1968 Bryn Mawr Campus Tour

Since we're having trouble uploading our Virtual Tour video, we will be posting the research so you can get an idea of what the tour will look like. I'm pretty sure we'll be showing it in class.

360 VISION RESEARCH PROJECT: 1968 TOUR OF BMC/SOCIAL CLIMATE

By Esty & Chandrea

Here is where we can start to compile our information and the resources we use!

Project focus: Campus tour/map with a focus in 1968. Perry House and Batten do not exist at that time. So we could focus on the campus and social climate for the tour--it was HOT!


Areas of interest on dorm and campus life (guide questions/FAQs on tours?):

Why don’t we have sororities?
What affinity groups existed during this time period?
What were some popular activities?
What was the most common major?
What did the campus look like?
How did customs and other dorm supports function?
What historical events coincided and/or preceded--therefore, influencing--the 60s/70s
What slang was used so we look authentic?
What do students do for fun?
What religious services are available?

Information (Jotted Notes):

General/historical/big picture context:

• According to The Campus Life, the 30s-50s spawned fraternities/sororities. It unclear whether it still continued to boom throughout the 60s; however, what was going on nationwide--the threat of Russians advancing in tech and eventually the Cold War--affected college campus and the media. “Meritorcracy...was gaining power...students were less committed to learning than to making the grade. Strategies for wresting high marks from their professors determined how undergraduates acted in class and how they approached study” (Horowitz 220-221)

• “The democratization of higher education...expanded old institutions and had created new ones...benefited most the middle class, but also opened the way for...lower-income groups...” (Horowitz 220-221)

• Interest areas for study were politics, particularly law school, and the sciences, pushed by the media, as a result of Russian/Tech advancement “threats”

• First cohort of baby boomers came after WWII and with them can a younger, more liberal culture in terms of music, sexual revolution & freedom (no more courtship, sex until marriage, etc). “Drugs began to edge out alcohol as the mind-altering substance of choice” (Horowitz 228)
• Style/dress changed, too. Denim took over. Women let their hair down and didn’t do their make-up. Men wore long beards and long hair.

• Black leaders of more radical student groups kicked out white allies and lived up to the Black Power motto

Sub Categories:

1. Vietnam War:
1. Many college campuses opposed the Vietnam War--in 1969, 28% of the college population participated in a demonstration in the first four years of the war
2. Tet Offensive Jan. 30th 1968
2. Civil Rights Movement:
1. “The sit-ins of the Spring of 1960, initiated by four black students who attempted to sit down for coffee in a Woolworth’s on Greensboro, North Carolina, provided the first catalyst....in the spring and summer of 1960 between 5,000 and 10,000 Northen students picketed...stores that refused to desegregate their southern lunch counters...white and black students worked together...
2. MLK is assassinated April 4th 1968
3. Summer Olympics (1968) John Carlos does black power demonstration

Context specific to BMC:
Logistics:

• The year is 1968, Katherine McBride is the College President.
• January 29th 1968--Spring semester begins
• 1968: March 21st--April 1st at 9am--Spring Break
• 1968: Thanksgiving break is Nov. 27-Dec. 2
• 1968: Xmas vacation begins Dec. 20th
• Population/Demographics (1970--close enough to ‘68)
• There are about 850 undergraduates, 650 grad students (male & female) and 175 faculty
• Students come from 36 different countries
• 2 out of 5 students receive financial aid
• BMC has about 11,000 graduates by then
• According to the 1968 march issue of the college news there are about 24 black students
• Notable Graduates:
• Drew Gilpin Faust (‘68)--current president of Harvard
• Some Majors:
• Chemistry
• Classical and Near Eastern Archeology
• Education and Childhood Development
• Languages: French, German, Greek (Professor Lang is Dept. Chair), Latin, Russian, Spanish
• Here are some campus differences based on the map:
• The health center was an infirmary
• 18 beds, students needed health insurance, were not charged for consultation and had to be vaccinated against smallpox
• Brecon (EST. 1981) was the Graduate Residence and Center
• Batten (EST. 1970) was the German House
• Pensby was the Power House
• Cambrian Row was Faculty Row
• The Campus Center was the gymnasium and the bookshop was located behind i
• English and Russian House was SWSR
• Perry House (circa 1971) was Spanish House
• There was a College Inn right before Erdman (not sure what building it is now or if it exists)
• There was no Haffner dorm and dining hall (EST. 1968/1969)--in the midst of being built
• Thomas Hall was also was called “The M. Carey Thomas Library”
• Canaday (1969) is simply labeled as “New Library”
• There is no carpenter library yet
• SWSR: By 1968 there are about 100 students enrolled in this graduate school. It also has 600 living graduates by that time. They are in teaching or research positions that have to do with urban renewal, mental disability and retardation and family services.
• Campus Events/Life:
• Haverford News and College News combine to create The News  by the end of 1968 (sold for 25 cents), which is later renamed BiCollege News
• 1968 – Honor Council established (as distinct from Student Council).
• Between 1964-68 parietals are abolished by BMC students according to Faust
• They were dorm curfews at 2am and had restricted male guests to certain hours.
• There is a Haverford/BMC Students for a Democratic Society Chapter instated in 1968 (HUGE!)
• Chapters sprang up on many campuses
• There is the student organization: Alliance for Political Affairs whose 1968-69 agenda included: the crisis of the urban ghettos, the war in vietnam and the presidential election (Nixon is elected president Nov. 5th 1968)
• Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969. SDS has been an important influence on student organizing in the decades since its collapse. Participatory democracy, direct action, radicalism, student power, shoestring budgets, and its organizational structure are all present in varying degrees in current American student activist groups. Though various organizations have been formed in subsequent years as proposed national networks for left-wing student organizing, none has approached the scale of SDS, and most have lasted a few years at best. (Wikipedia!)’

• In mid/late february of 1968, the Bryn Mawr-Haverford Negro Discussion group staged a vigil at BMC (I believe and they missed classes). All BMC black students (24) were present as well as black students from Princeton, Temple and Haverford. Approx. 1,000 white students showed up in support. The vigil was for the Orangeburg Massacre of February 8, 1968. The College News criticized BMC white students for not showing up in numbers and making the issue a “black issue”...as if it were not their problem in their March 1st issue.

Climate:
McBride on Climate of the 60s in 1970 address:
“When the end of the Vietnam War was announced, students rang the bell in Taylor Tower for twenty minutes. They seemed to be ringing out a decade of national and international death and destruction...student concerns for peace and justice had been deeply stirred by the events of the Sixties...few of the lessons were those of the classroom...it was not a very good time for classroom teachers or traditional studies, whose authority and relevance were widely challenged...In any case it is the spirit at Bryn Mawr, where the commitment to scholarship was maintained even in the most turbulent moments of the last decade and where academic interests and creativity now flourish more strongly than ever....”  

• She then describes the increasing number of mawrters going into law and medicine, studying greek and history of religion, etc

BMC, SGA and Drug Use
In compliance with the honor code, SGA prohibits drug use. Calling it a “threat” to the community whether used on or off campus. Popular drug choice: Marijuana and LSD

Faust at commencement in early 2000s (?) in alumnae bulletin:
Drew Gilpin Faust '68, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, began her convocation address by confessing that she has always resisted ceremonial occasions and "hated the Bryn Mawr traditions.When I was a student here between 1964 and 1968, I was focused on establishing justice and equality in the world, bringing racial integration to American society, and ending the war in Vietnam-all of which I expected to accomplish before graduation," said Faust. "… lanterns and strawberries and maypoles seemed somehow trivial-even frivolous."

My own words to describe the climate (words can be used on tour):

• Tense
• Challenging of authority (pre-existing rules like the dorm restriction_
• Establishing of new rules (The honor council)
• Outside learning vs. inside (classroom) learning
• “Educational and political concern” --BiCo SDS
• Sense of urgency to be active (Vietnam war, civil rights movement, cold war)
• Radical perspectives

1968/Campus Lingo for video (lets create scripts if time)

• SGA is Self Gov
• Taylor Hall is Taylor Tower
• Early 1968 is The College News which is dubbed The News at the end of 1968
• Juice is punch
• Parties are mixers
• Money is bread
• Go, Gone, irate is Ape
• Good/exciting is Bitchin
• Good time is Blast
• Dance is Boogie
• Great/cool thing is Boss
• Beer is brew
• how depressing is bummer
• guy is cat
• girl is chick
• bed/go to sleep is crash
• Do you understand is ya dig?
• Someone who is boring is a drag

Work Cited:
1. Campus Wars:
http://books.google.com/books?id=h2Tp9VBvq68C&pg=PA292&lpg=PA292&dq=richard+flacks+campus+radicalism&source=bl&ots=UD5AzS3NgH&sig=1-zT0qWeEG5KbPQBWJBe7Jzc-wk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=pE61ULfUF8200QHtzYCoBA&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

2. 1968 Campus Map:
http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/BMC_campmaps/id/34/rec/25

3. Bryn Mawr College Calendar 1969-1971 (with 1968 info on Graduate School)
http://archive.org/stream/brynmawrcalendar6263bryn#page/n15/mode/2up

4. Annual Reports of the President of Bryn Mawr College (1970-1977)
http://archive.org/stream/annualreportsofp11bryn#page/n9/mode/2up

5. BiCo Online
http://www.biconews.com/2008/04/23/about/
http://www.biconews.com/2000/02/29/on-the-verge-of-a-special-plenary-a-look-at-the-history-of-the-code/


6. Alumnae Bulletin
http://www.brynmawr.edu/alumnae/bulletin/newfl011.htm

7. Faust’s Convocation Address May 2001
http://www.brynmawr.edu/news/2007-02-11/faust_speech.shtml

8. March 1st 1968 College News (so before 1968 Spring Break!)
http://triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/BMC_collnew/id/8368/rec/6

9. Wikipedia on SDS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_a_Democratic_Society

10. Slang from the ‘60s
http://cougartown.com/slang.html

11. 1968 timeline
http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/1968/reference/timeline.html

TOUR GUIDE VIDEO

Characters (IN MAY OF 1968):
Chandrea, junior Chemistry major,  Alliance for Political Affairs
Esteniolla, junior Greek language major, Bryn Mawr-Haverford Negro Discussion Group

• Reminder: Memorize some 1960s terms

Opening Scene:
Bryn Mawr College Sign near admissions
Picture of Campus map then zoom out to ….

Historical Context: The year is 1968 at Bryn Mawr College  and Katherine McBride is the current college President.

Introduction (Characters are introduced)

DATE: May 3rd 1968

1. Haffner (There was no Haffner dorm and dining hall (1968/1969)--in the midst of being built)
FACT: Haffner dorm is not complete until 1969
2. Dean House (in front of wyndhm next to haffner)
3. College Inn (in front of erdman--housed SGA meetings)
Question:  What is the student population/student life like?

• There are about 850 undergraduates, 650 grad students (male & female) and 175 faculty
• Students come from 36 different countries
• 2 out of 5 students receive financial aid

FACT: BMC has about 11,000 graduates by then. According to the 1968 march issue of the college news there are about 24 black students enrolled on campus..

Chandrea or Esty sees Faust: “Oh hey Drew! She’s a rad senior!...(explain what her class did)

FACT: Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust (BMC ‘68) is currently serving as president of Harvard University.

FACT/QUOTE: Drew Gilpin Faust '68, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, began her convocation address by confessing that she has always resisted ceremonial occasions and "hated the Bryn Mawr traditions.When I was a student here between 1964 and 1968, I was focused on establishing justice and equality in the world, bringing racial integration to American society, and ending the war in Vietnam-all of which I expected to accomplish before graduation," said Faust. "… lanterns and strawberries and maypoles seemed somehow trivial-even frivolous."

4. Infirmary

• 18 beds, students are vaccinated against smallpox, need health insurance, free consultations

5. Taylor Tower
6. “New Library” (Canaday) and go to pick up “The News” - talk about how the name has recently changed; Haverford and Bryn Mawr join forces
Question: What organizations are on campus?

• Chandrea: Alliance for Political Affairs whose 1968-69 agenda included: the crisis of the urban ghettos, the war in vietnam and the presidential election. Many college campuses opposed the Vietnam War--in 1969, 28% of the college population participated in a demonstration in the first four years of the war (take an anti-war stance).

Contextual History: 1968 is a tumultuous year--significant events happened which ultimately shaped and influenced the agendas of colleges nationwide including Bryn Mawr. Some events include the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam war (January 30, 1968), the assassination of Civil RIghts leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (April 4th, 1968), later, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (June 5, 1968) and eventuallyRichard Nixon is elected U.S. President (November 5, 1968) in the midst of the Cold War (1945-1991).

• Esty: In mid/late february of 1968, the Bryn Mawr-Haverford Negro Discussion group staged a vigil at BMC (I believe and they missed classes). All BMC black students (24) were present as well as black students from Princeton, Temple and Haverford. Approx. 1,000 white students showed up in support. The vigil was for the Orangeburg Massacre of February 8, 1968. The College News criticized BMC white students for not showing up in numbers and making the issue a “black issue”...as if it were not their problem in their March 1st issue.

Contextual History: : “On February 8, 1968, ]South Carolina Highway Patrol officers in Orangeburg, SC shoot demonstrators against segregation at a bowling alley. --Courtesy of Wikipedia

• Esty: There is also Self-Gov--explain how they are against drugs and their establishment of the honor council in 1968

7. Gymnasium (campus center--acknowledge that the bookshop is in a building behind the gym)
Question: What is the school climate like?
Chandrea talks about her appreciation for the academically rigorous environment but that she feels it is not the appropriate time to ignore activism projects.

8. Faculty Row
9. Brecon - was the Graduate Residence and Center
Question: What do students do for fun?

• Go to mixers and boogie and drink brew or punch--have a bitchin good time
• catch a movie
• hang out with chicks and cats

Next, film fades out to US in modern times where for a minute (we can be in one of our rooms) we discuss our project (what was challenging? Surprising? Exciting? How is it relevant to our campus today?) and answer one of the following questions:

How is your own and/or your classmates' research informing your understanding of the ‘walled community’ of Bryn Mawr College?  How are you coming to understand women’s prisons and colleges as similar and/or different? (really like this one)  As enhancing and/or diminishing of learning?  Use written text or another format (we'll discuss options) to address one or more of these questions.