 "Photo: N/A")
Dating life at Vassar College has come a long way since the 1960s and even farther since the 1860s. Women seeking men, women seeking women, men seeking men and men seeking women all have a place in campus dating life, but students complaining of their single status on Valentine’s Day has a long and persistent history at the College. And for some lucky Vassar students, so has dating.
On Sept. 26, 1865, Vassar first opened its doors to a class of 353 women who were required to pay $350 for tuition and housing. Founded by Matthew Vassar in 1861, the College’s mission, according to the Vassar website, “to give young women a liberal arts education equal to that of the best men’s colleges of the day” was an act of defiance towards conventional society at the time. Vassar offered women a full range of courses—including art history, astronomy, physical education, mathematics and chemistry—gaining itself a reputation for academic rigor and boldness. However, being a single-sex institution, Vassar women seeking romance with men, had to look beyond their campus. The male institution of choice, according to a Miscellany News article titled “The Misc’s Guide To Men’s Colleges” dated May 8, 1963, was Yale.
According to the article, Vassar women were known to “date Yalies more than any other variety of college male.” In fact, before Vassar became coeducational in 1969, acting as the first of the Seven Sister colleges to do so, Vassar students would sponsor trips to colleges such as Yale University, Harvard University, Princeton University, the United States Military Academy at West Point, Williams College and Amherst College to meet men. Not only would these women sponsor trips to men’s colleges, but they would rate them as well. According to “The Misc’s Guide to Men’s Colleges,” the Yale male could be identified by his “madras jacket and his hair, which falls alluringly into his right eye.” There was also the “Princeton tiger,” who carried “an orange and black pocket flask;” the “superior” Harvard male; the “rowdy, animalistic and isolated” men at Dartmouth; and, finally, the cadet from West Point who was fond of walking. For those Vassar women who desired to remain near campus, always available were the recent college graduates who worked for IBM in the Poughkeepsie area, whose “availability for weekend dating was their chief asset.”
Professor of Art Susan Kuretsky graduated from Vassar in 1963. Reflecting on the difference between the student atmosphere at Vassar in the ’60s and its atmosphere today, Kuretsky said, “There’s a complete ease of people dealing with one another today. It’s a very relaxed atmosphere in contrast to people getting dressed up and going somewhere else, getting out of their normal everyday lives.” Kuretsky expressed how for many of the women at Vassar in the ’60s, there was a clear intention behind socializing with men beyond campus. Some women held certain expectations regarding what they would do after they graduated; for many, graduation meant immediate marriage. Others were more inclined towards graduate studies or the pursuit of a career. Kuretsky described dating at Vassar as formal and artificial. Said Kuretsky, students put each other “into boxes, and it was necessary to work your way through the boxes in order to get to know someone.”
There was a certain amount of blind dating in which “you would be taken out to dinner by a date, who had met you at a mixer the weekend before, and you did not necessarily know the person,” said Kuretsky. Vassar women would get dolled up for these dates and mixers at other schools, wearing stockings, high heels and makeup. Their hair would be curled after having rolled their hair in curlers the night before. In addition, Kuretsky described how it was fairly common to see Vassar women dating their professors, usually those who had recently graduated or were near them in age.
Vassar College Historian Elizabeth Daniels ’41 explained that many Vassar girls would go to New York City for the weekend and were required to sign out and then sign back in with the College. In a sense, Vassar acted as a parental unit. In addition to trips to the city and men’s colleges, Vassar women would sometimes invite men to spend the night at the Alumnae House since men were not allowed to stay overnight in the dorms. Daniels also described the tradition of the Junior Prom, an annual ball held in the All Campus Dining Center. Those not invited would come to watch the dancers from the balcony.“ Daniels exclaimed, “If you got invited to the Vassar junior prom, you’d reached the top.”
The restrictions placed on Vassar students and overall dynamics changed after the College went coed. Daniels described this change as “a great deal of leveling and equality.” Kuretsky said, “The precious relationship that men and women can have at Vassar today is a result of its background as an all-female institution.”
Vassar has long considered itself a bastion of independence and self-sufficiency. Perhaps in some ways, Vassar students of the 21st century, have this history to thank for Vassar’s eclectic social scene that it is today.
6 comments