Faculty

This dinner program honors Miss May Morris in Morgan Hall on November 2, 1956, the year of her returement. Born in June 29, 1886, May Morris, Class of 1909, became Dickinson College's librarian in 1927 and revitalized its collection, budget, and general organization. She received her Ph. B. from Dickinson and a degree from the Pratt Institute of Library Science in Brooklyn, NY. When Miss Morris became Dickinson's librarian, there was only one librarian, one assistant, 52,000 volumes and a budget of $6,050.

A portrait taken the year of her retirement, Mary Buckley Taintor joined the Dickinson faculty in 1928 after receiving her B.A. from Ripon College in 1911, her M.A. from both Ripon and Stanford in 1915 and 1918 respectfully. She also taught French as a member of the Ripon College faculty in 1919.  She studied at Oxford University, at the Sorbonne in Paris, at the University of Grenoble in France, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the American Classical School in Rome.

This pamphlet highlights the many rules governing Dickinson students regarding attendance, including special rules and penalties. Class could only be missed for chapel or medical necessities, either due to illness or prearranged for appointments. Demerits were received for skipped classes and being late, even for Physical Education classes. Every unexcused absense was worth 5 demerits, but that was doubled if it was the day before or following a holiday break.

This Progress Reports includes changes and plans to change College policy regarding female students. Most notably is the mention of the 1973 Spring semester and the success of the movements to "rescind the 'sex quota,' by action of the Board of Trustees, so that henceforth Dickinson College will strive for an approximate ratio of 1:1 in admissions of male and female students; and to omit singing at College functions the last verse of the Alma Mater, with its references to 'men' and 'sons.'"

"Recommendations and Report on the Status of Women in the Academic Profession at Dickinson College" documents the information from a survey done from 1962 to 1972, which included a study of student enrollment during those years. In these ten years, female enrollment increased from 33.3 % to 43.2 %. On the other hand, male enrollment had increased as well. The downside to this information was that there was an increase of female students, but no increase in female faculty.

Data from a survey done from 1962 to 1972 about Dickinson College faculty revealed information about female faculty in the "Recommendations and Report on the Status of Women in the Academic Profession at Dickinson College" document. They discovered some interesting results, both positive and negative. Some negative aspects found from the survey were that women were underrepresented on the faculty, in the upper professional ranks and on the standing committees of the faculty.

The 1910 Microcosm comments upon the show that the women of the college were to put on. All of the advertisements, tickets, etc., were punctuated with question marks, leaving the theme of the show open to much speculation by its audience. The program declared that the entertainment was to be presented by the Y.W.C.A., which some men thought it meant "Young Women Can't Act" but were made to think differently. The first act was a comedic piece titled "Mrs. Oakley's Telephone" about the many conversations between various characters that takes place on this one telephone.

The report of the Student Senate Committee on Social Rules to the Faculty Committee on Social Rules was published in The Dickinsonian. The report addresses social rules that pertained to drinking downstairs in fraternities while female students were upstairs, privacy (or, as the reported defined it, the the separation of two persons of the opposite sexes from others), and what other college policies were regarding visiting hours for women. The report listed rules at other colleges, including Swarthmore, Stanford, Reed, Oberlin, Yale, and Haverford.

In October of 1884, The Dickinsonian published their first issue following the institution of coeducation. The "Locals" section includes an instance in which a professor forgot that he had female students in his class. The excerpt reads, "Prof. R.-- 'Now gentlemen--Oh! I beg your pardon, Miss Longsdorff.'" Zatae Longsdorff, the female student mentioned in this peice, was the first woman to graduate from Dickinson College.

The first mention of coeducation in the Dickinsonian appeared in October of 1884. The male editors of the Dickinsonian advised male faculty to not, "show any partiality to the co-eds. (Co-eds. in the parlance of to-day means girls) After-recitation communications cannot be tolerated. Private instructions to a co-ed are only justifiable where the subject is particularly hard to grasp."