issue of tenured women faculty. "Many of the faculty who teach Women's Stud ies courses are junior faculty who will leave," Chessman said. This lends less stability to the course offerings. Wenzel wrote in the August 1983 issue of the Journal of Educational Thought that ". . . the presence

and absence of women directly affect the size, strength, and longevity of any women's studies enterprise, anywhere in the world." Wenzel is actually the only Yale faculty member to have a partial appointment in Women's Studies. Others who teach Women's Studies classes have appointments in other departments.

"This means Women's Studies relies upon faculty to whom it can't dictate- it relies upon ~ will," Chessman said.

"Ideally," asserted Wilson, "Women's Studies should link to the issue of tenuring women."

The scarcity of tenured women on campus reminds feminists involved in Women's Studies that 15 years of coeducation is not a very long time in a place with century-old traditions. "This is a conservative University-even though it's coed now it bears the traces of its original form-a university for men," Chessman said. The Women's Studies Program resides in a somewhat "precarious position," within this University, according to Carver. "Women's Studies is trying to make a place for itself but somehow it is always on the edge. It tries to be a part of academia and yet questions traditional scholarship. Trying to be in two positions at once isn't easy." Wenzel agrees. "I see feminism and women's studies in particular as having to be out of necessity an 'enclave of outsiders' on the inside, working constantly toward the transformation of that very inside space."

Virginia Woolf spoke about just that "enclave of outsiders" in her 7hree Guitws. She might have been talking about Yale's Women's Studies Program when she described the college that the "outsiders"- the women- should found .

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Shared Obsessions Tina Kelley "I have yet to have one Yale woman tell me she does not have a problem with food," said Dr. Francy Howland, New Haven psychiatrist and assistant professor at the Yale Medical School. Eating disorders have reached epidemic proportions on most college campuses, and Yale is no exception. According to one estimate, between 35 and 65 percent of college-age women suffer from either anorexia (dieting and/or exercising to the point of starvation) or bulimia (overeating followed by self-induced vomiting).

Although the medical origins of anorexia and bulimia remain unknown, victims of eating disorders at Yale attribute their diseases to three central factors: problems in their own mental health, pressures in the University environment, and a society which confmes them in unnatural roles.

Weighing 38 pounds more than she did two years ago, Laura looked trim and healthy in her layers of running clothes. She spoke with the intensity of a coach who knows it is possible to win a marathon. Laura was an obligatory runner, an exercise addict. When an injury sophomore year kept her from running, she began dieting and exhibiting signs of anorexia.

"At my worst, I was running four to eight miles in the morning, and eight to 12 at night. I saw someone in Mental Hygiene for five sessions.

When I weighed 100 pounds, I thought I had a problem, but I tried to pretend I didn't. I said to him, 'I don't have a problem, do I?' and he said no. I walked out of there to my best cross country season ev~r. I made All-American, but I paid for it later. My running coach was concerned that I was running more than everyone else, but because I was achieving som ething it didn't seem like a mental illness, which in fact was what it was. No one thought I had a problem except me."

When Laura realized she needed help, she took a term off and went into psychotherapy, where she gained a series of important insights. "My problem is not in my relation to food," she said. "My problem is in me.

M y obsession with food let me hide that. If your main concern is eating and running, more threatening things like classes or getting a job become m inimwn in importance. Food is something we can control. Many women talk of their eating disorders as something that 'happens,' something they have no control over.

"You go in thinking your problem is with food and running, then in analysis you see it's really how you feel about yourself, and that takes a big adj ustm ent. The first is more real, the second is less controllable.

Then you get used to the unsettledness, and you realize you're going to get to know yourself." Laura has been in therapy now for a year and a half, which she feels is unusually long, though most anorexics need at least a year of psychiatric treatment for every year of their disease.

"They told me I looked great, I looked terrific and together. And I was falling ap art inside."

The New JournaVMarch I, 1985 45

Unable to cope with her problem alone, Diane moved in with a friend the second semester of her sophomore year.

"One night at around 3 a.m. my friend took me to DUH [Department of Undergraduate Health, the former name of University Health Services (UHS)) because I just couldn't deal. I talked to the person there in a way I hadn't talked to anyone in weeks. They put me upstairs, and I looked down tfrom the fifth floor and said I'm never going back to that horrible place that made me feel so bad." She took a year off and went into therapy.

Howland believes the pressures of college often intensify problems with food. "I treat an enormous amount of women at Yale with eating disorders," she said, sitting in her Trumbull Street "I'm exhilarated and fascinated by the self-knowledge I've gained, so I stay in it," she said. "In some ways I'm glad I had the problem because I learned about myself, but sometimes I think there's got to be a better way."

As her therapy progressed Laura returned to a normal weight. "Getting better is hard," she admitted. "First of all, it's much easier to lose weight because then you feel directly good about your body. When you gain weight you feel horrible, though everyone says, 'Isn't it wonderful?

You're getting better!' No, you're getting fat." She seemed to spit the word out.

While most anorexics or bulimics at Yale have suffered from the diseases for seven or eight years. se,¡eral believe that the roots of their problems lie not only in themselves but also in the University environment. "Anorexia is a manifestation of a larger form of discrimination which at Yale has a lot to do with being a woman," Diane said. She sat crosslegged, sipping tea in her stylish, sunny apartment. A drawing of a woman's torso hung on the refrigerator door.

"The average freshman comes to Yale and he feels as if he's given a certain amount of authority. and he defines himself in relation to it. She, I should say. She feels powerless, not in control. It's not enough just to b~. when 46 The New Journal/March I, 1985

everyone's so perfection-oriented.

When women to start to control their bodies, it's equated with success. People complimented me when I got skinnier, they told me I looked great, I looked terrific and together. And I was falling apart inside.

"When you arrive here, it's the first time you have adult or sexual responsibilities, or lack of them, and you become conscious of sexual attraction, what 'sexy' is and all of a sudden, what you have to be. I had a boyfriend freshman year who told me every night what parts of my body he thought were too fat. I felt horribly guilty that I hadn't noticed it before.

"I became more and more conscious of my body and my eating habits. I thought he was to blame because he couldn't see bevond that sort of thing in me, but he was expressing a widely and unconsciouslY held belief, that women aren't meant 'to be the way they naturally are-curvy and round."

In adjusting to Yale's competitive life, Diane began to judge herself against her ideal view of body, and her weight dropped to 90 pounds. "You feel your body can never be good enough, therefore you can never be good enough. The anorexic really does feel she's controlling her problems when she's out in the world, but she goes home and bottoms out. She can always be more thin or more successful."

"The dining halls are disastrous for anyone who has problems with food." three-room "office," complete with balcony, fully-equipped kitchen and brass candlesticks over the hearth. The decor makes her patients feel more at home, less institutionalized. She treats close to 45 anorexics o r bulimics.

"I think eating disorders have reached epidemic proportions on most college campuses, and Yale is probably worse than most. You have sensitive, ambitious women here. Many women at Yale unconsciously identify with their fathers, and they haven't come to terms with how to nurture themselves. They haven't internalized their mothers. At Yale they come to internalize the man's world, and Yale is very male. Yale places large demands- there is a need to perform, a need to pretend, a need to sell yourself to the purpose of production. Some people ftll the void symbolically through food. There are so many women at Yale who deny that they have any emotional needs at all."

One bulimic voiced a similar opinion: "You had to be compulsive to get in here, and once you get here you have to be compulsive again."

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Anorexia ncrvosa is a disease nf self- floor. No one would ever guess what starvation . Anorexics often lose up to 25 they've done and that it aflccts the mapercent of their bod>· weight through jority of women on campus- usuall}' dieting or fanatic exercise. In extreme the prettiest, the brightest, most engagcases, muscle and digestive systems ing a nd exhubcrant, the most comdeteriorate to the point where the pa- petitive ones." tient's body can no longer accept The disease varies in intensitv. '"I nutrients. Victims of bulimia will binge treated one bulimic at Yale who had a on excessive quantities of food, then $200-a-day addiction for six week:-;," purge their systems through self- Howland said. -she would binge only induced vomiting. Both diseases are the best food, and she would throw up r,>bsessive forms of addiction. In both. 72 times a day. She did nothin~ but laxatives or diuretics are used to in- that. It's more typical to do it three to crease weight Joss. The mortality rate seven times a day, in addition to keepfor anorexics is two to three percent. ing down betwet•n two and five meals."

Serious complications can result from It is twice as high for bulimics. ''There are a lot of mtnor symptoms the disease. "There is a danger of heart that indicate you might have an eating attack and rupture of the stOmach or disorder," one anorexic woman explain- esophagous," H owland said. "The ed. "Are there certain foods you will enamel of your teeth can also be damagnever eat? Do you eat the same foods ed. :-.;o system is unaffected in the case every day, and do rou have anxiety of anorexia or bulimia: the kidney, the before and guih after a meal? Do you liver, the heart muscles and tht• dislike your body? When you exercise menstrual cycle. You have a hard time do you think of the amount of calories learning and can read the same thing you are burning. instead of enjoyin'{ the over and over again and not understand activity? Do you ever fast or make it.~ According to one bulimic. ''] don't yourself throw up? Is it important to think I'd have done anything about my you to have a real sense of control problem or gone for help if I hadn't around food , and are vou conscious of thought about the damage it does. Pt·othat?" Another anore;ic said. ~People ple say that if you have bulimia rou define eating disorders in much too might not be able to have children."

Students who are concerned about strict terms- are you a skeleton? do you put your finger down your throat? But their own eating problems or those of a af you are so concerned about food. you friend are encouraged to sc.·ek help. The ould deal with the problem before it Student Self-Care Exchange at University H ealth ~rvices provides informaruins the quality of your life." l Dr. Francy H owland, a New Haven tion on various eating disorders, as dot:s '!psychiatrist. dt!scribed what happens in Overeaters Anonymous. Complete Ievere cases of bulimia, a disease which recovery often r~quires psychiatric help. is easier to hide than anorexia. "\\'omen ~A woman with an eating disorder tend!! go from the sweetshop to N a pies to the not to really get better on her own," dining halls to restaurants, then take Howland said. laxatives, and then go out, and some have become incontinent on th~ ~:~~--~--------·~~ dance

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Laura, whose eating disorder also surfaced freshman year, agreed the pressures of the University contribute to the disease. "A lot of it had to do with arriving at Yale," she said. "Here a lot of people are out in the world for the first time and they try to define .themselves, but it's threaten ing. They take up a hobby. I said to myself, 'Great, I'll go running, that'll be my identity, and I'll make friends on the ' • team.' I think I did become the woman who ran the mos~ miles at Yale, but that's not something I'm proud of. You start out as a panic-stricken freshman who's going to be outdone by your classmates, and in a way, the University thrives on the resulting obsessions."

"I would say that between 25 and 50 percent of the women on campus have a problem with food," said D r . Jane R asmussen, Chief of Student Medicine at UHS. According to Ines Esteves, TC '86, co-coordinator of Walden Studentto-Student Counseling, "About 10 percent of our cases are eating disorders.

It's one of the more common serious problems, more comon than alcoholism or drugs. People come to us because it's not something you want people who live with you to know about."

Howland treats many women whose roommates are also bulimic or anorexic. "Some people have learned their behavior from their roommates, who might also take laxatives or try selfinduced vomiting," R asmussen said.

Moving off campus often allows victims of the diseases to lead a more normal life. "The Yale dining halls are threaten ing, because there's an unlimited supply of food, and the social situation causes tension at times," Laura said. Sh e described a psychological study proving people conform the size of their meals to what a control person is eating. "You can try to say you're not influenced b y what others are eating, but you are," Laura said.

"T he dining halls are disastrous for · anyone who has problems with food," Howland said. "Bulimics can dining hall-hop and choose anything they want to eat. It's really too dangerous." She believes a revised dining hall plan where

I

ts p ay rem ove the present temptation of unlimited portions. She prescribes strictly regimented diets for her bulimic patients, whom she urges to cancel meal contracts and eat elsewhere. Laura believes her own recovery was made easier by her decision to move off campus. "I don't have to face the Yale dining h alls, though I think I could now," she said.

While Yale's lifestyle can intensify eating disorders, the U n iversity has difficulty p roviding for their cure. Some anorexics, bulimics and the outside doctors who treat them criticize the psychiatric care p rovided by the University.

"D U H can't help you if you have a long term problem. It's b ad, seeing how many people have eating disorders," one b ulimic woman said. "It's so common h e re because it's so easy to h ide. I know a woman who· saw someone at D U H for a whole semester . She never told h er doctor she was bulimic, and the doctor n ever asked."

"I've talked to a lot of people who tried getting help at D UH and it eventually made them worse," Diane said.

"They had to get o u t of there- there's no one the re trained in eating d isorders."

"We p rovide counseling for psych othera p y and m onitoring weigh t," said Dr. R o bert A rnstein, head of M ental H ygien e at U H S. "There's n o upper limit for the n u m ber of sessions we offer if the person is in severe d ifficulties. If he is fun ctio ning and not in any d an ger, there is a limit" o f 15 cou nseling sesSions.

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"All I could call it was a feminist issue. In fact, this was why I started thinking about feminism in the first place- fd never looked at society and how it was structured and how that affected me before. This happened to me because rm a woman. There's no way a man could have had this problem.

"When I first started to think about it, I realized that growing up, I became aware, mostly .u nconsciously, that there were certain very defined but contradictory roles I was being expected to play.

I was suppOsed to be intelligent, competitive and at the same time attractive to men. I tried to do everything at once, but I was smarter than a lot of people, which intimidated them, especially men. I was aware that if I talked in class I would turn people off, but I did it anyway and ended up feeling like a

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social pariah. I wonder how many other women at Yale worry about the same thing."

Rachel became concerned with her weight in high school. "I felt I shouldn't eat too much, but then I got so mad I had to conform to someone else's rules and that idea of how I should look. I'd diet, then get really mad, then go off it.

When I got to Yale, I began to binge once a day. I did it to keep my weight the same. I had to devote a lot of time to buy food, eat it, then throw up. I t would take about an hour, and that's a lot of time here.

"Sometimes, being bulimic makes you feel good about yourself; you can control food because you can throw up," R achel said. "You can say, 'Look, I ate an entire cake and I'm not gaining weight.' But there's also a weird selfhatred there, that I thin k is typicaJ of women in general, not just those with eating disorders. When it hits me, I realize I have to do all of these things, fill all of these roles, and I'm just not good enough, I'm not strong enough, I can't do it. Then when I binge I've confirmed it. I say, 'Ok, I'm bad, I did a bad thin g, I'm crazy, I hate myself because I do this stupid thing, so I b inge, so I'm right in hating myself."

R achel's b inges do not occur very regularly. "I'll forget all about it for a while, then I've had to realize it's started again, and I wonder if it will ever go away. Will I be 30 years old and still doing this?"

According to H owland, "Bulimia is an eminently treatable disorder. The cure rate is 100 percent in that eating can be normalized and the addiction respected. I haven't had to turn anyone away because of money problems, and I haven't had one bulimic who d id n't get better , who d idn't come to respect food and eventually live a pretty nor mal life."

"Bulimia makes relations w ith men d ifficult," R achel con tinued. "Y ou don't want to tell them about it, it's too gross, it's too upsetting. If you do tell someone you're close to and they try to help and can't, they get frustrated. When I told my old boyfriend, 'it almost made him feel guilty. It's probably very difficult

you can read

TheNewJournal for men to understand. They don't see the roles the same way women do. They can't see why it's important to be thin.

"In this society we are led to believe so many women have made it, and the women we're shown in fashion magazines are intelligent, successful, articulate, thin and :-eally pretty. These are the models we're shown and these are the examples we want to follow. But I don't blame the fashion industry for creating impossible roles. Instead I would say eating disorders result from the prevalence of stereotypes in society as a whole and women's desires to escape them. As women's expectations change and they no longer choose their mothers' roles, problems like eating d isorders are to be expected."

Psychologist Judith Rodin, who teaches introductory psychology and is now working on a study of eating disorders, has speculated that women may rebel against a rounded body as a symbol of the traditionally subservient role of motherhood. Some writers believe eating disorders may express feelings of discomfort with being female in this society. Women may see appetites as dangerous or equate a smaller body with an unconscious admission of feminine weakness. Laura wondered if a male-oriented culture wants to reduce women to look like children, lacking curves or substance. Some allege eating disorders have received attention only recently because they are so predominantly a women's problem.

"Women need the courage to acknowledge their emotional needs, even in a place like Yale where it's not so safe to do so," Howland said. "They have to look at what part of themselves as women is excluded - they have to look at how to alter male institutions to incorporate fe-mininity. Women have to come to realize they don't have to be like men to be good. They have to do what's right for them. They can have a feminizing and humanizing effect on their institutions ."

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Tina Kelley, a senior in Morse, is editor-in chief of TN]. Laura, Diane and Rachel are pseudonyms.

The :"'ew .Journ al/ M arch I , 1985 51

Ice Hockey Captain Anne Bingham 52 The New JournaVMar~h I, 1985

A Different Ballgame Joyce Banerjee Letting the women rowers sit in the bus was not a good idea. They had just fmished rowing on the Derby and were drenched now by the river water and freezing rain of the late winter evening in 1975. Then they followed the same old routine: the men showered in the boathouse and dressed in warm clothes while the women stayed in their waterlogged sweats, waiting to return to Payne-Whitney because they had no shower facilities .

The promised renovation of the boathouse was delayed for fmancial reasons, so the women sat on the bus as they had every fall and spring for the last three years. But this time they started talking. "What are we going to do?" someone fmally asked.

"Let's go take a shower in Joni Barnett's Office." Barnett, now an associate secretary of the University, served as the director of women's athletics.

"No, let's not get too destructive here." The women were not going to shower in Barnett's office, but they would make their point. They wanted everyone to know the oonditions under which they practiced and oompeted. The women felt ignored by the Athletic Department, viewing Barnett as a figurehead or buffer between them and the administration.

Chris Ernst, '76, looked at her friend Ann Warner, '77, and said "I dare you to." It was that simple. The plan was sealed, set.

Ernst made an appointment with Barnett, and a week later, she and 18 teammates went to Barnett's office dressed in their sweats. There, they stripped before the administrator, each woman with the words "Title IX," for the legislation which assured equality in education, written in blue magic marker across her chest and back. A Yale Daily News photographer who also worked for The New York Tunes stood on a chair behind the women, capturing the look on Barnett's face as the naked Ernst read her statement. Because the Tunes had a slow news week, the paper printed the photograph, reported the incident and generally left Yale embarassed.

Following a national trend in the 1970s and the ratification of Title IX, women's athletics at Yale grew in both success and range. The rowers now have shower facilities in Derby, women here play lacrosse and ice hockey, make AD-American for cross-country and basketball. In between practices and early morning lifts, some women athletes speak frequently about their dissatisfaction with Yale's treatment of women's sports. Like the crew team in March 1975, these women criticize the Athletic Department while working to chapge it.

"Unless you get political, you won't be able to play your sport the way you want."

The New JournaVMarch I, 1985 53

quacies of the women's athletic program.

Like so many women before them they ask the crucial question: is Yale's Athletic Department committed to women's sports? "Commitment" entails funding, use of facilities, promotion, varsity status of sports, coaching. But the word also encompasses opinion, communication and attitudes toward women athletes.

Lacrosse Goalie Nada Sellers defending against Georgeanne Nattress Yet the status of women's athletics can Department and the teams. Our coach was makbe interpreted and explained in a variety ing arrangements to go, but the administration of ways. Athletes, alumni, coaches, ad- didn't even know we were near qualifying and minstrators: each group, and often each so told us we couldn't participate. Harvard, wlw pers~m in the group, has a different view was ranked below us with a worse record, went of Yale's dedication to women in sports. in OUT place.

There are no clear, unbiased accounts of women's athletics here, rather a variety Unlike Nattress, most women athletes do of voices, often urgent and adamant, not begin their Yale careers with disillufrom which to choose. sionment. They arrive to fmd a large, well-equipped gym, Coxe Cage and a &me: Pierson common room. Brown tufted history of successful teams. Although leaJher chairs and, on one wall, a huge portraiJ preparing to try out for the national crew of a tum-oj"-the-century football player. A /ale- squad, Nattress's successor , Sarah evening study break ofthe Yale Women ~ Athletic Carlson, BK '86, carne to Yale initially as Association (YWAO) disintegrates, people leav- a basketball player. She was quickly iming in groups of two and three. Near the en- pressed with the pre-game meals, the trance to the room, thru of last year's officers payment of hotel expenses, the funding ga/Mr. President Georgeanne NaJJress, PC '85, for her team. Her vice president, Pia and Vice President of GmlXUICes Missy Parks, Sass, SM '86, has also played several TC '85, sit on a couch, Vice President Lucy sports here, begirming as a field hockey &mlwlz, CC '85, reclines in an armchair. player. "For field hockey, Yale always seemed one of the best places to play. It Missy: Freshman year, I thought the women had a nice field, good coaching and a wlw cvmplained were paranoid. But there~ no good team," Sass said. "I was defmitely going back now. I've gained a certain con- impressed with program. In fact, for the cioUSMss o/ virtue of my experience with the ad- first year and a half, I was impressed ministraJWn and several really dynamic women. with all athletics at Yale. I heard no comGeorgeanne: I was so angry freshman year. I plaints." mnember fold hocky was inviud to a postGradually, after talking to older season tournament. That~ when I realized the athletes or looking at the men's teams, reallacJc of communicaiion between the Athletic Carlson and Sass realized the inade54 The New Journal/ March I. 1985

' ' Missy: (leaning forward, toward Georgeanne) We all buy into the idea that men are the real athletes and that women are somelww facsimiles.

You reOJly have In fight the subtleties of sexism.

Georgeanne: (quietly) WiJhin and without you.

Missy: 'lnis plaa is still racist and sexist.

Georgeanne: WiJh big letlers.

Missy: 17le schedule posters are a pnftct t.llll17l· ple of how the Athletic Department Si9'S "Yes, yes" and never gets anything done. 11ley used to have a sandwich board out in front of Ray Tompkins House wiJh the men:r bask.dhaJl scores postd on it.. One woman got angry because the women~ scores werm ~ inclwied and the board said --¥ale Basketboll, • so she painted the women~ scores on. They then changed the sign and the schedules In "Yale men :r and women :r basknball. • !leftfor ayear and wlzm I returned, the posters hod gone back to before. lfs indicative of the AdministraJWn1 aJtilude toward women~ athletics.

Without slam dunks and frequent fights on the ice, women's sports may never attract the crowds men's games do. Therefore, if these events are not as "exciting" as men's, no amount of advertisement will help promote them. Many here feel, however, that only awareness of the special qualities of women's athletics will trigger appreciation. This year, the Student Committee on Athletics (SCA) petitioned the Athletic Department to pr<>duce schedule posters for all teams.

Moreover, all sports, whether wrestling or squash, will be gender specified. •1 know it's repetitive to say Yale men's football, but it's frustrating to see men's basketball as 'Yale' basketball because women's basketball is just as much 'Yale basketball,"' Carlson said.

Athletic Director Frank Ryan feels the posters will help ease the strong and constant sense of inequity among many women athletes, but also noted a general

apathy about sport at Yale. To promote women's athletics further , Ryan and the SCA are discussing a women's sports week in the spring. "There are so many sports, so many other demands on our leisure time here," Ryan said. "It's the same thing at other Ivy League schools.

With a little luck, we can get some attention, but we can't manufacture it."

Lucy: When people start talking about women's athletics, everything sounds negaJive, maybe because it's all repressed. A lot of women can come here and be really happy, not realize they're missing anything. The most positive experiencu are mack by the athletes themselves.

George anne: There are good facilitus, good coaching. It's an amazing experience.

Missy: I ftel very positive about my athletic experiLnces here but I have my own feelings, and tky're not based on facts, figures and numbers.

For example the coaches stay in their own cubicles. They won~ taJJc with each other. Oh, and salaries are taboo. {Former lacrosse andfold hocky coach} Robin Cash started breaking the silerzas and look where she is now. Whenever tMy tkvelop camaradnU, iL's time to move on.

Last year, much controversy and complaint focused on the coaching of women's athletics. Prior to 1977, most coaches of women's sports worked parttime. Today, only Ice Hockey Coach Kathy Lenahan serves on a part-time basis. Her captain, Anne Bingham, TC '86, enjoys having a woman coach now.

Yet Lenahan's absence for part of the day concerns Bingham. "It's hard to explain the morale boost you have when your coach can dress in the locker room with you, when she understands your problems. But [former coach] Peter Downey was around the rink all the time.

H e was there when recruits dropped in, to get phone calls, to talk to the captain at lunch time," Bingham said.

The issue of dual coaching assignments troubles many athletes, because they think their coaches simply don't have the time to provide the attention the team needs. Assistant coaches' multiple assignments often leave them little time to recruit. Some sports need assistant coaching but go without, such as gymnastics, which operates with a one-on-one coaching philosophy. ¡

For every woman coach with several assignments, Ryan points to a man in the same position. He claimed coaches receive such assignments because, as fulltime employees, they should work all nine months of the academic year.

After Robin Cash's departure from her two head coaching positions, her assistant Dale Philippi-Walker took over lacrosse. P hilippi-Walker, however , also coaches squash, and while the lacrosse team practices indoors before sp ring break, she must continue with her squash responsibilities. She volunteered for the lacrosse position, giving the Athletic Department time to fmd a permanent replacement for Cash.

Despite their double-duty, woman coaches at Yale are paid consistently lower than the men. In 1984 the highest paid woman coach earned less than $30,000, and at least 10 male coaches received more than that sum. Moreover, the highest paid men's coach took home $40,000 more than his female counterpart.

"The women are younger, less experienced. They're starting where the men started," Ryan said. "The marketplace sets their salaries. The Ivy League does painstaking research on salaries, and we exchange our salary records. Salaries at Yale should be and are very competitive in this marketplace.

We're worried more about equity than anything else."

"We all buy into the idea that men are the real athletes and that women are somehow facsimiles . You really have to fight the subtleties of sexism."

Missy: A big issue is: to what extent is iL our responsihility to point out problems to the administraJum? We're athletes, first and foremost, and iL's a bummer to realize you're not a priority around here.

Georgeanne: The men's programs are amstantly updaJed, but the women must always remind the administration, we have to be the squea1cy wheeL Missy: The men grl updal.ed but we nÂŤd essentials.

Georgeanne: There dotsn~ seem to be a amstant commilmmt to growth here. We lvwe to k#J asking them, 'What are your goo1s., 'Ifyou confront them, tMy luwe to thmk about you.

Lucy: They say they're making a commiJmmt to be the best in the fl!)ll.Lague. But the women's basketball team can~ grow wilhout Jneakrs and the ice hockey team can't grow without slraJa. The New JournaVMarch I, 1985 55

Left, Captain Lisa Melfi leads the Women's Crew Team.

Lik with softball and volleyball. They won~ mdce volleyballvarsi!JI becau..se they say they can~ mdce it ~si!JI all the way.' With sojtba.ll, they sltlrled the team on a really inadequate level.

The controversy over the women's volleyball team incorporates many of the criticisms about Yale and women's athletics. In 1979 the team won the Ivy League title and was then cut from varsity to club level. It lost coaching, use of trainers, funding for equipment and uniforms and use of the amphitheater for home games. Nonetheless, 40 women tried out last fall for the squad of 16, and the team fmished third in the Ivy League, against other teams which have the amenities of varsity standing. "Other than Dartmouth, which is 10 years behind in women's sports anyway, we're the only Ivy League team that is club.

We can't get as far as we want like this," said Cathy Robohm, TC '86, co-captain of the volleyball team. "Other schools are jealous of the talent we have on our team, and other volleyball coaches really support us. But there's only so much pressure they can put on our administration."

The Athletic Department, however, believes varsity volleyball would be too expensive, forcing the department to cut another sport. Ryan said initiating varsity volleyball would cost his department $40,000 to $50,000. H e foresees an overlap of volleyball and basketball seasons, which would cause problems in the use of the amphitheater. Moreover, varsity volleyball would not be wellreceived by an Admissions Office which feels Yale already has too many varsity sports.

Robohm has heard these objections many times in the last three years, and she has answers to all of them. If Yale cannot afford another varsity sport, she does not understand why women's golf, a team which must advertise for players, was added to- the roster. Robohm has presented a petition to the Faculty Committee on Athletics and will meet with them in March. "When they say 'varsity all the way,' that includes a lot of extravagance . We're not asking for steak dinners at Kline Bio every night, bur only

for a few advantages of being a varsity sport. It's ridiculous for th em to quote a figure like $50,000 when we're getting by, just barely, on $800. They think we want a full-time coach, but our old coach would come back on a part-time basis," she said.

"We have only a few of our games at home, so it wouldn't be difficult to have the basketball 'captain's practices' upstairs then. We don't have to do any recruiting either, because right now as a club we have many more women than we need trying out."

Missy: If there's nothing w hide, why is there a silence at the Athletic Department? They should publish the athletic budget, disclose coaches salaries, becau..se they're not equal, the budgets aren't equal.

Everything comes down to funding.

Money for pads which fit female ice hockey players, for trainers, for assistant coaches, for new varsity teams. The Athletic Department states it does not have the money to spend, while the women contend if they were a priority, the administration would fmd the capital.

The athletic budget this year came to about $5.5 million, which the six associate athletic directors divided. Ryan admitted the portion given each team is not equal, explaining a budget depends on the costs of the individual squad: coaches, travel, contests, equipment and recruiting.

The women, however, see a vicious circle in the administration's funding philosophy. The department wants to see a successful team before it increases its budget. The athletes believe the financial commitment is necessary before a program becomes successful.

Current athletes and alumni are trying to create a fmancial base for themselves, either through the formation of alumni associations or endowments. Last fall Yale endowed women's crew after alumni raised $54,000 since 1979. Women's crew is part of the larger, wealthy Yale Crew Association, which has paid for much of the women's expenses over the last few years. "If we wanted to go to Florida in the spring, we had to get money from our parents and friends. Men's crew shared their money with us, but we still

had to ask them for it," recalled Anne Boucher, '81, chairperson for the endowment. "Other alumni associations are reluctant to give money they've saved for the men to the women, but they don't realize they will get 100 new members that way."

As Boucher works within the system to improve crew, Ernst urges women athletes to do all they can for their teams, in and out of the system. She believes Yale will move only if pushed and emharassed. "Athletics is a sensitive spot, the nerves are rawer there. Sports are not as socially acceptable as simply studying, for women at Yale. There's the attitude, 'You girls aren't serious about sports. If you are, there's something wrong with you,"' Ernst said. "Coaches can't argue or they'll get ftred. But students can't get fired. Unless you get political, you won't be able to play your sport the way you want."

Nancy Harthun, CC '87, walks in and sits across from Lucy, next w the couch. She listens intently as the older women talJc about Frank Ryan, the thpartmental bureaucracy, the search for a new associate directJJr of athletics w replaa Kit Morris.

Naricy: The administrative sysfml is a mess.

It's a shabby operation from wp w botWm. Few of the teams have managers. There's no organization -when I come w a game I don't know what I should be doing as a manager.

The detaiLs don~ work, and that distracts athletes.

Georgeanne: We're hoping w get a wom411 as the new associate directJJr. Maybe that wiU "revolutionize"' things. (She looks at Missy who has sat quietly for several minutes.)

Missy: I'm just thinking about the future of women's athletics here. The women are more conservative, maybe complaant. I don~ want w lose things, but that's e.xrutly what I'm t:ifraid of I'm one of the last who saw the bad old days of women's sports here. I was here with people who did the TiLle IX strip. People now don~ reali.u the pain, anger and hard work those women went through so athletics wouldn't be second class. There's no forgetting our hisWry, but some have already forgotten . Some never knew.

â&#x20AC;˘

Joyce Banerjee, a junior in Timothy Dwight, is Editor-in-Chief-elect of TNJ. The New journal/March I, 1985 57

58 The New Journal/March I. 1985

The Compleat Cartoonist Rich Blow When Sandra Boynton tells you she is happy with her life, believe her.

She has a right to feel that way. The 31-year-old artist and humorist is the acknowledged genius in her field, lives on a beautiful 40-acre farm in Lakeville, Connecticut which she bought herself, and supports her husband and three young children. Boynton draws greeting cards for a living and has been doing so ever since she graduated from Yale in 1974.

Her artwork, replete with rare and bizarre animals like chocolateloving pigs, heartbroken ewes and sourpuss cats, is instantly recognizable. Those animals, combined with Boynton's appealing wry humor, have made the unpretentious artist an industry phenomenon.

Over 100 million of her cards are sold every year, "mostly to friends and family," according to Boynton. Add to that astonishing figure all the calendars, mugs, T-shirts and so on that Boynton devotees purchase and it becomes clear Sandra Boynton is big business indeed.

"If I had to apply to Yale again and I said on my application my goal in life was to draw greeting cards, they would never accept me," said Boynton, a slim woman with straight brown hair, freckles and an appealing smile. Luckily for Yale, when Boynton applied in 1969 she had no such ambition. Instead she wanted to be a director and eventually wound up majoring in English. "I took virtually no art courses while I was at Yale," Boynton remembered. "At the time, that department was just not very good, and besides it was geared towards graduate students. The English Department, on the other hand, was just fantastic."

Boynton looks back on her time at Yale during the U niversitys initial years of coeducation as a very positive experience, with only a few reservations. "There were undeniably some disadvantages in being a woman here in that changeover period," she recalled. "For me, the most difficult time was freshman year, and I think that was true for most of us. All the women were in Vanderbilt, which was an WlCOmfortable situation because it was so much like a fortress. As for the men ... well, with the male-to-female ratio as high as it was, you tended to meet only the men who were pretty sure they were the guys you'd want to know. Only after freshman year did we realize not all Yale men were like that."

Indeed, Boynton would end up marrying one of those men she met after freshman year, an Olympic canoer named Jamie McEwan. They met while he was a junior in Saybrook and she was a senior in Calhoun.

The two were able to maintain their relationship after Boynton graduated, but did not decide to marry until several years later when their lives had settled down. ¡ The New JoumaVMarch I, 198S S9

It was in that first summer after graduation when Boynton, who had drawn since childhood, discovered her natural talent as an artist could be parlayed into profit. She was waitressing to earn money for the Berkeley

animals, to put bows on their heads and to get rid of the white backgrounds which she knew made her cards stand out on retailers' shelves. White cards get dirty, and store owners would never buy them, Boynton was informed. The final straw for the young artist came when she learned she would have to sell her designs at a flat rate rather than maintain ownership and receive royalties on their sales. For Boynton, there was little point to marketing hercards if they weren't going to look like she wanted them to, and she left the show without a company to merchandise her art.

"I was very lucky," Boynton said about that decision. "Frankly, I didn't need the money badly enough to give up control of my work. It was a fortunate luxury to say, 'I'll do this on my own terms or I won't do it at all."'

A luxury, perhaps, but the desire to retain final control over her art would become a constant in Boynton's career School of Drama, which she would at- thereafter. It is not that Boynton is artend that fall, when she decided there rogant- she isn't- it is just very imporhad to be a better way to finance her tant to her that commercial pressures education. "My sister Pam made never force her to lower the quality o f jewelry and sold it in local stores," her work. The timing was perfect, then, Boynton said, "so I thought I would for Boynton to meet a representative of make use of whatever talent I might Recycled Paper Products, a small have. Painting cards was the only way I greeting card company with the flexcould think of to make money. Plus. at ibility to allow Boynton the kind of conthe time it was really an open market; trol she wanted. Anonymous animals, there certainly weren't many greeting white backgrounds -and royalties were cards that I would have bought. As it not going to keep Recycled Paper from turned out, the market was a lot more signing Boynton to a contract. In the 10 open than I had thought." years since, Boynton has drawn over All told, Bovnton would receive 2500 designs for Recycled Paper and orders for 120,000 of her cards, orders company revenues have risen to she had to fill in time for Christmas. somewhere in the neighborhood of S40 She hand painted 60,000 cards that million. Boynton cards account for summer, working at assembly-line almost half of that sum. "Other comspeed to crank out up to four of them a panies have tried to woo me away," minute, and was able to get an uncle to Boynton concedes today, "but there's no print the next batch of 60,000. Having reason why I should go. This company seen that people not only liked her cards has been ,¡ery good to me." but were willing to pay for them, BoynWith her new contract. Boynton headed ton's next step was to take 27 of her to California as planned, but she found designs to an industry trade show. Berkeley too "alien" and returned to There she ran into problems. Industry New H aven. Back at Yale, she enrolled representati+:s wanted her designs, but at the Drama School in the Doctor of they also wanted more control over her Fine Arts program. "At the time," she work than Boynton was willing to relin- said, "that program was sort of a black quish. They wanted her to name her sheep, a concession to academia.

60 The New Journal/ March I. 1985

Neither the teachers nor the students were of the same high quality I'd come to expect when I was an undergraduate." Disappointed and frustrated , Boynton quit the program after a year and a half to marry McEwan and pursue a full-time career with Recycled Paper. It was a decision she has never had cause to regret.

Boynton seems to handle her phenomenal success with the same kind

of warm humor she displays in her cards. Laughing, she said, "In some people's minds I'm extraordinarily famous; other people have absolutely no idea who I am. That may be because I've never done TV specials and I don't have a line of licensed Sandra Boynton footwear. It's very easy for me to feel ordinary. I mean, it's certainly not like I'm Meryl Streep and people come rushing up to me in Burger King to tell me how much they loved my last movie." She paused and added, "I am relatively anonymous and I like it that wav. I don't think I'd ever want to ch~nge that."

Boynton is particularly fortunate in that while commercial success has not brought h er unwanted attention, it has given her the money to live a quiet, comfortable rural life with her husband and children. H er marriage seems almost suspiciously blissful; Boynton herself is more than willing to admit it is, at the verv least, "unorthodox.~ \Vhile McEwa~ works on an unpub-

lished novel and trains for the world championships in canoeing, Boynton draws in her studio and is largely responsible for taking care of the kids during the day. It may sound like a lopsided arrangement, but Boynton d oes not consider it so. "I support my husband and he doesn't have any problems with that, nor do I. In fact, I think he thinks this arrangement is just great.

There's no tension because o f the money. I mean , I'm doing what I love to do, what I'd be doing even if I weren't married."

As if her contractual obligations were not e nough to keep her busy, Boynton manages to spend a significant amount of time with her children: Caitlin McEwan, age five , Kevin Boynton, who is three years old, and Devin M cEwan, fou r months. "We alternated last na mes with our children," Boynton explains, "because we both wanted our family names to continue and hyphenating the names would have been a real burden. Imagine having 'Boynton-M cEwan' for a last name," she laughed.

Boynton is renowned for her drive and productivity, and one well-known anecdote about the artist recounts how she returned to her drawing table just 16 hours after her son Keith was born in order to meet a deadline . "I n some people's eyes that makes me appear really tough , almost bitchy, but that's really not the case," Boynton said. "I just feel very strongly that if a whole company is counting on you, you had better live up to your end of the bargain." Even with a new baby Boynton manages to keep drawing a steady rate. although she admitted , "There's no such thing as a n average day with three kids. One day everything will be fine , the next someone will have to be rushed to the doctor, and the day after tha t it's my turn to pick up the kids at school. There are times when I feel like an average housewife, a nd that's okay."

After ten years of drawing cards, Boynton is often asked whether she considers her career suitable for a Yale alumna with several years of graduate school. In other words, does drawing her cards really make Boynton an artist

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Th.- Ne" Journal/March I, 198S 61

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worthy of respect? "I'm finally lear ning own; that experience, she recalled, was how to be philosophical about all this," one of the most frustrating of her Boynton sighed. "I think people career. "I was talking to United sometimes have the attitude that drawFeatures about doing a strip and boy, ing greeting cards isn't a serious thing was that depressing. Talk about lack of for me to do, that it's not respectable for artistic con trol! They gave me the most a Yale graduate and all that. I can confusing contract I've ever seen, and understand that because sometimes I the gist of it was that if they didn't like have that attitude myself. There's a my drawings or they didn't think I was sen se that my time would be better funny enough, they could hire someone spt•nt winning P ulitzer P rizes or writing else to rewrite my stuff- and bill me to great American novels. Occasionally I pay that person!" Not surprisinglY, do think of writing a play, but at th is Boynton rejected United Features' ofpoint I can't imagine when I would find fer. the time."

Despite that setback, Boynton conBoynton has written several books, tinues to break into those fields of art most notably Tlu Compltat Turkey and and merchandising she does not already CHOCOLATE: Thr Consuming Passion, dominate. At p•·esent she is working on but they look and sound much like her three books simultaneously: a revision cards and have not yet won any of Tht Complrat Turkty-"because I Pulitzers. Boynton admitted that, in thought it wasn't complete"- and two truth, this docs not upset her too much, books for younger readers tentatively describing CHOCOLATE as "a titled Cloey and Maudt and Goodnight, Goodnight. A line of Boynton children's bestseller that consistently tr·ailed Thin Thighs in 30 Days on the charts, but a clothing is in the works, and she has worthy book nonetheless. I know I reallong-term goals of creating animated ly enjoy what I do," she said with no ftlms for children. It is no wonder then hint of apology. "It's just a lot of fun, and the artist resents when people ask her I've never felt like I've compromised how much longer she is going to keep myself more than I should have." doing the same thing. II is a question she o ften hears: "People ask me if I would Despite Boynton's frequent lightheartedness, she takes her work very be happy doing the same thing in ten seriously. The artist is particularly years that I'm doing now. To me, that angered by the recent proliferation of implies I'm doing the same stuff I was in cards which look strangely like her own, 1974, and I know that just isn't true. As with animals and sayings that could an artist and a humorist, I've grown a lot in that time. I like to think I 'll keep almost, but not quite, be found on a Boynton card. "It's a very deliberate imon growing in that way." itation," she said, angry but resigned, From selling cards door-to-door to "and there's very little you can do about becoming the industry's houest properit. I t ry not to get frustrated about that, ty, Boynton has accomplished an amazbut I do anyway." ing amount in one decade. Most imThat concern for the quality of her pressive, she has managed to retain her warmth, her humor and her inwork leads Boynton to eye carefully what other cartoonists and artists a re dependence in the process- you can c~at ing. She admits to being a great read it in her cards. And as long as admirer of feUow Yalie Garry T rudeau, Boynton can hold on to those qualites '71, wh ile she exclaimed, "I can't stand which have made her work so beloved.

GarjiL/d. I hate the art in GarjiL/d-what it is likely the future holds only more an unattractive character! More impor- promise for her. Sandra Boynton has tantly, I think the whole strip is so come a long way, and she is by no negative and cynical. Some of my work means ready to stop now. has an edge to it, but I hope none of it is ever as mean as Garfold sometimes is."

Not too long ago Boynton con- Rich Blow, a junior in Branford, will bt Exsidered drawing a comic strip of her tcutivt Editor of TNJ. ·

•

62 The New journal/March I, 1985

"It was a fortun a te luxu ry to say, 'fll do this on m y own terms or I won't do it at

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1 /2

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1 or 1000. Fast service.

Discount Includes your choice ot cardstock, acetate or vinyl cov~. coupon expires 3/ 31/ 85

•on one of our Xerox Memorywriter® typewriters.

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coupon expires 3/ 31 / 85

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PASSPORT PHOTOS

3 minute servtce

I 1 Reg. $6.95 wtth coupon $5.95 coupon expires 3/ 31 / 85

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64 The New Journal/March I, 1985