Under a section entitled "Twinings" in The Dickinsonian, the editorial staff listed campus marriages, engagements, and pinnings.
Penny Kingman, who wrote a column for The Dickinsonian entitled "Two Cents Worth," created a humorous piece about "collegiat wind-up" dolls. "Wind up the Co-ed doll and she winds up the Fraternity doll," writes Kingman. She jokes that Co-ed dolls will go too fast if wound up too tight and that Sorority dolls put on pins.
In a letter to the editor of The Dickinsonian, JoAnne Harris discusses the social rules for co-eds at Dickinson College. She discusses the benefits accrued by the "Rules Experiment" when the college permitted more drinking and loosened social rules. She explained why she believed the college needed to take a more rigid stance on drinking rules, but she asserted that co-eds would need to exercise personal responsibility in Fraternity houses regardless of the rules or their enforcement.
JoAnne Harris wrote an article on fashion for the college woman entitled "College Wardrobe Planning Demands Practical Thought"Â in The Dickinsonian. Harris begins by citing Cinderella's wardrobe predicament as one shared by all college women. She interviewed Robert Einstein of the Fashion House and Mrs. Houston of the Boutique in order to discover the secret of planning a successful wardrobe in college. The interviewees warned that practical fashion did not mean dull fashion and claimed that what women wore during college would become their style after college.
An advertisement in The Dickinsonian for the Fashion House sets up a fictive, romantic tale for a Dickinson co-ed. "She hadn't seen him since June," reads the copy, "just happened to look out the window as his car pulled into the Drayer drive..." The advertisement revolves around what the co-ed wears to meet this man.
In The Dickinsonian, an article entitled "Statistical Survey Shows Men Spend Money on Women" begins "That it is a man's world every woman sometime or another admits." A senior at the college conducted a survey for a statistics class in which he asked 132 men and 72 women how much money they earned during summer months and how much of it they spent on various expenses througout the schoolyear. Dickinson co-eds, he found, earned less than their male counterparts over the summer. Women, however, spent more for tuition and living expenses than men.
Dickinson College planned to replace Metzger Hall, former home of the co-eds, with the new women's dormitory at the start of the Fall quarter. The building could house 168 women and would have 77 double rooms, 8 single rooms, and two triples. The dormitory had a center core of bathrooms and laundry facilities; rooms were equipped with built-in desks and bulletin boards along the side wall.
The Dickinsonian began a series of illustrations meant to function as a coloring book. In one of these illustrations, a woman in a tight skirt leans against a wall and appears to be either bored or asleep. The caption beneath this illustration indicates how Dickinson students may have felt about the rules and regulations governing female students: "This is a Dickinson Coed. The college protects her virtue with many rules and regulations. Color her bored."
Some quotations featured in The Dickinsonian's "Quotes of the Week" reveal what professors at the college were saying about women. An anonymous English professor supposedly said that a "woman is like a rose because she appeals to the sense of taste and the sense of touch as well as the sense of sight." Another English professor purportedly said, "You look at her lips and wish to use them in certain rites but you can't until she says, 'I'm ready.'"
In The Dickinsonian's "Quotes of the Week," a list of humorous quotations gathered each week, a co-ed admits the reason she did not attend Swarthmore: "I didn't go...because I look horrible without lipstick."
The Dickinsonian staff reported in "Cupid Hits Target" that seven fraternities had announced pinnings. Neil Knowlton of Sigma Alpha Epsilon pinned Carol H. French from the Hague, Holland. Pinning occured when a man gave his pin to a woman in order to indicate publically that they were a romantic item.
The Dickinsonian staff reported on the defeat of a birth control champion at San Francisco State in an article entitled "Sex Loses Out." According to the author, Jeff Poland, a champion of birth control, ran for student council on a platform that advocated the sale of contraceptives at a discounted price in the student bookstore and the distribution of information and advice on sexual matters to college students.
The Dickinsonian staff reprinted an article from February 25, 1922 in honor of the college's 90th anniversary. Entitled "Women Debaters Get Briefs Torn in 'Sweat Box'," this article explains that women on the debate team did not "hold themselves above using methods employed by the opposite sex when it comes to winning honor for Dickinson." They adopted the "sweat box" method of the men's debate team in order to prepare for competition and have withstood gulling at the hands of faculty coaches.
The Dickinsonian printed a picture from 1892 showing an all-male editorial board for the newspaper. The caption explains that although co-eds were not represented on the newspaper's staff, they had entered the college eight years prior to 1892.
An article in The Dickinsonian's celebration of the college's 90th anniversary described the "Species Dickinsonienses" as presented in the October 1, 1920 issue of the newspaper. Writes the author, "Those students having skirts, wavy hair, and an athletic stride are co-eds."
A reprinted article from February 11, 1922 in The Dickinsonian's celebration of the college's 90th anniversary described the "love code" of galoshes, saying that many women at the college indicated their stages of "fastenedness" or "unfastenedness" based upon the number of buckles they left open or closed.
No buckles open = married
One buckle open = I am not looking for a sweetheart
Two buckles open = Engaged to be married
Three buckles open = Not engaged to be married
Four buckles open = Have a sweetheart, but not engaged
An article in The Dickinsonian's celebration of the college's 90th anniversary entitled "Dolly Destroys Dickinson Tranquility As Students Protest Coed Admission" explains the 1884 furor over the admission of a coed on campus. When Dolly Longsdorf became the first coed, writes the author, the Freshman divided over the "coed question." Dolly and the Board of Trustees stood their ground, and sixteen women were admitted to the college by 1890. The college needed to remodel Old West in order to accomodate female students.
An article from October 25, 1928, reprinted in The Dickinsonian's celebration of the college's 90th anniversary, claims that two freshman co-eds were found "almost perfect." Otherwise, physical examinations revealed that the rest of the freshmen women had more than two defects. These defects included being overweight or underweight, having round shoulders or falt feet, "showing" head forward, or having lateral curvature of the spine.
Another reprinted article from November 12, 1936 in The Dickinsonian's celebration of the college's 90th anniversary discussed the need co-eds had for telephones. The author, rhetorically asking if his readers have ever tried to call a co-ed, says that anyone who has succeeded in doing so has "the makings of a genius or magician."
The Dickinsonian observed Dickinson's 90th Birthday by reprinting old pictures and articles, trying to capture the history of Dickinson as it related to the students of the '60s.