During a recent campus visit, some Albright alumni reminisced about their college days and how much things have changed for the female students:

“Remember how coeds had to wear trench coats over their Bermuda shorts?”

“Remember how the female students were only allowed to smoke in their rooms and one other spot?”

“I remember that fresh-women were only allowed to stay out until midnight one night a month. And then each year, they were allowed one more late night per month.”

In Discovery and Promise: A History of Albright College 1856-1981, the late Eugene H. Barth, Ph.D., professor of religion and philosophy, wrote about the changes in the status of women in society and at Albright. When Union Seminary, the parent institution to Albright, opened in 1856, it was a coeducational church school, founded by the Evangelical Association.

Barth wrote: “The sexes ‘mingled’ only under careful chaperonage and any open demonstrations of affection were not sanctioned. What was quite acceptable in society at that time in history would be considered today to be the purest form of male chauvinism.”

While Union Seminary offered degrees to women after three years of study, male students had to continue at another university to earn a degree.

“This was male chauvinism of another sort, for the obvious inference was that an education adequate to qualify women for a degree could not be sufficiently demanding for men,” wrote Barth.

By 1892, both female and male students of Schuylkill Seminary, one of Albright’s parent institutions, loudly objected to the strict rules of the administration, and demanded some opportunities to socialize with each other outside of classes. The Board of Trustees intervened and helped both sides agree to a compromise.

In this physics lab at Central Pennsylvania College in 1898 female and male students learned together.

Women in the United States won the right to vote in 1920 with passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. This victory followed more than 70 years of lobbying by dedicated women activists, called suffragettes.

Elizabeth H. Burkey, Ph.D., broke through a glass ceiling in 1953, when she became the first female member of the chemistry faculty. She was an early advocate of equal status for women on campus, according to Barth.

Special rules for female students were in place at Albright as late as the 1960s. In 1966, “the regulation persisted that women were not to smoke on the campus or in the dining hall lounge,” Barth writes. He adds this description of Albright in 1969, “Women were under far more restrictions than men. No one policed the male dormitories to check students in and out at night. Coeds were required to ‘sign-in’ and to ‘sign-out,’ as were their female guests during a visit to the campus.”

In 1969, students took over the library during the now legendary sit-in to protest many College policies, including some of the rules for females. A compromise reached during the sit-in released junior and senior female students from curfew with written parental permission, and established dormitory open houses on Sunday afternoons, so that male and female students could visit each other during that time.

A historic academic step forward occurred in 1989 when Albright established a concentration in Women’s Studies. In 2005, the concentration was renamed Women’s and Gender Studies, reflecting the growing body of scholarship on how gender issues affect men.

Currently, students can choose from 20 courses on women’s or gender studies including: Women and Men: Debating the Differences; Feminism & Philosophy; Women and the Bible; Women in Latin America; Psychology of Gender; Black Women Writers; and Race, Class & Gender.

“The women’s studies program allowed me to examine myself as both a woman and as a creative writer,” says Bonnie MacAllister ’99, who also studied English and French at Albright. “It influenced my choices and emphasized my potential. I was even able to continue my studies abroad in Paris at the Sorbonne, where I studied under Helene Cixious, renowned feminist and author.”

A recent article about women and science in The Albright Reporter also reveals how much times have changed. Today, of 205 Albright students majoring in the sciences, 125 are female. To read the article, go to www.albright.edu/reporter/summer2006/women-in-science.html.

- Francine M. Scoboria