Alumnae share wisdom, experience at inaugural Wellesley memories night

Six alumnae who graduated in the decades spanning from the 40s to the 90s gathered in Tower Great Hall to share their college experiences with students at Wellesley Memories Night on Thursday.  Kit Cali '13 spearheaded the event with the help of The Wellesley College Alumnae Office, The Wellesley College Alumnae of Boston and The Office of Residential Life.

The event attracted over 200 students and about 20 alumnae from the Class of 1942 to the Class of 2002, according to Cali.  The panelists were Margery Milne Battin '48, Sally Graves Hammerness '58, Davi-Ellen Rosenzweig Chabner '64, Georgia Murphy Johnson '75, Folly Patterson '85 and Gail Rock Townsend '95.  Cali moderated the panel.

The chief purpose of the event was to give students a glimpse into how the College "has changed or not changed" over the years, according to Karen Kerns '97, Senior Assistant Director of the Alumnae Association.

Cali proposed her idea for Wellesley Memories Night last semester.  She came up with the idea when she met an alumna who was a prospective student's grandmother during last year's Spring Open Campus.  "She was still very much a Wellesley woman despite [the difference of] decades," she said during the program.  Cali wanted students to have a similar connection with alumnae.

Cali started the panel by asking the panelists for their majors, where they lived on campus, what student organizations they joined, why they applied to the College, what the typical student was like while they were at Wellesley and how diverse the campus was.  She also asked the panelists for stories about their professors and the wisdom they learned from their Wellesley education.  Questions from the audience followed.  

When the panelists began telling stories, Cali was surprised by what they said.  "I couldn't believe some of the things that came out of their mouths!" she wrote.  "I don't think they could either, to be honest.  I was also moved by their openness and generosity in telling stories about difficult subjects that still affect us now."

These subjects include race, class and gender issues.  Most of the students belonged to the middle class, Battin '48 said.  Townsend '95 experienced "culture shock" when she arrived at the College: she attended a public high school with a wide spectrum of class differences, but she didn't find this spectrum at Wellesley.  Hammerness '58 described her class as "WASP-y."  There were only two African-American women in her class.

Several alumnae recognized differences between students who attended private school versus students who attended public school.  Battin, Hammerness, Chabner '64 and Townsend agreed that private-school-educated students were generally better prepared in writing and foreign languages, but that public-school-educated students were better prepared in math and science.

Chabner attended the College on the "cusp" of the women's movement in the 60s.  She married in February of her senior year to her current husband, whom she first met in the staircase of Tower Court West.  For her final three months at Wellesley, she was forced to keep her marriage a secret, as revealing it would mandate her moving off-campus.  Married women could not reside in residence halls while she was a student at Wellesley because it "risked revealing marital secrets," she said.

In the 60s, women could choose among three professions: teaching, nursing and secretarial work, she said.  After Chabner decided to become a teacher, she applied for a stipend at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  "You have a great record," the interviewer told her.  "You deserve this money.  But I see you're married.  And I can predict that you're going to be pregnant soon."

Awareness of LGBTQ issues did not increase until decades later.  "We didn't know any lesbians at Wellesley," Chabner said.  "That was secret. Nobody talked about that."  

Wellesley's LGBTQ community increased its visibility in the 90s.  Spectrum, one of Wellesley's organizations for the LGBTQ community, hosted its inaugural Dyke Ball.  The party started as a prom for students who identified as LGBTQ and were unable to attend proms with their partners in high school, according to an alumna who graduated in 2002.  Then it "just became a really fantastic party."

 "Listening to [the alums,] I got the sense that Wellesley has changed a lot over the years," Cali wrote in an e-mail.  "There was curfew, for one, and many of the panelists mentioned how happy they were that the school has become so much more diverse.  Wellesley students have always had a unique spirit."

The panelists kept a light tone during the discussion.  Patterson recalled a sociology project that required her to be "socially deviant."  For the assignment, she and her classmates didn't use utensils at dinner and crowded other people's personal space. Chabner admitted that she went to the top of Galenstone Tower during a snowstorm and threw snowballs to the ground.  She also at one point "hatched a plot to escape the [housing lottery]."

"I think [Wellesley students today] have a lot to live up to in terms of having fun," Cali wrote.

While at the College, Hammerness learned "the value of friendships" and that "the only way to do a job is to do your best and do it right."  

"Wellesley taught me how to write," Chabner said.  The College also gave her "the power to do things." Johnson '75 said the College gave her "the power of analysis," which she later used as a consultant.

The College's archivist, Ian Graham, presented memorabilia from the Archives, including a campus map and scrapbook from the 40s, a book of photographs of College Hall and an anonymous book students passed around in 1988 to discuss controversial subjects.