Dorothy L. Roberts describes her reasons for leaving Dickinson College in an interview. Roberts only attended Dickinson from 1941 until 1943. According to Roberts, the "war really hit our classes" on December 7, 1941. Until that point, Dickinson College had been a heavily male school.
Wilma B. Prescott (Class of 1945) describes in an interview the discrimination that the sorority Chi Omega practiced during the World War II. According to Prescott, the Chi Omegas discriminated in their membership policies, which explains why the sorority is no longer on campus. Chi Omegas could not take "oriental or Jewish" members into the sorority. As Prescott explains, "You were a WASP...." Prescott points to the war as an explanation for discrimination against the Japanese in their membership policies.
Wilma B. Prescott (Class of 1945) recalls in an interview that Professor Milton Walker Eddy of the Biology Department never flunked a female student in his class. Prescott refers to the professor as a legend and claims that he was called by the attorney to solve cases by using strands of hair. According to Prescott, Professor Eddy "felt sorry for those girls who had to take it [the required course] and weren't, did not have that bent."
Wilma B. Prescott (Class of 1945) shares in an interview how she married her husband during her senior year at Dickinson. Her husband had graduated in 1943 and was at the Great Lakes. When he had ten days furlough in February 1945, Prescott took ten days off to marry him. When she returned from her honeymoon, Professor Grimm, who taught Spanish, greeted her, "Buenos dias, senora," referring to her marital status. Prescott reports that it was normal to be married while still attending college. Other female students married their husbands-to-be.
Dorothy F. Nagle (Class of 1946) describes the night before the servicemen left and the subsequent changes at Dickinson in an interview. In 1943, Dickinson hosted a large dance the night before "the fellows were going to be leaving" from the Carlisle Railroad Station. Students were permitted to remain out an hour later than normal curfew (twelve o' clock instead of eleven o' clock) and to rise early the next morning to see the men off.
Dorothy F. Nagle (Class of 1946) recalls in an interview how she joined the Nurse's Aide program at the Carlisle Hospital during her freshman year at Dickinson. Twelve female students signed up for the program and received training at the hospital. The hospital needed help at the Carlisle Barracks because their nurses were overseas. Nagle believes she learned more in the program than she did during her four years of college and comments that the army "treated us like queens, but did they work us!" Working for the Nurse's Aide program gave Nagle the sense of contributing to the cause.
In an interview, Mary Synder Hertzler reports that groups at Dickinson College did discriminate in membership policies or in rush during the World War II period. "We were the only ones that did," says Hertzler of her sorority, the Pi Phis. The Chi Omega sorority "left," according to Hertzler, because the national chapter prohibited the extension of membership to minorities. Hertzler initially claims to remember one woman of color at Dickinson College but later revokes that statement, recalling that there "were some Puerto Ricans or somebody" at prep school.
While interviewee Mary Synder Hertzler did not mind the quality of the food at Dickinson's dining hall during the World War II period, not every student agreed with her. Other students "objected" to the food, and one female student took her steak and put it on a spindle on Dean Josephine Brunyate Meredith's desk. Hertzler claims that she "would have no more done that than fly to the moon." This student "evidently didn't care for the steak."
Nancy Watkins Lucas reports in an interview that female students corresponded with soliders and sailors during the World War II period. Lucas, who smoked at the time, recalls that cigarettes were difficult to obtain. In fact, the brand Lucky Strike Green, whose cigarette packaging was green, started a campaign during the war, "Lucky Strike Green - Gone to War." Lucas claims that "the servicemen could always get you cigarettes." Lucas dated a sailor who brought her cigarettes during the war.
According to Maragaret McAdoo's experience while on Dickinson as recorded on her interview, she observed that there always seem to be 200 more men than women on the Dickinson campus. She further elaborated by stating that a quota was implemented that the male female ratio could not be more than 3 to 1. Thus, out of a total enrollment of 600, women only made up 150 out of the total student body population. This trend, she said, continued even as the Second World War persisted.