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So went the motherly advice of Hazel Hughes to the 73 students who had arrived on the Clark campus in fall of 1942 as the University\u2019s first women undergraduates. Hughes was hardly timid, but as the director of student activities for the newly launched Women\u2019s College, she knew dramatic change was coming to Clark, and believed her young charges should ease their way onto the overwhelmingly male campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nine months earlier, the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and as men were siphoned into the war effort, women were presented with educational and professional opportunities they had long been denied. They seized their moment, and the country, the culture, and Clark were about to be transformed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Waves were inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the shadow of war<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
During the Great Depression of the 1930s and early 1940s, the possibility of admitting women to Clark University\u2019s all-male undergraduate college was under debate. In the wake of the nation\u2019s dire economic situation, men\u2019s enrollment in the undergraduate college was fluctuating, and the University\u2019s endowment had shrunk. To remain viable, the University needed students to bring in revenue. But while Worcester\u2019s liberal arts colleges competed for male students, no similar opportunity existed for academically inclined women. As such, Clark\u2019s administration identified a market niche waiting to be filled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his endowment establishing Clark University, founder Jonas G. Clark<\/a> stipulated the institution\u2019s purpose was to educate young men. To accommodate female undergraduates, the University established a legally distinct Women\u2019s College that would share faculty, administration, classroom and library facilities, and curricula with the Men\u2019s College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reaction of male undergraduates and faculty to the announcement, while mixed, was not characterized by significant resistance. As Clark historian William Koelsch wrote in his book \u201cClark University, 1887-1987\u201d: \u201cOnce the deed was done, the male students and faculty largely welcomed the women undergraduates both as individuals and as parts of the college organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The late H. Martin Deranian \u201945 confessed to being delighted at the news that some of his classmates would be female. \u201cI was ecstatic! I felt privileged to see this happen,\u201d he said in a 2015 interview<\/a>. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what to make of it all. I was really kind of in awe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Campus life at Clark during the war years was certainly not a typical undergraduate collegiate experience for the 73 women (approximately one-third were transfer students) who entered Clark in fall of 1942, or for the 269 men enrolled that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The late Effie Vranos Geanakoplos \u201943, who transferred to Clark in the fall of 1942, was one of several undergraduate alumnae interviewed by Ashley C. Rondini \u201997 and Lauren Almquist \u201997 in the mid-1990s for their research paper \u201c\u2018The Legitimate Invasion\u2019: An Oral History Celebration of Clark\u2019s Pioneer Women, 1942-49.\u201d Geanakoplos told the authors her graduation day was \u201ca blend of joy and sorrow. A lot of the boys were going to go off to war, and, before that date, casualty lists were coming in every day. We were all very aware of the dangers, and it was very sad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those who joined the Women\u2019s College embraced the chance to earn a liberal arts degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe were all here [at Clark] because we wanted to be here,\u201d said Phyllis Freeman Gustafson in a 1986 interview with members of the Class of 1946. \u201cThe University was sought out by each of us. We were here because we wanted a good education.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some women sacrificed deeply to be among this historic class. When Barbara Norris Andersen \u201946 announced she was enrolling at Clark, her mother demanded she instead attend Radcliffe, a family tradition. A defiant Barbara packed a single suitcase and got a friend to drive her to Worcester. Her mother was so enraged that she disowned Barbara, refusing to speak to her daughter ever again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once they\u2019d arrived, the women proved themselves on every front. Their exemplary performance in the classroom assured the administration and faculty that Clark\u2019s academic standards would not be compromised. Pleiades was established in 1945 as the women\u2019s counterpart of Gryphon, the men\u2019s honor society, and five years later, when a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa was established at Clark, three of the first five initiates were female. Women assumed leadership roles in clubs and organizations across campus. They rowed crew and played basketball in the basement of Jonas Clark Hall, a.k.a. the Women\u2019s Gym, which required them to pass and dribble around the grove of pillars that held up the building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Acceptance wasn\u2019t universal among the men. An April 30, 1943, editorial in The Scarlet<\/em> opposed adding women to the Athletic Council and objected to women being awarded the same \u201cBlock C\u201d insignia \u2014 the varsity letter \u2014 as the men for their participation in varsity sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ann McKenny Early \u201946 counterpunched in her Scarlet<\/em> sports column, decrying \u201cthe misogynists [who] just didn\u2019t want us,\u201d noting that the women athletes were \u201cinsulted in assembly.\u201d From that point on, she cheekily retitled her column \u201cBlock C\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were instances of sublime collaboration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women\u2019s student body president Margaret \u201cPeg\u201d Russell \u201946 successfully allied with Stanley Gutridge \u201945, president of the men\u2019s student body, to improve the study environment in the library by drafting rules for appropriate behavior, which, if violated, could result in academic penalties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cClark looked into the future,\u201d Gutridge said in a 2016 interview<\/a>. \u201cThey knew men were off to war and women were pushing ahead, stepping into jobs and working for social and economic equality. It was really a learning experience for all of us, but a very good one. Clark was preparing us for the reality that once we headed out into the world we needed to go forward together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the number of students in the Women\u2019s College doubled between the 1942-43 and 1944-45 academic years, male enrollment in 1944-45 barely reached 30 percent of what it had been three years earlier. With the men\u2019s numbers much reduced, it fell to the women to maintain Clark traditions like Spree Day, publications like the campus newspaper and yearbook, and cherished student organizations such as the Glee Club, the Boheme Committee and the Clark University Players Society. For more informal fun, the Women\u2019s Lounge hosted marathon games of bridge played with the same zeal brought to today\u2019s video games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the 1986 interview of Clark women, Harriet \u201cHeidi\u201d Burack Lewitt \u201946 reflected on how campus life changed as the men\u2019s numbers dwindled. \u201cIt had altered because we were running all the organizations,\u201d she said. \u201cWe were not only holding the fort, we were given that opportunity because we were here, and [the male students] weren\u2019t. It was less of a competitive thing than sort of the norm. We could become head of whatever group it was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In August 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allies, ending the Second World War. Returning servicemen, buoyed by the G.I. Bill, flocked to colleges to begin or finish their degrees. \u201cBy the time a lot of them came back, [women students] were an established fact, and much more accepted,\u201d Sue Colton Arnold \u201946 recalled in the 1986 interview. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t this, \u2018Do we want you here?\u2019 We had been here. They were coming back and had to be received and acclimated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The actions and attitudes of members of the Clark University faculty were crucial to the success of the Women\u2019s College. The almost entirely male faculty, with a few exceptions, was accepting and encouraging of their female students. Thelma Brodsky Lockwood \u201945 recounted the note a professor had left in her final exam book that read, \u201cI questioned women coming to Clark University, and now I apologize.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI thought that was beautiful,\u201d Lockwood said. \u201cI felt, well, the women had arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most loved and enduring figure in the Women\u2019s College, M. Hazel Hughes<\/a>, watched over her co-eds with protectiveness and affection from 1942 until her death from cancer in 1968. Hughes was energetic enough to serve as the women\u2019s first basketball coach, and mature enough to act as trusted mentor and mother-confessor as she rose to the position of dean of women. It was under her watch, in 1962, that women were given permission to entertain male visitors in their rooms (on Sundays from 2 to 5 p.m.), and that the curfew for sophomore, junior and senior women was eliminated in 1966.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The place Hughes held in the hearts of Clark\u2019s women, particularly the players on her basketball teams, during those early decades was recognized in 2011 with the installation of a plaque in her honor outside Jonas Clark Hall Room 001, the former Women\u2019s Gym.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like many at the time, Clark\u2019s early women struggled with determining if their destinies lay in traditional roles as wives and mothers, as career seekers, or as both. In 1948, the Advisory Board for the Women\u2019s College proposed that a curriculum focusing on \u201chuman relations\u201d should be available to female students, on the grounds that \u201cthe most important function of women in the contemporary world is that of wife and mother.\u201d The University never adopted the proposal, but it spurred a master\u2019s thesis that included a survey of 107 alumnae of the Women\u2019s College. Some supported the board recommendation; others were dismissive. \u201cClark is not a trade school,\u201d one respondent said, \u201cand I did not go there to learn to keep house.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The homemaker vs. college graduate dilemma helped Betty Friedan\u2019s bestselling 1963 book, \u201cThe Feminine Mystique<\/a>,\u201d resonate with college-educated women. The book has been credited with sparking \u201csecond-wave feminism,\u201d which contributed to widespread activism by female students at Clark and other colleges and universities during the 1960s and the \u201970s. The need of many women to put their college degrees to good use would bring profound change to the country, and to Clark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Women\u2019s College is not mentioned in Clark\u2019s academic catalog after 1968, and there was no dean of women appointed after Hazel Hughes\u2019 death that same year. Marcia Savage \u201961, M.A.Ed. \u201962, Ph.D. \u201966, L.H.D. \u201992, would assume many similar functions in her role as dean of students, and later as the first female dean of the college from 1975\u201379. During that decade, the number of Clark women appears to have reached 50 percent of the undergraduate student body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Savage recalled the respect accorded to her in her administrative position. \u201cWhat I thought was fascinating about Clark, and my relationship to it, was how they felt when I was the only woman on the provost\u2019s council during a very difficult period. I was serving with faculty members who had had me as a student. But they did very well with me. They gave me the due that I was owed at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the time the 1960s had drawn to a close, women slowly had begun to assume more administrative and faculty positions at Clark. In 1962, Alice Cooney Higgins<\/a> became Clark\u2019s first female trustee, and five years later was named chair of the Board of Trustees, the first woman in the United States to hold that position at a private research university. She proved to be an influential and forceful leader for the length of her tenure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/Winter-2018-cover.jpg\")
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More than holding the fort<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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women undergrads filled classrooms on campus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u2018The women had arrived\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Dueling destinies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Changing times<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Women’s Basketball Tournament<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n