Bell, Marion B.

"Suggestions Considered Requisite by the Students of Dickinson College For the Improvement of the College," labelled the "Atrocity Sheet Circulated by Dickinson Students" in Marion Bell's 1941-1946 Scrapbook lists many student complaints including those against Dickinson's food, service, and need for a President, but most notable are those against the Women's Dean, Dean Josephine Meredith.

Included in Marion Bell's scrapbook is a song composed by the Metzger Girls about their Dean, Josephine Meredith:

I.

"We are the girls from old Metzger Hall,

We might as well be within prison walls,

For the "Creep" is always there,

Lurking behind each door and chair,

She never laughs and she never smiles,

She disapproves of us and our styles,

As we girls go screaming by

She utters with a sigh:

"Nice girls don't scream."

II.

In Metzger Hall we ain't got no mice,

Found in Marion Bell's personal scrapbook from her years at Dickinson College (1941-46), this document of six pages outlines female regulations in dress and socialization in games, bars, dancing, and dining, with a special section regarding social possibilities on Sundays. It also includes rules regarding curfews, tardiness, noise disturbances, and distinctions between freshman women and upperclassmen not "on rules- those having a 75 average." It even provides a section for transfer students.

Clipped from a newspaper between 1941 and 1946 and placed in Marion Bell's personal scrapbook, this snippet shows the rules and regulations regarding women's attire at Dickinson. Marion Bell was known to wear slacks and this made her quite a rebel against this school rule. See Marion Bell, the Anti-Anti Bifurcationist.

Marion V. Bell (Class of 1946), sister of Whitfield Bell, appears in the 1945 Microcosm with glasses and slacks. News editor of The Dickinsonian, Bell is described as liking "slacks, apples, and long walks." The Microcosm also describes Bell as being an "anti-anti-bifurcationist" (anti-bifurcation rules prevented female students from wearing slacks).

Christine Crist (Class of 1946) describes the heavy-handedness of Dean Josephine Brunyate Meredith when the cadets arrived on campus. Although Crist remembers a date with a cadet from Texas, she says that the dean did not tolerate such fraternizing. The female students received an earlier curfew when the cadets arrived.