Most women who attended William and Mary could afford to be there. Almost all of them came from middle class or upper middle class homes. Seventy percent of the fathers held jobs that could be classified as white collar, although that designation does cover a wide range of salaries and responsibilltes. They were doctors, lawyers, businessmen, military officers, salesmen, merchants, and accountants. The largest single occupational group was that of farmers, not at all surprising in a largely rural state. Less than 1% of the women came from homes where the father held a blue collar job. The occupations of 12% of the fathers were not given, and another 9% could not be ranked as either white or blue collar because of lack of information about the postion held.2
The fathers were fairly well educated. Fifty-one percent had had at least some college education. By comparison, in 1940, only 10% of the male population as a whole had attained this level of education. Almost 19% had done some graduate work. Less than one percent had had no formal education at all; 12% had quit by the end of the eighth grade; and another 12% had not finished high school. A few of the women indicated that their fathers had grown up during the difficult Reconstruction years when schools were not always available, however much they may have wanted an education.3
Most of the mothers, 88%, were listed as housewives or as having no occupation at the time their daughters attended college. Several women indicated that their mothers had worked prior to marriage. Of the mothers who did work, many were widowed, divorced, or married to men who were unable to work. Most of the working mothers held white collar jobs, with over half of them being teachers.
The mothers were also better educated than the female population as a whole, with 45% having had some college education, compared with less than 10% of women in 1940. Only 2.5% had attended graduate school. Less than 1% had had no formal education; 7% had stopped by eighth grade; and another 10% quit before graduating from high school.
Clearly, most of the alumnae were from households which placed a value on education as evidenced by either the parents' educational background or by the occupations they held. Of course, parents with poor schooling or low status jobs could also encourage their daughters to attend college in order to improve their status. Although money was tighter during the Depression, most of the women students came from families which valued college education enough to make the necessary sacrifices for it.
Ninety-two percent of the women students received financial help from their parents in order to pay for their education. Some proudly noted that their parents, however hard they had had to struggle, had paid all of their daughter's expenses. Still, a large number did receive outside help or earned some of their own money. Twenty-three percent received full or partial scholarships, 16% held part-time jobs, and 9% received help from family members other than parents. Seven percent listed other sources of money, primarily loans from the College, but also loans from banks, friends, and family. Inheritances, trust funds, savings, and gifts provided money for some women. A few worked during the regular school year and attended college only in the summer or on a part-time basis.
Despite pay cuts, money worries, and a slightly smaller enrollment, the college administrators were able to take pleasure in the realization that they could be more particular about whom they admitted. One of the results of admitting women was that William and Mary received ever-increasing numbers of applications throughout the 1920s. The college was quickly deluged with more applicants than it had room to house. Initially, the problem was solved by accepting students on a first-applied, first-admitted basis, provided the applicant met the minimal admission standards. It quickly became evident that this method would exclude better qualified students who applied later in the year. A better screening process was needed, and the best process was the simple expedient of raising admission standards.
In 1918 the qualifications for admission were three in number: a student had to be at least sixteen years old, had to "present a certificate of honorable discharge from the last school attended," and had to demonstrate "adequate preparation" by submitting a high school transcript or by taking entrance examinations.4 Throughout the 1920s, the entrance requirements were made only a little more stringent and were probably as much a reflection of higher standards in high schools as a changing standard in admissions at William and Mary. The April 1921 catalog stated that an applicant had to have completed a four-year high school course, earning fifteen units.5 The next year, graduation from an accredited high school, with sixteen units, was specified.6 Two years later, an applicant also had to provide a recommendation from his or her high school principal.7 Despite these more stringent requirements, applications and enrollment at William and Mary continued to increase throughout the 1920s.
When the depression came, the number of applicants dropped and enrollment also declined. However, the College decided not to lower its admissions standards in order to admit more students. Indeed, the College continued to increase its standards for admission. The imposition of stricter admission standards during the Great Depression is perhaps the surest sign that William and Mary was well on its way to becoming a good quality small liberal arts college. The April 1933 catalog announced that applicants had to rank academically in the top half of their high school classes.8 This was the last new standard imposed until a total revamping of the admissions requirements were published in March 1940. Applications had to be submitted on special forms and were still considered in order of receipt, so it was necessary to apply early. Women were urged to apply by March 1, because of the stiffer competition for spaces. Men were advised to apply by May 1. The essential requirement for admission was graduation in the upper half of one's high school class. However,
[s]ince the number of applicants who meet the essential requirements is considerably in excess of the number that can be admitted, the College selects those who present the strongest qualifications in scholarship, character, personality, performance in extra-curricular activities, and breadth of interests.9In February 1936, President Bryan reported to the Board of Visitors that William and Mary, despite its declining enrollment, had rejected one hundred applicants for the 1935-1936 school year because they were deemed academically deficient.10 This is probably the best proof that the College could give of its commitment to higher standards. The years of merely filling classrooms with warm bodies were over. Now William and Mary would try to attract the more academically capable students.
The College of William and Mary did not find it necessary to add any other new academic departments during the 1930s. One department, journalism, was dropped and its creative writing courses were incorporated into the English and theatre departments. The college was still in the business of producing teachers, although one could not major in education. The students had to major in some other subject area and take at least seven education courses if they wanted to prepare to teach. Pre-professional studies were also emphasized for students interested in engineering, medicine, pharmacy, or dentistry.11
The women generally chose to major and minor in one of the subjects that make up the humanities and social sciences. The single most popular major was English, with almost 20% of the women choosing that subject. The next most favored majors, in decreasing order, were history, home economics, library science, mathematics, French, and sociology, with between five and ten percent of the women majoring in one of those fields. The most popular minor was education, followed by English, French, history, biology, and chemistry.12
Campus organizations continued on as during the 1920s. The students still had to provide most of their own entertainment because there was little to do in Williamsburg. Travel out-of-town was difficult, and women had to have permission to leave town. There were a great number of concerts and lectures on campus. Many famous people visited the College. Some, such as Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, came to see the restoration project as well as the College. But most, including Amelia Earhart, Gertrude Stein, and Frank Lloyd Wright, were invited by groups at the College. In 1934, President Julian A.C. Chandler died, and John Stewart Bryan was elected to replace him. Bryan loved parties and everyone on campus got involved in the elaborate Christmas parties he sponsored. Final dances before graduation were held in the newly-built Sunken Gardens and brought some of the well-known big bands to town. Bryan was also instrumental in enlarging and improving the Fine Arts Department. The William and Mary Theatre, part of this department, staged many productions which were very popular. The department also sponsored art exhibits and asked noted artists, such as Georgia O'Keeffe, to speak to its students.13
The most important women's organization continued to be the Women's Student Cooperative Government Association. In 1930, increased numbers of women students made it necessary for the Executive Committee to divide its duties between two committees. The new Executive Committee recommended the social rules, edited the women's handbook, and in general governed the students. The rules had to be approved by the college president before going into effect. The newly-formed Honor Council was to judge code violations and to instruct the students in the workings of the honor system. Although the Honor Council judged honor code violations, the college administration reviewed all cases. The Judicial Council continued to be in charge of judging rule violations. Its chairwoman gave permission to visit in town during the evening, to have dates with men who were not William and Mary students, or to have dates outside of normal social hours, which previously only the WSCGA president could grant.
According to its constitution of 1936, the purpose of the WSCGA was to enforce the college rules, "to legislate in all matters that do not fall under the direct jurisdiction of the [college] authorities," and to "further the best interests of the women students." It also tried to get more rights for women, although this was difficult to achieve. It was considered a victory when senior women won the right to visit the College Shop on Sunday evenings.l4 But the administration flatly rejected a major petition in 1937 requesting more liberal rules for women. Billie Newberry, who had circulated the petition, wrote an editorial for theFlat Hat in which she quoted another, unnamed, publication as stating that "William and Mary [had] the most archaic social rules for women of any co-educational institution in America."l5 It would be a long time before the situation changed. William and Mary was very concerned about maintaining its upright image and preferred to put severe restraints on the women students in order to do this.
Surviving records of the WSCGA Judical Council give an indication of what rules were being broken and the punishment for the breaking of those rules. A sampling shows that the most commonly broken rules were dating out of social hours, leaving town without permission, and coming back into the dorms late after having been out. These three categories comprised 75% of the broken rules. Other violations included going somewhere other than the place for which the woman was signed out, smoking in unauthorized places, going to the park around Lake Matoaka with fewer than the required number of couples, shooting a gun on campus, being intoxicated, breaking punishment, riding in a car without permission, improper conduct with a date, and talking out of dormitory windows. The punishments ranged from a simple warning, usually given for a first offense, to being put on social probation or being "campused." The latter punishment meant that a woman was not to leave campus. Social probation meant a woman could not have dates. Being campused was the most common punishment, usually lasting from three to seven days. Two women who were drunk were campused for three and four weeks respectively. The gun shooters were campused for two weeks apiece (it was a b-b gun and apparently no harm was done). Three women were punished for smoking in unauthorized places. One was campused for two days, to be served when she returned in the fall since the offense took place after spring exams were over; one was campused for one week; and the third was put on one week's social probation. The woman found guilty of unspecified improper conduct with a date was campused for four weeks and put on social probation for a week.l6
The women's rules and the work of the Judicial Council point out a major difference between the male and female students. Other than the rules that applied to all students, there were no social rules for the men as there were for the women. Men did not have to sign out of their dorms or get permission to leave campus. If a man returned his date to her dormitory late, she was punished but he was not. Men who broke college rules were brought to the attention of the Dean of Men and sometimes even the President. Men could be expelled or suspended for breaking rules. However, the women were given more control over their erring sisters. Infractions of all rules, social as well as college, were brought before the Judicial Council. It seems inconsistent that the administration would have protected the women so much by keeping them hedged in with all sorts of rules and dormitory mothers, while at the same time trusting them to judge their own when infractions occurred. The men were treated the opposite way: they were allowed great freedom in what they could do, but not trusted to judge their own when rules were broken. Perhaps other studies will show the same situation true of other coeducational schools. The situation may have arisen because after the Strode Bill was passed in 1918, President Tyler visited women's colleges, not coeducational colleges, in looking for models on which to base the plans for the new women students. The administration may well have adopted rules for women from women's colleges, rather than studying whether coeducational institutions discriminated between their male and female students.
Many of the alumnae expressed the belief that the social rules were oppressive and silly and recalled that they disliked them while they were in college. At the same time, however, they generally accepted them as being a normal part of college life in the 1920s and 1930s. One alumna, who had been at a girls' school, said she was attracted to William and Mary because its rules were so much less restrictive than the ones to whicn she was accustomed. At the other extreme was the woman who found the rules too suffocating and transferred after being put on six months probation for leaving town without permission. One California woman noted that the rules made William and Mary more acceptable to her parents. Since they were too far away to make sure she was all right, they relied on the security of the rules to assure themselves that their daughter would not get into any trouble. Despite the rules, the general consensus was that the women students had great fun. As one woman said, "we accepted the rules cheerfully and then looked for ways to break them." She recalled wearing raincoats over rolled-up pants in order to go out for cokes, since the women were not permitted to wear pants outside the dorms or off the athletic fields. She also recounted how a fire drill saved her from getting into trouble one night when she returned late from a date. With everyone outside, it was easy for her to mingle with the crowd and pretend she had been there all the time. Another woman recalled that she was always breaking the rules, especially about signing out and the prohibition on talking out of windows, and had to go before the Judicial Council many times. But she ended by saying "It was a great life, and I loved my W&M days." Obviously, the women students could and did have fun despite the restrictive rules. Daring students saw them as a challenge: how often can I break the rules and not get caught? Quieter students just went along with them, even if they did find them rigid and demeaning. For some, who had been in girls' schools, the rules were less restrictive than what they had been used to following. Few found them so intolerable that they transferred to other schools where the rules were less strict. For many women, transfer was out of the question, anyway. Virginia residents who could not afford private college or out-of-state tuition had only one other option, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, which began admitting women in 1921, but Tech did not welcome women students with as much warmth as William and Mary did.17
1Questionnaire 35-7.
2Stephan Thernstrom's The Other Bostonians (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973) was used for classifying jobs as white or blue collar.
3Questionnaires 25-10, 27-10, 28-6. The same situation held true for some of the mothers, also.
4William and Mary Catalog, June 1918, p. 32.
5Catalog, April 1921, p. 43. A full year of one high school subject earned one unit of credit.
6Catalog, April 1922, p. 50.
7Catalog, January 1925, p. 57.
8Catalog, April 1933, p. 73
9Catalog, March 1940, p. 75.
10Board of Visitors Minutes, February 11, 1936, p.195.
11Catalogs, 1930-1939.
12Alumnae Questionnaires, Archives Acc. 1988.67. See Appendix C.
13The Flat Hat gave extensive coverage to lectures, plays, concerts, and other events on campus.
14Flat Hat, 31 October 1933, p. 6.
15Flat Hat, 18 May 1937, p. 4.
16WSCGA Judical Council Sample, Archives Acc. 1982.58.
17Questionnaires 30-6, 34-9, 32-9, 42-7, 42-31, 44-13, and 44-16.
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