Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from LYRASIS IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/agnesscottalumna7071agne NESSCOn ALUMNAE MAGAiJINE SUMMER 1993 EDITOR'S NOTE From the life of Bonhoeffer, who died for fcdlh amidst a corrupted culture, the Agnes Scott community probed its own issues of integrity, justice and sacrifice A barefoot actor in / \ wire-rim glasses JL JL and tattered undershirt stands alone on a darkened Agnes Scott Win- ter Theatre stage. The set is stark: bare floor, narrow cot, a rough wooden chair and table scattered with books, paper and pen. Against the wall hangs a red banner with black swastika. The place: cell 92, Tegel Prison (outside Berlin). Words revealed the man: Sleep a little. Strengt/ien body aiid soul, headaiid hal^d. For peopk, houses , spirits aivi hearts are aflame. Till your day breaks After blood red nif^t staiyifast. . . . The writer, Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, knew that there was no sleep in the blood-red night that had settled over his native Germany by 1944. In the dark ot the holocaust, each individual wrestled with life and death issues, with what it meant to act accord- ing to conscience and to live as a person of faith. The life and words ot this modem martyr expressed in the one-act play, "The End, the Beginning ot Life: the Prison Experiences of Dietrich Bonhoeffer," by David Newton; and in the documentary film, "The Life and Times ot Dietrich Bonhoeffer" provided a poignant centerpiece for the "Lives of Conscience," a symposium sponsored during the spring semester by the Faith and Learning Committee ot Agnes Scott's Board of Trustees. As the character playing Bonhoeffer probed his own mind and heart, the words stirred members ot the audience to con- front, to reflect upon and to wrestle with issues of personal integrity, justice and sacrifice. "What a person knows aca- demically, what we have experienced and what we decide to do according to conscience," commented ASC Chaplain Patti Snyder, "this is where learning and faith intersect." If the experience provoked those of us in Winter Theatre to tocus on the responsibili- ties and consequences of personal choice, it also raised provocative questions about collective responsibil- iry. Bonhoeffer's particular concern was for the com- munity of faith. As Nazis secured key positions for themseh'es in German denominations, Bonhoeffer asked, point- blank, w^ill the church Nazify its gospel or teach the gospel of Jesus Christ? He concluded: We saw the lie raise its head, aiid we did not honor the truth. When the state demanded that all church leaders take an oath ot allegiance to support Hitler, Bonhoeffer would not. We saw our hi'ethren in direst need, and feared only our oun death, he lamented, as Hitler tunied the force ot a nation's self-hatred toward a religious minority. Over and over he called on the church to take a prophetic stand. But officially, the church remained silent. "It has not raised its voice on behalf of the victims," Bonhoeffer grieved and concluded, "It is guilty." After 18 months confinement, on April 9, 1945, the 39- year-old Bonhoeffer was executed just days before he would have been liberated by advancing American troops. Following the Lives of Conscience symposium I re-read from Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison, the poem, "Night Voices in Tegel." I am waiting for that midnight, In whose fearfully streaming brilliance The evil perish for anguish And the good overconK with joy. . . . Holy strength is at work, Setting right . CONTENTS Agnes Scott Alumnae Magazine Summer 1993 Volume^, Number I li Just Like Us by Laura Sikes Pmtraics ofhoniekss women and children, plus an update on ivays ASC students and staff help give shelter. Scratching Out A Mind by Jane Zanca Studies show that co-education shortchanges grls and women, a problem since Medieval times. Apple's Ark by Celeste Pennington Antique collector Audrey Apple embarks on a journey to find the origin of a ivonderful old toy. A Matter of Degrees by Mary Alma Durrett Sacrifice, stamina and self-discovery Iceep the Retun\-to-College student moving toward that ultimate i Halfway There by Celeste Pennington Estelle Matheu, Class of '95, has her own prescription for sophomore slump. DEPARTMENTS 2 Lifestyle 38 Etcetera < Besneden? Gesneden? Jane Fonda on campus Excerpts from graduation Thatcher on women's colleges AGNES SCOTT Editor; C'ck-^tc Pennington. Contributing; Editor: Mav)' Alma Ourrett. Editorial Assistant: Audrey Arthur. Design: Everett Hullum and Harold Waller. Student Assistants: Elizabeth Cherry' '95, Willa Hendrickson '94, Helen Nash '93, Emily Pender '95, Tonya Smith '93. Pubhcations Advisory Board: Jenifer Cooper '86, Christme Cozzens, Carey Bowen Craig '62, Bonnie Brown Johnson '70, Randy Jones '70, Helen Nash '93, Kay Parkerson O'Briant '70, Edmund Sheehey, Liicia Howard Sizemore '65. Copyright 1993, Agnes Scott College. Published two times a year by the Office of Publications, Agnes Scott College, Buttrick Hall, 14f E. College Avenue, Decatur, GA 30030. 404/371-6315. The magazine is published for alumnae and ft iends of the College. Postmaster: Send address changes to Office of Development and Public Affairs, Agnes Scott College. Decatur, GA 30030. The content of the magazine, reflects the opinions of the writers and not the viewpoint oi the College, its tmstees, or administration. LIFESTYLE Hig/ili^ts from the Jives and work of alumnae doing everything from hook marketing and yoga to ministering in a diverse D.C. congregation CLEAR'CUT ENGLISH Authcrr arid Seminar Leader Lucie Barrcrn Eggkston Lucie Barron Eggleston '68 remembers well the grueling weekend she spent in the Agnes Scott library outlining a paper on Ham- let. But the expression that crosses her face when recall- ing that assignment is a smile, not a grimace. The experience 25 years ago shaped the business she owns and manages today, Letter- Perfect Communica- tions. Eggleston tells Fortune 500 employees na- tionwide to invest their time in orga- nizing thoughts first then the writing will take care of itself. "Most people don't think through a letter or report before writing it. They think 'I've got to do this by the end of the day.' It's a task to be completed. They don't think about what the FOOD FOR THOUGHT Food Bank Consultant Virginia Love Dunaway '56 Most Americans are aware that programs exist to feed the needy. But many may be unaware of the complex struc- tures necessary to keep the poor fed adequately and efficiently. Virginia Love Dunaway '65 is a part of this web. The ASC history and political sci- ence major founded the Memphis Food Bank and is now a consultant j to Second Harvest National Food Bank Network. Dunaway travels to different food banks each month to monitor how ef- fectively they dis- tribute donated goods. She monitors how the food banks conduct their business and their finances, how written word can do, or what its results will be after their hoards govern and whether their executive directors practice sound leadership. In addition, she examines how these banks relate to their communities and how they store and distribute their food. Based on her findings, she suggests improvements. Monitor- ing food banks assures manufacturers that their donations are handled judiciously, she notes. L.H. Goad the receiver gets the com- munication.' " Tlie English graduate-former En- glish teacher and bank training and development direc- tor, has also authored a book. What They Never Told You in English 101. In her self-help guide, the C^olum- iiia, S.C, ,m- thor debunks writing myths and gives readers ba- sic principles. "A lot of people were taught what they shouldn't do." Eggleston 's focus is on the positive. Leisa Hammett-Goad IN A VOLATILE MARKET Marketing director Cheryl Carlson '84 Last year,- when the pub- lishing industry overall achieved a meager one per- cent income gain (up from no gains the previous year). AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE SUMMER 1993 revenues at Heinle & Heinle ot Boston qua- dmpled, to $20 million. Heinle & Heinle attributes its remarkable growth to successful marketing ven- tures and to the acquisition of three publishing houses. As marketing director for Heinle & Heinle Pub- lishers, 30-year-old Cheryl Carlson '84, is focused and articulate. In less than fi\'e years she has developed a reputation for having the business sav\7 to market a company that dominates leinguage materials publish- ing among competitors that include McGraw Hill, Houghton and Mifflin, and Holt, Reinhart. "Publishing is a volatile industry," says Carlson. "Funds for books are closely related to the economy. It the market is down domes- tically, it might be up inter- nationally. So we publish in a lot of markets." Carlson's goal is to maxi- mize revenues for her list of books. "I'm evaluated on whether we're growing, and if I'm within my budget," she says. By her own admis- sion, the past five years have been marked by tre- mendous stress, growth and change. During her tenure, Carlson has endured a reor- ganization in which half the staff were laid oft and three companies were acquired. Acquiring new companies meant that "overnight I had twice as many titles, twice as many authors, and twice as many new markets, " says Carlson. Also, the corporate man- agement style was radically altered and new manage- ment techniques were introduced. The company adopted a form of team management. "This means basically I have to live and die by my own decisions. And when you're making large financial decisions, it's initially overwhelming." As one of the few na- tive-bom Americans on the 70-person staff, Carlson has learned how communica- tion style is connected to culture. Her supervisor is Mexican and her editorial counterparts are Austrian and Argentinean. Working on cross-cultural teams "brings a lot of texture to what we do," she says. "We all have different ways of managing. "Coming to a decision as a group, without letting any one person drive the agenda, and making the decision that is best tor all concerned, has been a real challenge for me," she ad- mits. "I'm very independent and autonomous. I really prefer working by myself." Although Carlson had studied French since kinder- garten, it was a year abroad in France that proved the catalyst for her love of lan- guages and for her "mission to see people learn lan- guages better." After graduating from Agnes Scott in 1984, Carlson worked in Atlanta for an international consult- ing firm. She handled CEO executive searches and re- searched mergers and acqui- sitions. Two and a half years later, Carlson felt she'd gone as far as she could without an MBA from Han-ard Uni\-ersity or the Wharton School. But, be- fore plunging into graduate school, she decided to take some time oft. At the encouragement of Tiz Faison '84, an Agnes Scott classmate who was working in Paris, Carlson headed for France. She studied language, literature and art history' at the Sorbonne. "Li\-ing in France was the most wonderful experi- ence," says Carlson. "I wish I'd been brave enough to do it earlier." With her newly acquired fluency in French, and her degree in English and eco- nomics from Agnes Scott, Carlson was hired by Heinle &. Heinle, publishers of lan- guage materials in French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. Headquartered in Boston's aristocratic Statler Building, Carlson's inner sanctum of mahogany pan- eled walls, art deco furniture and windows ot leaded glass offers a breathtaking view of the city's Public Garden. Although her office seems calm, the pace out- side is frenetic. "There are lots of dead- lines, details and a 1,001 3_ LIFESTlTE LIFESTYLE priorities yours, your boss's, your colleagues', your au- thors', your customers'. And everyone thinks something different is important." As marketing director, Carlson describes her job as primarily "number-crunching. I figure out what kind of story numbers tell and put it into words," she explains. "I prepare monthly, quar- terly and year-end reports, write sales forecasts, draft business plans and plans for venture capital." "Cheryl's strength is managing," believes Heinle &. Heinle designer Jean EXivoisin. "She has a high- pressure job and spends thousands of dollars. Her strength is in her ability to schedule her time and be a promise-keeper. There's al- ways the illusion that there will be more time. But there never is." Aside from working on two management teams for Spanish/French and Ger- manAtalian, she writes and produces promotional pieces. She also meets with customers, attends confer- ences, sets up focus groups and spends time with new authors. (Annette Cash, chair of ASC's Spanish de- partment, is a new author for Heinle &. Heinle. Her book A Cue Si is due out this spring.) "Most books are signed on a prospectus and an out- line, maybe one chapter," she explains. "We sign au- thors because we're ex- TWIST AND SHAKE Yoga lr\stfuctor Ruby Mae Laney Sewell 39 At 75 Ruby Mae l\ Laney Sewell '39 young. Over the years she dancing workshops in has taught hula, oriental New York and California. says she's past the age of and folk dancing, too. "Someone asked me baring her midriff, but Sewell was past 50 when once, 'Ruby, when are she's not too old to prac- she learned Yoga's gentle you ever going to learn tice Middle Eastern stretching movements from enough? She chuckles. dancing, a.k.a. belly a book loaned by a friend. "This is my con- dancing. Neither is she She fell in love then f s^ tinuing edu- too old to teach others with Hatha Yoga, *^/ C/iV ^ cation." young and old the which emphasizes ^ ^ exercise v^^/" ' U -LH joy of movement, in- cluding Yoga, her *ji' GoaA favorite. thanmedi- ^ ^^'*M ^^^ The French and psy- chology graduate began "Wie -^Ht 'JL taking dance lessons as a her skills, ^a^^^^ C^ ^^\^ child, took every dance Sewell fre- ^x// ^ **-^^tT t^^ course Agnes Scott of- quently at- */ ^ ^ ^ ^^L fered, and began teach- tends .^i^^^^^ u^ ^mmJB^^ ing dance in her home Middle Eastern \f^^ ^P^B&^ when her children were W ~ tremely interested in their research. Some might have a really unique concept." Until this tall, Carlson traveled three weeks a month. But the exhausting pace began to take its toll. "It was hard to keep any normalcy or maintain a per- sonal life with that kind of schedule," she says. "It's im- portant to those of us who don't have things that root us, to not pull our roots up too often." As demands on her time and energies grow, she has set priorities. Once a week, she works at home. Her spacious apartment overlooking Bea- con Street is a comfortable retreat drenched with light from atrium skylights. She also maintains a bal- ance in her life through vol- unteer activities. "You real- ize there are much bigger things in life than whether a book is going to be a week late," she says. As a member ot the Junior League of Bos- ton, Carlson spends one day a week, and one weekend a month, working with homeless kids taking them ice skating, preparing dinner for them, helping them with crafts. "Some- times it's overwhelming with 30 kids in a small room. The noise is outra- geous. I always have a head- ache when I leave. But I'm AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE SUMMER 1993 surprised how generally happy the kids are how- sweet and anxious to please. And then, there are a few hell-raisers," she admits with a laugh. She traces her motiva- tion tor volunteering with homeless children from les- sons learned at Agnes Scott. "I was taught that to be a productive, happy person in our society, it's important to take care of yourself and to love the people around you. "No matter how busy you are, it you're too busy to lend a hand to your friends and your neighbors or your town, there's something wrong." Learning to put appro- priate emphasis on her pro- fessional life and not letting it overwhelm the rest, says Carlson, is essential to her own sense of success. Carolyn Blunk is a freelance writer living in Boston, Mass. TAKEA BREAK? Ccnsukant Polly Brooks Simpson '61 Option 1: Find a job after high school or college graduation. Option 2: Go to college or graduate school. But Option 3? What is it? Polly Brooks Simpson has all sorts of answers. It's her business. The former social worker and pri\'ate practice thera- pist now consults with teens and young adults who need to fill in that proverbial year-off. Simpson is a prime re- source for students looking for a great way to delay col- lege or take a break before continuing university study or pursuing graduate work, or before "entering the real world" of work. She helps clients who wish to live abroad, leam a foreign language, do a com- munity service project over- seas or work on an environ- mental project. She gives direction to students who simply say, "I'm tired and I don't want to go to school next year." Simpson helps her cli- ents explore their fantasies and possible career paths, then she researches and recommends several options which may include volun- teer and internship opportu- nities. The payoff for Simpson: watching transformation among her clients who gain confidence and self-esteem or a new life direction dur- ing their "sabbaticals." TTie one problem, Simpson finds, is that sometimes she would like to pursue the intriguing options that she finds for her clients. L.H.Goad DIVERSE COMMUNION Pastor Gamett Foster '64 \\ /hen the Rev. V V Gamett Foster '64 peers from her pulpit into her 225-member congrega- tion she sees diversity Anglo-Saxons, Africans, African- Americans , Caribbeans. Among them are high-powered Washing- ton lobbyists. Environmen- tal Protection Agency em- ployees and at least 35 law- yers. It's a crew, she says and chuckles. And the chal- lenge posed by this motley membership at Takoma Park Presbyterian Church m Takoma Park, Md., says Foster, their spiritual leader of two years, is to help match social commitment with theological understanding. In her sermons the ASC English major and Princeton Theological Seminary gradu- ate tries to give parishioners a new lens through which to view the biblical text and new ways of seeing life. "One of my goals," says Gamett, "is to develop a community whose life in the world flows out of theological understanding." L.H. Goad LINDA, AGE 43 I don't want to come back here. Because you hear crying at night of some of the women and you know what the children are going through. They realize their dreams just aren't coming tiiie. I still have lots of dreams. JUST LIKE Photographer Laura Sikes intended to take candid photos of life in the Moreland Avenue sheker for women. But she If ^T^ ^l changed her mind. She decided I I ^^^^ not to invade that private space. ^L^^J V^l Instead, she posted a sign-up sheet for portraits and the following Sunday converted a small dining room into a studio. By the time she had put up the seamless and turned on the lights, a line of women many with children ^filled the hallway. She saw mothers combing their children's hair, women putting on lipstick and Dorothy styling her wig. "I think of the result as real intimate," says Sikes who later exhibited the photos to help Atlanta's homeless. "I learned a lot from those women, you know." 'W Women and children are the fastest growing homeless population. In CLYDE, AGE 81 "I used to stage dance, tap, Charleston, alldiat. Ballet. Well, after a certain age, I stopped 'cause I done lived my life and I know I can't live nobody else's, so I stopped that dancing. I didn't want to die dancing. I'd rather die with a prayer Ln my mouth." PORTRAITS OF HOMELESS WOMEN BY LAURA SIKES 7 \;^'' DONNA WITH AMBER, 5, and VIRGINIA, 3 I've been a nurses' aide. A maid. A cook. I'm not afraid to work. I've tried to get jobs and they tell me, 'I'm sorry we just don't think you can handle it.' I need a job. I'm in a shelter but I want out. My goals are to have my children and myself in our own home. AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE SUMMER mi response to that, concerned women like Sikes are get- ting involved. '<^ "I can't walk out of the door and say today I am going to end homelessness or world hunger," reasons Agnes Scott's assistant publications manager Mary Alma Durrett. "But I can say I will fix dinner for these six homeless families at the Trinity shelter." W Durrett is one of several ASC staff and students whose lives connect with those of the homeless as they prepare meals and act as night directors at Trinity, one of Atlanta's 14 shelters (providing 600 beds) for women and children. Early one morning as Durrett helped a young mother bundle up four kids hot with fever, she re- members worrying. By 7 a.m. they would have to leave the shelter and head into the cold. "Where do these women go during the day?" Durrett wonders. "W "The question that always rolls through my mind is how can I address the larger issues of homelessness?" W Members of the Agnes Scott community are dealing with that. With nine women's organizations (including Atlanta's DOROTHY, FORMER TEXTILE MILL WORKER AND MIGRANT LABORER "Before I came here, I was living in my car and sleeping in the park. I'd like to have my own apartment. I really would. Or just a little room with a little hot plate and a shower. That would be plenty for me. 1 don't feel sorry for myself and 1 don't want nobody else feeling sorry for me." / 1 V 1 si " i BECKY WITH ALEX, 2, AND DANIEL, 9 MONTHS I work on the labor pool. I make $25 for eight hours; sometimes I can make $15 or $20 for six hours. I'm glad I got a place to stay. Most people ain't. They be sleepin' outside in the cold. I have a roof over my head. I mind my own business and stay out of trouble. ^NES SCOTT MAGAZINE MAY I'W Junior League and Women's Chamber of Commerce) this year they formed the Women Help- ing Women Coalition to build a Habitat for Humanity house in Atlanta's Reynoldstown. '^ For months, ASC Habitat chapter members spent off-hours sanding, nailing, painting and sell- ing 250 Main tower-shaped birdfeeders and President Ruth Schmidt personally donated $1,000 to raise $5,000 toward construction materials. W Then Saturday after Saturday, volunteers JEREANDHER SON, DESMOND "Tlie hardest thing is not being able to come home to a home like your own private apartment, and Desmond and me we sit down and have din- ner and talk. I have to talk to him more to get him to realize things will be better again one day; he's like, every day, 'Do you think ill we 11 move soon 11 MAKING A HOUSE A HOME Agnes Scott joined in the Walkathon among Women Helping Women Coalition volunteers to raise money for the Women's House entirely funded and built by women. found themselves sloughing through mud and rain to help Mary Brown build a home for her- self and children Shakeivious, 9, and Johnny 3. For this Women's House, even the construction site supervisor was a woman, Habitat s Jeanne Shorthouse. W Toward the end of a busy Satur- day in April, Mary Brown in coveralls and large dangly earrings draped an arm around the sup's shoulder, squinted at her new house and smiled. "It's gonna be pretty. I can see teal trim on the front of the house. Can you see that, Jeannie?" "ig From the beginning, all workers on the site have been women, only. Among the 50 in mauve paint-spattered jeans, boots and billed caps that day was Pam Ruffin. Since 8 a.m., she had installed insulation in the attic and crawl space of the house. "Even though we may not have experience in building," she said, "women can do anything." Celeste Penningtxm 12 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE MAY/W.^ f!.~" 'i... ' v.. , >v. ,^' \ < :^---^ ilB!!!! V. ^/ ? \ \ -- J^ %?* / /',-/ / / / Written by Jane Zanca Illustrated hy Ralph Gilbert V y ^ '*/ y i-- /^ /. - > / '/. - ^"-^ SCRATCHING OUTAMIN0- Studies show co-education has not served women well. The women's college advantage may be re-emerging, an idea whose time has come. T}^ pictures of ill-fated Abelard with Jus pupil ond lover Hehise were drawn in the iduminated initial letter of an ancient manu- script, Historia Calamitatum. This is the only medieval depic- tion of Abelard. The face of '' Hehise has been scratched out. HELOISE AND ABELARU. Re-," member those tragic figures of French literature and medieval history, brought together as a youthful, bril- liant student and a renowned logician and teacher. The tvvo became lovers. And tradi- tion holds that for the indiscretion, both were punished: he by castration, she by confine- ment for life in a monastery, where she rose to the position ot abbess. Is there not a signifi- cant hole in the traditional interpretation of this tragedy? On the Richter scale of the 12th century', a scandalous sexual relationship even one involving clerics or bishops might register about a two. TTiat translates to a raised eye- brow, a titter behind one's hand, perhaps a delay of hierarchical favors. The education of women now there was a shocking topic. Teaching one's daughters in those days was a private matter, carried out (if at all) in isola- tion with a tutor or in the cloister of a con- vent. Either setting sufficed to keep girls from dipping into the currents of knowledge that swirled through the 12th century. There was a rationale for this, of course. Put simply, women incited lust which men were incapable of controlling. Therefore men perceived women as antithetical to the pursuit of knowledge. That the union of Heloise and Abelard began with an attraction to each other's -:i3S^'' 15 WOMEN'S COLLEGES THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF EDUCATION: BREAKING WITH CENTURIES OF EXCLUSIONARY TRADITION THE 1700s Settlers leave behind 1 8th centw-y European traditions that hold, as Jean Jacques Rousseau put it, educating women is important, as it is relative to men: "To pkase them, to be useful to them, to make theinselves loved and honored by them. . ." 1778 Happily, Rousseau dies . TO THE EARLY 1800s Most teaching occurs at home. Elementary class- rooms open to boys and ^rls. (Young women are wan\ed against reading ro' mantic novels, believed to cause overexcitement of sexual organs and uterine disease.) Throughout the 1800s America races westward. Insatiable demand for teach- ers to tame new frontier contributes to birth a^^d growth of women's colleges. 1821 Troy Female Seminary opens . Founder Emma Hart Willard has radical minds, a shared excitement about learning to the 12th century mind, that was not only impossible, it was unthinkable. NINE-HUNDRED YEARS LATER, the world allows Heloise to go to school, but as with her 12th century counterpart, it may not take her education too seriously. That this philosophy survives and that it has a terrible impact on girls has finally been documented. One of the most recent reports, commis- sioned by the American Association of Uni- versity Women [AAUW] and compiled by the Wellesley College Center tor Research on Women from more than 1 ,000 publications about girls and education (including hundreds of research studies), charges that ignoring or demeaning girls is a tradition central to the American school system. Teachers pay less attention to girls than hoys; some tests remain biased against girls/women; some textbooks ignore or stereotype women; sexual harass- ment/stereotyping occurs, both from male classmates and teachers. Unfortunately this gender bias begins as early as kindergarten and has far-reaching ef- fects on women's self esteem and confidence, on their work options and earning power. In its latest analysis of the high school class of 1972, the U.S. Department of Education found that while these women obtained higher level educations than men, they had not come close to achieving parity in the labor market. Another report noted only seven of 33 major occupations did women earn pay equal to that of men. Only one percent of top corporate managers are female. A fomier sur- geon general called the absence of women in medical research "scandalous." Explains Mary Williams-Norton, chair of the physics department at Ripon College in Wisconsin, m a Fortune magazine article, "Of- ten girls' grades are based on low-level learn- ing like memorization of fact. One reason that girls don't achieve more later on is that they don't get praised for independent thought, creativity and higher order thinking." For girls and women, co-education has built fences where bridges to learning and op- portunity should stand. Still, for every fence the system builds, there are Heloises who slip through. TTiey re- tain a bright-eyed excitement about knowl- edge, embrace learning as a lifelong lover. These women create a lifestyle that fulfills a deep need for growth arid personal mean- ing whether it is in tending the hearth for a family or spinning off predictions for the stock market. Usually they can be spotted by the trail of dust they raise, kicking up accomplish- ment after accomplishment throughout their lives. WHO ARE THESE WOMEN ? Increasingly, they are singled out as graduates of women's colleges, institutions that empower women. Says Ruth Schmidt, President of Agnes Scott College, "A woman's college provides the very environment which will enable women to succeed." Indeed, compared to women graduates of co-ed colleges, graduates of women's colleges are six times more likely to be on the boards of Fortune 500 companies or to be named in Business Week's list of outstanding corporate women. Surveys by several groups have shown that women's colleges produce a higher per- centage of females with degrees in physical science, life sciences, math, economics and business. Nearly half of graduates from all- female schools have advanced degrees. They are twice as likely to pursue a doctorate. Gtaduates of women's colleges are also more likely to make inroads into traditionally male jobs, and they place in those jobs at the higher end of the pay scale. After establishing a career path, median salary for graduates of women's colleges is typically $8,000 more than for women from co-ed campuses. Graduates rarely regret their choice of an all-women's college: 71 percent of women's college alumnae say they would choose the same college again. This track record is more impressive in light of how the educational system educates girls, from the beginning. TTie AAUW notes that in the traditional classroom, boys are en- couraged to be ambitious, adventurous, curi- ous; to ask questions, even to challenge au- thority. Girls are rewarded for being neat, nice and well-behaved. They learn not to ask ques- tions or challenge assumptions. Soon they are barely seen, much less heard. Day after day, school year after school year, the two different messages are reinforced, and girls begiii to lose faith in themselves. THE COLLEGE EXPERIENCE may be a first chance, as well as a last chance, to break the mold of 12 or more years as a second-class citi- zen. Single-sex colleges, according to author Alexander Astin (in his analysis of college environments in Four Ctitical Years), provide 16 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE St'MMER /! more positive patterns: "Students become more academically involved, interact with faculty' frequently, show large increases in in- tellectual self-esteem," he writes. Victor Wilson, assistant dean of students at Agnes Scott, also notes that this single-sex college experience challenges the status quo: "Here I don't see the societal notion to pam- per women, the 'We'll take care you, little lady' type of thing. Here, the little lady can take care of herself." TTiere are many implications in taking care of oneself. In the classroom, it rules out the possibility of receivfng an Agnes Scott educa- tion as a spectator It means that instructors will invite or demand participation. "When 1 see a student playing with her hair instead of answering the question, 1 tell her there is no right or wrong answer, but 1 want to know what she thinks," says Donna Sadler, associate professor of art. After a lifetime of being ignored, it can be a shock especially when those infamous Agnes Scott tirst-term grades come out to find that the instructor took one's work seriously. To foster gender equity really means "equippmg our graduates so they can compete in the larger world, and that means not spoon- feeding them, not giving them special courses 'designed for women,' but gi\'ing them the kind of courses that equip them to meet the standards of the larger world," says Richard D. Parr\', F.E. Callaway Professor or of Philosophy. "My own \'iew is, my role in the classroom is to be tough and demanding. Challenging." t is noted in a re- cently released Carnegie Foun- dation study, . College: The Undergraduate Experiei-ice in America, that in co- educational settings, men talk more and what they say carries more weight. (A consistent finding in research spanning 20 years is that this kind of activity begins early: boys call out answers eight times more frequently than girls in lower grades.) Patterns of college classroom interac- tion, with the emergence of leaders and fol- lowers, are set very early in the term. "In many classrooms, women are overshad- owed. Even the brightest women students often remain silent." The training to be silent is difficult to undo. Although experiences in the Agnes Scott environment vary, some women remam quiet, reflects Elizabeth Cherry '95. "In my classes here, the students are less outspoken than those in my high school classes," she says. "We [at Agnes Scott] tend to be more quiet. . . . When competing with women, I don't want to win. I would prefer a tie." It is interesting that Cherry's latter observa- tion encapsulates another of the AAUW's findings: girls' approaches to learning are dif- ferent from boys', and these difterences are ignored in the traditional classroom. Girls tend to learn better in groups, says the report, with the group shaping multiple solutions in- stead of the one "right" answer that boys tend to pursue. Girls tend to identify personally with a sub- ject, to be careful listeners, to depend on expe- riential logic behind ideas, notes Nancy Gold- berger of the Fielding Institute. In classrooms where adversarial debate reigns, says Goldberger in a Phi Delta Kappan interview, girls fall silent. Comparing teaching experiences at Harvard University and Agnes Scott College, Christine Cozzens, assistant professor of En- glish and director of women's studies, noted these distinctions, as well, and found them so unnerving that she never felt she was fully prepared for class (see following story). Ginger Patton-Schmitt '89 has taken a sobering inventory of such distinctions during her first-year law study at the University of Georgia Law School: "All first-year law students take the same curriculum. Only one- third of law students are female. All of my sub- stantive courses are taught by men. ... It has been a much different environment." She and two past and present classmates, Vanessa Elliot '92 and Amy Bridwell '92, have compared approach. She tal', the poor, the messy, the whole bunch." Reed is focused: she has completed an extemship in medical technology at Atlanta- area hospitals and an internship at Grady Hos- pital. Recently, she has been working as a pharmacy technician in a federal penitentiary. Her constant challenge is to manage moth- ering, studying, participating in an internship and working 30 hours a week. Reed lives with her three children and her mother. REED'S HECTIC SCHEDULE is not unlike other RTCs, who represent almost 1 7 percent of Agnes Scott's student body (up from 6 per- cent just 10 years ago). The average RTC maintains a 2.9 a grade/point average, has school-aged (or younger) children, and works part-time. Many RTCs had started college after high school, then dropped out to marry, bear children and/or work. Some have experi- enced divorce or the loss of a spouse. Some have adult children. Others care for aging par- ents or support dependent children. They handle complex personal responsi- bilities (and initial anxieties about stepping back into academia) to become a stable, com- mitted student population. The RTC reten- tion rate is higher than that of traditional-age students, explains Stephanie Balmer, assistant director of admission, responsible for RTC recruitment. "Some have wanted to return to college for 1 5 years and some have to walk through fire to get through college." "I have known RTCs who were nurses, who worked 24 hours on the weekend so that they are free to study and attend classes during the week," notes Kathy Monturo '92 of Lilbum, an RTC graduate who conducted a senior-year independent study of the "Effects of Returning to College on Non-Traditional Age Women." "When they get here, these women are very focused," continues Monturo, a soft-spo- ken Brooklyn, N.Y., native who moved At- lanta in 1979. "They know what they want, they just don't always know how to get it. Some adult students must limit the hours they work and that limits their financial resources." Others give up the paycheck. Monturo discovered that demands of study affect relationships with parents, spouse, chil- dren and friends. "One major question for the adult learner is whether the time, eftort and sacrifice are going to pay off. Truly, the older student comes to the classroom with more than just a burning desire to learn." Florence Hardney-Hinds, a December '92 graduate, agrees. "I had to decide on a field of study that was marketable. I asked myself what I could do. I had always been a volunteer, teaching adults to read, organizing projects for Jamila's [her daughter] school." Teaching emerged, the natural choice. An easygoing 45-year-old, Hardney-Hinds 26 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE SLIMMER !<)" enrolled in ASC's fledgling Master of Arts in Teaching program and also student teaches in DeKalb County's Open Campus, an acceler- ated high school program for special students. Her own return to college (she first en- rolled in the mid-1960s) was nudged by her daughter's move into adolescence. "I had been very devoted to her and realized that I might [be trying] to live a life I hadn't had, through her. I didn't want to be consumed by that." REALIZING A LIFELONG DREAM is how Sandi Harsh, a junior English major and secre- tary ot ASC's annual fund office, describes her return to college. "The program seemed to be tailor-made for me." Harsh began a degree at the University of South Carolina after high school, but dropped out to marry. She traveled with her husband and two daughters to Ken- tucky and eventually moved to Atlanta, her husband's home, where she became a success- ful real estate agent. Yet her desire to return to the classroom persisted. NX/hen the Atlanta real estate market bottomed out, she says, "That really made me think this was the best time to pursue my education." To be an in RTC stiuknt, Karen Reed must maintain a disciplined life: every Tuesday and Thursday morning after seeing her children off to school, Reed walks or catches a ride to the bus stop, then transfers to a hAARTA train at Avol^dale to reach the Decatur station. From there she walks to cam- pus. She's careful iiot to sched- ule classes before 9:25 a.m. and she tries to finish her studies before returning home to help the children with theirs. On Monday, Wednesday and Fri- day, she works at the pharmacy from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. 27 THE RETURN-TO-COLLEGE PROGRAM This quick self'pi)rtrait by Susan Buckley '93 became an affirmation oj her new career direction. A 50'y ear-old RTC student and Phi Beta Kappa who ran on ASC's cross country track team, Buckley hopes to pursue an advanced degree in psychology and a career in art therapy. Starting over was not easy. "At 18 I didn't have any anxiety about going away to school but 1 did when 1 came here," confesses the 47-year-old Harsh. "1 was concerned that I had forgotten what 1 learned before or that I had so few prerequisite courses that I might not be able to make it. The first couple of ', semesters can be overwhelming." This is not an isolated experience, ac- cording to Margaret Shirley '81, a counse- V, lor for ASC since 1987 and one of the first L RTC students in 1974- "RTCs and tradi- tional students are more alike than they are different, but part of the RTCs diffi- culty is in learning how to be a student again." Shirley, who returned to the class- room after years of working as a book- keeper, observes, "Self-esteem may be low and the students may be saying, We're not sure we can do this.' " Some have problems with concen- tration, writing papers or gleaning the most important information, writes Anne Bianchi in her Smart Choices , A Woman's Guide to Returning to School. "Add to that . . . statistics that show women in general to be lacking in math skills, and the picture becomes fairly bleak." But Bianchi points out that non-traditional-aged women also bring to the classroom "many years' experience facing and overcoming problems. They have a will to succeed that, in most cases, has enabled them to move from problem to solution in the shortest amount of time. . . . On average [it takes] only six weeks to boost their school skills to a point of functionality. Even in math." Says Shirley, "That's the most wonderful thing about Agnes Scott you gain selt-es- teem. You find that you have a voice of your own. 1 see that within the women I have got- ten to know they are personally powerful." The discovery can be exciting yet over- whelming: with new consciousness may come a flood of new questions, new dilemmas. De- mands can grow unwieldy, leaving her feeling fragmented and isolated. One RTC verbalized her angst in a bulletin board note: "I've gradu- ally dropped activities and people from my life. Choral Guild was the first to go Mary Ann's friendship with it. I gave up aerobics for the three hours per week it gave me for read- ing and research. My marriage was the next casualty, my exit accompanied by the loss of daily contact with my children. Then my church my feminist awareness was growing work of friends it included. Finally, in an effort to finish college by my 50th birthday, I left my job last June and with it my income." Reordering priorities may become the con- stant in an RTCs life. "It's a day-to-day, mo- ment-to-moment process," says Monturo. "You have to make judgments all the time. You say this is something 1 can do; this is something my husband can do; or this is some- thing we're just not going to he able to do." For Susan Buckley, 50, the College has of- fered an opportunity for discovery. Disillu- sioned with her nursing career, she came to ASC in 1988 at a friend's suggestion. As a pas- toral assistant at her parish church, she had an interest in earning a degree in Bible and reli- gion. Then she took a studio arts class with Terry McGehee, chair of the art department. It was a eureka experience. All Buckley could think was, "Wow! This is where 1 need to be." A LIVELY DISCUSSION ofOthelb in Peggy TTiompson's English class draws comments from RTC Karen Reed. "Othello is proud and regal and black. He is everything that a man should be," obser\-es Reed with predictable confidence. "He's not a snake," she continues, comparing him to the unscrupulous lago. Her street-wise candor draws laughter. "Overall 1 think my Agnes Scott experi- ence would be worse without the RTCs," says Willa Hendrickson '94, a 21 -year-old biology major. "They come at things from a whole different perspective than we do. They have a lot of real-life experience to add." Agrees Assistant Dean of Students, Victor Wilson, "It would be a totally different campus without them." And their numbers are likely to increase. The national "birth dearth" of 18- to 21 -year- olds, the in-migration of Latinos and Asian- Americans over the past 30 years and the growing "older population" continues to im- pact American college campuses. U.S. Department of Education figures indi- cate that of the 13.6 million students in col- lege and professional schools in 1990, two- fifths were over the age of 25 and 60 percent of them were women. By 2000, nationwide, half of all students will be adults over 25. SHEER SIZE of the non-traditional-age learn- ing pool and the cost factor will probably affect future recruitment. The older student is less expensive to attract and to retain. Agnes Scott spends an estimated $400 to recruit an RTC, substantially lower than recruiting an 18 28 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE SLMMER 199.; year old, notes ASC admission's Stephanie Balmer. And the a\'erage need-based financial aid package tor an RTC in fall 1991 ($4,310), was $800 less than the a\'erage for traditional- age students. "Financial aid was caicial for me," says Melanie Pavich-Lindsay, 41, a December 1992 history' graduate who wants to pursue a doctor- ate. She worked part time at Rich's Depart- ment Store and helped raise her husband's son from a previous marriage during her five se- mesters at ASC. "Sometimes I looked at the traditional-age students and en\'ied their less complicated li\'es. I wish 1 had recognized at their age how important education is." Monturo agrees, "One problem that you have to deal with when you discover this in mid-life is that learning is addictive. You want to learn everything. NXTien you look through an [aca- demic] catalog. It's like being in Tiffany's and saying I want to have one of these and these and these." Monturo laughs at her zeal. One morning she had driven halfway to campus before real- izing that she was wearing only a slip and blouse. "I went home to finishing dressing but was praying that I wouldn't have a wreck or get stopped along the way." A RECURRING COMPLAINT among RTCs is that they do not teel they are an inte- gral part of the campus coinmunity. Most live oft campus (although residence hall life is an option for RTCs). Obser\'es Victor Wilson, assistant dean of students, "When student groups want to meet on Sunday, it's hard tor an RTC from Douglasville to drive in." The situation produces a kind of schizophrenia in RTCs. Assimilating "just takes awhile." Stresses Admission's Cooper: "We want them to ha\'e the total college experience." Ruth Wiles came to ASC with the same idea. She arrived in her late 50s, during "one of the lowest ebbs of my life. ... 1 couldn't get stable work." The politi- cal science major (who began drawing Social Security last year) has immersed herself in campus lite. In February, Wiles joined other sophomores who received class rings during a formal ceremony. In the audience were Wile's 1 1 -member contingent of children and grand- children. "The whole family is very support- ive," says the Memphis native. "1 bet they'll be here for my graduation. They want to see me get through." RTC The ins and out's of Agnes Scott's Retum-To'CoUege program Application process: High school tran- scripts, previous college transcripts and appli- cation forms must be submitted with two recommendations. Entrance interview in lieu of SAT or ACT scores. Financial Aid: RTCs must take at least six semester hours of course work to qualify for financial aid and may apply for financial aid (grants or loans), including the Middle In- come Assistance Program ($3,000 grant) it income is between $20,000 and $60,000. Orientation: Tailor-made for the non-tra- ditional age group. Students are assigned "Big Sisters" to help them through the first days. Personal counseling: Counselors help with a variety of scholastic and personal problems. An RTC support group meets weekly. Focus groups: Approximately 1 2 students meet weekly for the first seven weeks of the fall semester to help cope with college life. Retum-To-CoUege Student Organiza- tion: a primary support and information group. RTC Lounge: In this Alston Student Center lounge with comfortable furnishings and desks, RTC congregate to study, talk and sometimes sleep. Transfer credit: A student must earn a minimum of 60 semester hours at Agnes Scott toward the 124 semester hours re- quired to receive a degree from ASC. Timetable: Eight years to complete a de- gree if an RTC begins as a first-year student. A role in Blcickfnars Spoon Ri\'er Anthology is just one way RTC student Ruth Wiles has involved herself in ASC life she's also served as vice president of the Retum-To' College Stiuient Organization aivi as one of two RTC repre- sentatives in the Student Gov- ernment Association. In Janu- ary she traveled to Washington to participate in a "Women arid Public Pohcy" seminar. 29 THE RETURN-TO-COLLEGE PROGRAM Cell biobgy lab offers, valuable hands-on experience to sophomores Estelk Matheu (right) ard Ayanna Whitfield. 30 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE Sl'MMER/*. tresstul is how Estelle Matheu THE ODESSEY OF DISCOVERY W'nttcn lyy CcL'stc /\'n)in\tjt() -'hotogwipJicd lyy Munihi Ni7' with a kill i^etween govern- .so. But 1 have to acadL'iiiic Kiad, ment troops and study.' He really Matheu, like al- Da\'id Koresh of encourages me. most a third of the the Branch We pu.sh each students at Agnes L\i\'idian cult in other to do well." Scott, is in the Waco, Texas. She Matheu 's from work/study pro- :elt that cour.se Houston, ("ole- gram. Ten hours a gave her insights. man's from Baxter week she assists 'Religion is a pow- Springs, Kansas. with lihrary erful thing. Wlien They met at an circulation/refer- you understand ASC dance and ence tasks. that, you have a since have grown For more than a sense ot what rules in one another's year, she's also been a person's life." company. "With seeing lanky Chris- But no matter other people I've topher Coleman, a aow hard she's dated, the relation- senior engineering tried to make time ship got to the major at Georgia for academics, point that it was Tech. "We go to work and social just me and that museums. Ice skat- life, the balance other person. Chris ing. We went to -las been weighteel and I don't date the ballet Giselle. toward study. other people. But We see plays. Chris Week nights, we are not just hadn't experienced ler contact with bound to each much of this be- Coleman may be a other. We go out. fore. So we are phone call during often gt) in groups, learning. Expand- study break. "Both with friends. We ing our horizons." ot us respect each just have fun being For academic other's time. If I ourselves. balance, this se- -lave an exam, he "Together, we mester Matheu ^5!E "bombarded" is the Id '52^ way she describes ^^k|g2^^H feeling. "Because of ^^^^^HH this class, when I ^^^^^Hy|d go to museums I P^^^^^^H know more what to Hfl^^^^^? ^^^^^^B look for in art and ---^'^^^^^r i^ how to interpret ^toa^^^^^^^_^ i -< -'^ o\0^/> Working in the lihrary with Kelly Holton '94. 'CoTt 33 THE CLASS OF '95 t the close of each A" balloons bob up and down Agnes Scott residence hall walls, waiting to he popped. Each represents a final. Among the bal- loons taped to the the walls outside her room on third floor, Rebekah Scott Hall, five belong to Estelle Matheu. Customarily she locks herself in the room with a squeeze bottle of water and studies for finals, non-stop. Later to stay awake, she's down- ing Coca Cola. Sugar and adrena- line kick in and if necessary, Matheu continues studying straight through until morning. Last semester she had fewer finals, spaced out and interrupted with Christmas celebrations and one late-night tromp to the Alumnae Garden to throw a newly engaged friend in the pool. This semester, memorizing facts for history, she says, provided "kind of a break" from very compre- hensive science finals. But her fi- nals had to be scheduled one right after another. "Why didn't soine one tell me it would be like this!" moans Matheu. Matheu's cure for sophomore slump is "Don't give up." That kind of determination sees her through finals. For five back-to- back exams, she studies 72 hours, non-stop. She closes her eyes. "Why didn't some- body tell me it would be like this? I pulled three all nighters, in a row." She grins. "Talk about sophomore slump." That phrase has had a special ring for generations of Agnes Scott stu- dents. "Histori- cally," says Mollie Merrick '59, associ- ate dean of stu- dents, "sophomores have experienced a let-down from the excitement of that first year. They feel the pressure to declare majors. While those decisions are not irrevers- ible, they do ^ IllEGAl MU8I0 IN THE AREA Locked in her room, she begins the finds marathon. 34 AGNES SCOTT MAG.AZINE SLTvlMER |Wi have conse- quences, like caus- ing a student to take more time to gtaduate." Emily Pender, one ot Matheu's contemporaries, describes it this way: "About the time you have de- clared a major and you believe this is what you want to do with your life, you take a higher- than-lOO-level course. TTien you suddenly realize you really know nothing about this subject and think you are not going to make it." The first year is so new that stu- dents are ready to jump in, academi- cally and socially, notes director of recruitment Jenifer Cooper. "In the sophomore year students see three years ahead. By the junior year, they begin to see the light at the end ot the tunnel. And they hit their stride, aca- demically." Estellc Matheu stoically followed her ouTi prescrip- tion tor getting through sopho- more slump. "You can't give up. For one exam. For one quiz. You can't say, 'I'm tired. I'm not going to study.' You just don't have time. If you do that, you just have to work that much h.irder." During finals, as the fragrances of spring evenings and sounds ot mu- sic from car stereos wafted through the window, Matheu went the distance with her marathon of study. "I had to." She sighs. "1 still had balloons out in the hall." It she has a regret this year, it's that she may not have done as well as she could have. "I really kned all my classes. Rut 1 found myselt cram- ming. 1 just wish 1 could have taken each class sepa- rately so I could get the most out ot it." As Matheu packs , roommate Kathy Durkeepops her finals balloon. "The education here is superior," says Matheu. "So it's all worth it. 35 THE CLASS OF '95 ETCETERA A potpourri of opinions, news, notes and quotes and cvdturd lessons- from the Agnes Scott College campus and from around the world. BESNEDEN? GESNEDEN? Language and other cross-cultural lessons by Kimberk Swaak '90 One day, after visiting museums and mailing pretty postcards to friends and family back in the United States, I discovered that my vacation was over. It was time to make TTie Netherlands home. That day started with a hang: I got lost in Amsterdam and drove for two hours before mustering up the courage to ask, quite timidly in English, for direc- tions. I knew then how power- less one feels without language. Even in a country as small as Holland, where American culture has made its mark with CNN television newscasts, with American movies in local theaters and Americans to befriend I discovered the worth of a thin Dutch dictionary. More often than not, my cross-cultural experiences became lessons in humility. A normal trip for grocer- ies took three hours, time enough to look up English translations for words on Dutch signs and food labels. (I'll remember that, the next time I'm tempted to subtract 20 IQ points from anyone who speaks broken English.) Besneden, gesneden what's the difference? TTiose words I got mixed up at the bakery only to discover I'd ordered circumcised bread. A harder lesson came as I sought employment, wanted work that was intel- lectually stimulating and fulfilling something not requiring command of the national language. Hmmm. Another (but never final) lesson came in understand- ing how my own identity is tied to lan- guage: even witty, gregari- ous person- alities change when con- versation is reduced to a struggle with basic vocabulary and grammar. At times, trying to adjust to a new culture, its customs and idi oms left me frustrated and wondering who 1 was and why I had come here. Perhaps I could have lived in The Netherlands without ever learning the language. But the week I arrived here with my Dutch hus- band, I decided to begin language lessons. After a year ot intense study, I teel confident enough to speak Dutch. 1 have a job. 1 am making it in another culture. ^. I have begun to understand the world from another viewpoint. And yes, I now distin- guish besneden from gesneden. Still, when walk into the bakery to order a loaf of bread, the proprietor always manages to greet me with this knowing smile. 36 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE SLDHMER /W3 TWO gkia:^ g: :ts: .ovi, education NationsBank Executive Veronica Biggins lauds parents of graduates A'V Zhenmy [et me say this: These moment," encouraged VV daughters were young women owe a Biggins, Corporate horn, my father told great debt to you. You've Community Relations me there were two Executive with things I should give ^^^V^^^^^^^^H NationsBank. them: love and educa- ^^B '^^' ' "^^^^^^^^^1 "You've done right tion. These are the ^E .* '^"^^1 by your daughters. two greatest gifts any You've loved them parent can bestow and you've educated upon a child, he said, ^H^^-^^H them." so give them gener- ^^^k ,9^^| Biggins, an alumna ously and without re- ^^^k^^H of Spelman College, gard to self," Veronica recently was named by Biggins told families of made real sacrifices to President Bill Clinton graduating Agnes see your daughters get to to serve as one of six Scott seniors during this day. on the U.S. delegation the 1993 com- "This morning to the 37th Session of mencement address breathe in deeply and the Commission on in May. open your hearts to the the Status of Women "To all parents here, pride and joy of the in the United Nations. JANE FONDA SPEAKS OUT RTCs urged to turn their crises into life-long opportunities for growth A iter renewing X V acquaintances during her 25th class reunion at Emma Willard, a girls school in New York, Jane Fonda says, "It seemed our lives had turned out different from what we'd expected. It seemes we all became the men we were supposed to have married." Fonda, millionaire pro- ducer of the top grossing video of all time: jane Fonda Wbrks Out, and twice Acad- emy Award winning movie star, was at Agnes Scott in April at the invitation of Retum-to-CoUege students at an hour-long convocation. "At Emma Willard," says Fonda, "we could be as strong and bright and ath- letic and active as we wanted to be." In a booming voice, she touched on her volunteer work with the Atlanta Project, the powerful effect of women networking with women, the trauma of di- vorce, and a life of learning. "The main opportunities for growth," said Fonda, "are the lows and the crises of life." MARGARET THATCHER ADVISES DISSENT Student eiicouragcd to fight for all'fcniale college, dina nmter to a number of world leaders When Somer\iik^ College, one of two all-female colleges at Oxford University in England, considered allow- ing men to enroll, alumna Margaret Thatcher encour- aged student dissent. According to a story in the Washington Post, the former Prime Minister wrote a letter to Joanne Baker, a 19-year-old student at Somer\'ille. In it, Tliatcher said, "I believe that women who want a good academic qualification should be able to choose an all-woman college." Somerville is the alma mater of four former Prime Ministers: Indira Gandhi of India, Golda Meir of Israel, Sirimawi Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka and Thatcher. If men do move into the architectural hodge-podge of buildings around Somerville's as planned, St. Hilda's will be the only one of Oxford's 26 under- graduate colleges reserved for women. 37 Agnes Scott College Decatur, Georgia 30030 Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Decatur, GA 30030 Permit No. 469 II.II.mII II...II...II.IIm...I.I.I.I.I Doonesbury Decatur. GA 30033-3025 THE OORKY BOYS IMHAT 65TALL JHE^ ATTBN- PO YOU HON. Mf^. JAeP5R MEAN, ISN'T FAIR ABOUT AL^X ? L5TTIN6 TH5 GIRLS ANeUIERQUe^lON5. by Garry Trudeau rnvBaiSHOuu? HAV^A UTTLB TALK WITH H5R. / MOM, SHB'U- N5V5RCALL 0NY0U.'55NP PAPT7Y. DCKDNESBURY copyright 1992 G.B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved. With studies showing gender bias in co-ed classrooms, the women's college education may be re-emerging as an idea whose time has come. Story, page 14. O Printed on recycled paper ALUMNAE MAGAZINE WINTER 1994 f'afc^ <^' y A Woman's Image Exploring Women's Studies at ASC EDITOR'S NOTE Changing landscapes: it is important not to step in the wet concrete or he entangled by the web of computer cables either literally or figuratively Years ago a magazine assignment took me to snowy, treeless plains around Nome, Alaska. My subject, a wiry fellow named Bill Webb, was putting together a team ot huskies to compete in the Iditarod race from Anchor- age to Nome. He invited m\ husband and me to join him for his first dogsled ride that season as Webb began hooking up his team, he told us to put our full weight on the sled brake. These dogs were bred, trained and ready to run. After experiencing a delightful no, exhilarat- ing ride through Nome's frozen wilderness, I was sur- prised to learn later that Webb and his dogs never got a good start in the Iditarod. The problem seemed to be the wooded country around Anchorage. His normally hardworking team careened, snipped, fought wildly and finally balked. They simply couldn't get beyond the trees. That image kept coming to mind as I finalized content for this magazine. In one way or another, most articles reflect Agnes Scott's own changing landscapes. Faculty, students and staff mumble and grouse as they leap trenches, test wet concrete and tiptoe around barriers or upended brick walkways in a literal landscape disrupted by installation of fiber optic cables in a computer network that will forever alter how we access information and how we communicate. "Plugging into the Future" (page 26) reminds us that as we focus on progress, the pain of stub- bing toes on loose bricks quickly ebbs. Some changes are heartfelt. In early January, former ASC Vice President for Development and Public Affairs Bonnie Brown Johnson '70 assumed new responsibilities as executive director for development and assistant dean of the Emory School of Medicine. We in publications already miss her humor, strength and wise rapport. It was Johnson's idea to pursue an article on women and philanthropy (page 20). Both she and President Ruth Schmidt (who will retire June 30) are models of charitable giving. Women's roles women's awareness change con- stantly. Writer Mary Alma Durrett helps us understand the impact of Women's Studies at Agnes Scott and other institutions as they reshape the ways the world views women . . . and how women view themselves ("A Woman's Image," page 6) . Over the past two de- cades, undergraduate insti- tutions in this country have changed significantly. Out lit greater diversity grow complex and often highly charged issues related to language and culture, race and faith. Administration and faculty find themselves under scrutiny from the out- side, with performance defined and evaluated according to corporate models. Students shoulder increased responsibil- ity for life-forming matters from academic direction to morality and faith. In an increasingly violent society, institutions seek to protect their own. Their economies reflect the effects of an unpredictable national economy. In its spring issue, the Alumnae Magazine will examine some of these trends and their effects on the College. The constant challenge for Agnes Scott's community is to consider and clearly define its purpose, then to main- tain its hearing as it moves through ever-changing land- scapes. During senior investiture tor the class of 1994, Christine Cozzens, director of Women's Studies at Agnes Scott, described the beauty and frustration of such work as a perpetual wrangle between tradition and change: "That struggle tests the value of anything we think or do, and the sparks that fly upward ignite our creativity and our purpose." CONTENTS 6 Agnes Scott Alumnae Magazine Winter 1 994 Volume^, Number 2 9f DEPARTMENTS A Woman's Image hy Mary Alma Durrett For the first time, women are taking control of the way w,'07Tie7'i are portrayed in American culture Wo77re)i's Studies pro^^ams are helping to set the agenda The Power of Giving by Celeste Pennington New studies are proving the old admonition that "it is more blessed to give than to receive" is not only true, but underrated. There's also a matter of influence . . . Mother Tongue, Father Tongue Written by Emily Style The differences in the way women and men use language is significant and revealing The Gift by Jane A. Zanca '83 You don't know the significance of a gift until it's received and even then you may not know for years. Plugging into the Future by Sheryl S. Jackson The new information technology project will link ASC computers across the campus and around the world. Lifestyle & Update 30 Classic 32 36 Etcetera Feedback AGNES SCOTT Editor: Celeste Pennington. Contributing Editor: Mary Alma Durrett. Editorial Assistant; Audrey Arthur Design: Everett HuUum and Harold Waller. Student Assistants: Elizabeth Cherry '95 WiUa Hendrickson '94 Teresa Kelly '94 Emily Pender '95 Vicki Vitelli '97 Publications Advisory Board: Jenifer Cooper '86 Christine Cozzens Carey Bowen Craig '62 Sandi Harsh '95 WiUa Hendrickson '94 Bonnie Brown Johnson '70 Randy Jones '70 Kay Parkerson O'Briant '70 Edmund Sheehey Lucia Howard Sizemore '65 Copyright 1994, Agnes Scott College. Published two times a year by the Office of Publications, Agnes Scott College, Buttrick Hall, 141 E. College Avenue, Decatur, GA 30030, 404/371-6315. The magazine is published for alumnae and friends of the College. Postmaster; Send address changes to Office of Development and Public Affairs, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA 30030. The content of the magazine, reflects the opinions of the writers and not the viewpoint of the College, its trustees, or administration. CONTENTS LIFESTYLE Religion in the South, reading the Presidents' mail, taking the high road in Haiti, healing through art and achieving academic success at home. THE NEW SCHOOL HOUSE Home School Teacher Linda Maloy Ozier '72 Linda Ozier dreamed of one day starting her own school. But never in her wildest dreams did the Boston resident imagine that her first pupil would graduate from high school and take Harvard course work, all by age 15 1/2. But that's just what the oldest of her two home- schooled children has done. By spring this son, Owen, will have com- pleted his high school cur- riculum in two years. The boy's education has in- cluded part home-school- ing, part advanced high school courses and classes at Harvard Extension, Harvard University's com- munity college program. Upon graduation he hopes Home'School teacher Lindci L):icr wah sun Owtn, at Harvard. to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her other pupil, younger son Drew, is also accomplished, answering college Scholastic Apti- tude Test [SAT] questions by age nine. The boys are following models for accelerated learning set by their par- ents. Their mom skipped her senior year of high school and at age 16 en- rolled in Georgia Institute of Technology majoring in math. Ozier was 17 when she transferred to Agnes Scott. IN THE WHITE HOUSE MAIL ROOM Volunteer Elise Gibson '29 Ford. Carter. Reagan. Bush. For more than two decades, Elise Gibson worked in the White House and, among other things, read these Presi- dents' mail. The ASC graduate was one of many volunteers in the White House Greetings Office. Her duties included addressing special greetings from the President to folks celebrating their 50th wedding anniversaries and 100th birthdays. Some- times she opened the First Lady's and the children's letters. But her favorite assign- ment was to work along- side United States postal employees in the White House mail room. There, after each piece of mail had been slit open and X-rayed ensuring none contained bombs Gibson read and sorted mail from the "hinterlands, telling the president what was wrong with the country." Gibson recently left Washington to return to the hometown named for her ancestors Gibson, N.C., population 500 where she plays a little bridge, reads and volun- teers for the local church and literary council. The ASC math major taught public school math in North Carolina for 13 years and pursued graduate work at the University of North Carolina. She interrupted her AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE WNTER 1994 LIFESTYLE studies during World War II when she was offered a job with the National Security Agency in Washington. Until her retirement in the mid-1960s, Gibson worked as mathematician, analyst, trainer and per- sonnel staff member at NSA. But she insists that she has worked harder as a White House volunteer than she did as an em- ployee of the NSA. In addition to White House duties, she taught adult literacy, served as a church deaconess and was secretary and trea- surer for Washington's ASC alumnae club for many years. REMEDY FOR BITTER MEMORIES Art Therapist Frances E. Anderson '63 Clay in hand is a win- dow to the soul." The words belong to a sur- vivor of childhood incest. Working through the me- dium of clay, this woman has dared to reflect on her own wounded life. "This engages the senses especially the WHERE KIDS COUNT holes large enough to swallow tires the tours proved as treacherous as Seward was adept. Child Care Publicist It was the Republic of Haiti's quickly Elizabeth Seward '91 escalating political tensions and vio- For a year Seward lived with no running lence that made necessary the abrupt water, no electricity and sporadic tele- departures of Seward and other mission- phone service and she loved it. aries recently. The ASC economics ma- As director ot public relations tor the jor felt heartbroken to have to leave the International Child Care Hospital in tiny country in the West Indies two Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Seward's years before the end of her duties included assignment. driving busloads ^S ** of United 'V* f^^^- It's returning to ,1^^ 'tfS^^ life iri the United States and Ca- ^TQggf:^!^/^ f naHian vi'iirnrs; /' f ^~~^^,,^' ^' " "Ovl^ a roiinrry with cross country to v^^ n^^^ '^ * i>^ -^l/HIj everything" z see evidence ot J^^ 1 the organization's *|^ J^ adjustment for g successful fight against Seward. She re- 1 childhood diseases in a country members fondly that where infant mortality is 106/1000 despite extreme poverty, Haitians met (compared to 9/1000 in the United her with a smile or hearty laugh. "They States). With no driving laws and pot always looked for a better day." eyes and the sense of touch," explains the woman's art therapist, Frances Anderson, who chose clay as her medium when she earned art and psychology degrees from Agnes Scott and master's and doctoral degrees from Indiana University. According to Ander- son, one out of four women and one out of six men are sexually molested as children. Over the years Ander- son became fascinated with how working in clay seemed to become a channel for the traumatic emotions that most incest survivors have learned to block. During art therapy sessions, she found survi- vors can mold messages about their rage, their sense of healing and recovery. "It becomes a direct conduit to the inner selt," says Anderson, a dis- tinguished professor in art at Illinois State University and a pioneer in a profes- sion now three decades old. The Louisville, Ky., native has compared the outcomes of incest survi- vors in art therapy with those in engaged in tradi- tional talk therapy. LIFESTYLE Repeatedly the findings have confirmed Anderson's hypoth- esis, as summed up by a woman who had under- gone 20 years of counsel- ing prior to art therapy: Never before, she told Anderson, had she come so far in healing. The ASC graduate has created a video tape of her findings, "Courage/ Together We Heal Art Therapy with Incest Sur- vivors," which documents her art therapy program, portrays the power of art versus verbal therapy and highlights the widespread problem of incest. Anderson admits she has a strong sense ot mis- sion regarding people who have experienced incest. She also has a need to "make a contribution to society" which she describes as "a core family value. As an art major at Agnes Scott, 1 asked myself, how do you con- tribute to society? Of course, the art you create is a contribution. But be- ing an artist can be seen as an inward-looking process. With art therapy, I'm involved in art and I'm helping society." Another form of 4 Anderson's professional contribution: she has used art to teach disabled chil- dren in public schools. "Art is intrinsically motivating," believes Anderson, who has de- signed special programs after discovering how art enhances the self-esteem and motivational levels of these children. The work led her to Illinois State, which boasts the country's fifth largest special education program. Her graduate and doctoral students learn from two textbooks she has authored (including Art for All Children Ap- proaches to Art Therapy with Disabled Children, now in its second edition). As a result, Anderson has created a series called "People Pots." Small, painted three-dimensional fig- ures groups of child- like people and ani- mals interacting and climbing in and out of rough clay bowls. Many of the sculptured clay figures are ^ connected " with one another a metaphor, says Anderson, for what occurs in the art therapy sessions. %/ People Pots are currently on exhibit at galleries in Peoria and New Harmony, 111., and will be shown at Notre Dame College in Belmont, California, next fall. FAITH AND DOUBT IN SOUTHERN FICTION Author Susan Ketchin 70 Any lover of Southern X JL fiction knows the essential ingredients of the genre: food, family, race and religion. Ketchin has blended her lifelong pas- sion for that literature and her fascination with the "powerful influence ot the South 's peculiar brand of religion" in a book. The Christ-Haunted Landscape: Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction (University Press of Mississippi). A recipient of a Coo- lidge Research Collo- quium Fellowship, Ketchin narrowed a wide field of contemporary Southern authors to a "biblical 12." Her book includes interviews, repre- sentative excerpts from their works and critical commentary on the liter- ary imagination of each writer including Will Campbell, Lee Smith, Reynolds Price, Allan Gurganus and Ketchin's husband, Clyde Edgerton. She interviewed blacks, whites. Catholics, Bap- tists, Methodists and AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE W7NTER 1994 ;jX HABB15 PHOTO FROM THE CST-HAUNIE0 WNDSOVPE fAnHANDDOUSTINSOUTHEWF discovered the novelists to be "deeply spiritual people who had a love/hate rela- tionship" with their reli- gious upbringings. "I had no idea of the depth, sin- cerity and anguish of these writers," says Ketchin, who jokingly describes herself as a recovering Calvinist. Ketchin has been steeped in literature since her ASC graduation. She taught sixth grade and high school English and earned a master's in English from the Univer- sity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where, she says, her famous author husband met her. Ketchin also taught at North Carolina State University, was an editor at Algon- quin Books and has edited fiction for Southern Expo- sure magazine since 1988. As a team, husband and wife write and perform folk music. The couple has released two albums. Their most successful tune, (named by Ketchin): "A Quiche Woman in a Barbecue Town." When not performing, Ketchin, Edgerton and their 11 -year-old daugh- ter live in Durham, N.C. Author Leisa Hammett- Goad is a freelance writer in Nashville, Tenn. UPDATE k'ciiiiL'Ll\ Center mtem Tracy Peavy hopes to become jidl-time . Tracking ASC interns in the tough job market. FROM INTERN TO EMPLOYEE In September, Tracy Peavy '93 was part ot the stage crew tor the annual Open House for 45,000 children and parents at The John F. Kennedy Center tor the Performing Arts in Wash- ington, D.C. just one of her tasks as an intern with the National Symphony Orchestra [NSO], Peavy, a flutist and music major at Agnes Scott, learned about the internship after stopping by the office ot Career Planning and Placement [CP&P] to inquire about a possible internship with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Instead, Laurie Nichols, assistant director of CP&P, steered Peavy to The Kennedy Center. For three months, Peavy will work in Perfor- mance Plus in the NSO, an education arm of the program. "One of my goals," Peavy admits, "is to get a job here." Also in Washington, D.C, this year was Laura Barlament '93, a summer intern copy editor in the Money section at USA Today, coordinated through the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Scholar- ship Program. After com- pleting graduate study in Germany, she may follow up an offer from Gannett Communications to work on their newspapers. Many recent graduates, including Karen Anderson '90, Kristin Lemmerman '92, Emily Perry '92 and Suzanne Sturdivant '91, have successfully turned internships into full-time employment. Anderson has moved quickly through party ranks after a post-gradua- tion internship at the Georgia Democratic head- quarters in Atlanta. Dur- ing the Presidential cam- paign, she was a political director of the Democratic Party of Georgia. Since May she has been in the White House, one of two liaisons between the Democratic National Committee's Political De- partment and the White House Office of Political Affairs, working directly with a special assistant to the President responsible for 24 Eastern states. Perry is a financial analyst with the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta after serving an internship there. In March '92, Sturdivant served as an intern in the political unit of Cable News Network [CNN] in Atlanta, and now works as an editorial assistant and writer there. Lemmerman, an intern at CNN's Futurewatch and then Network Earth, is now a public information assistant at CNN. LIFESTYLE & UPDATE A WOMAN'S IMAGE For the first time, women are taking control of the way women are portrayed in American culture Women's Studies programs are helping to set the agenda Written by Mary Alma Durrett Photographs o/ASC Faculty by the Author ^L flawless, chestnut-haired child / ^ of six stares out from the ad ^^^^^ with a faint turn of a smile. In JL. JL.her arms, crossed in front of her hare chest, she holds a collection of pear- shaped Halston perfume bottles. The sen- sual overtone is clear and goes beyond the now-routine message of most American ad- vertising, that women must be young and thin. In this case, the little girl becomes the ideal of feminine beauty and sensuality, ex- plains educator Jean Kilbourne in her 1987 video "Still Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women." Even more disturbing are the statistics that follow the images: 25 percent of re- ported rape victims are under 18, one in four little girls (and at least one in 10 little boys) has been sexually molested in child- hood. "Images like the one in this ad con- tribute to the problem," stresses the re- searcher, "by creating a climate in which it is increasingly acceptable for children to be looked upon in this way." Kilhourne's video and sobering find- ings are commonly used in ASC psy- chology and Women's Studies classes to serve as catalysts for discussion. SO WHO SHAPES the images of women today? How have women been perceived throughout history? What aspects of women have been ignored? What perspectives and accomplishments, left out? How can women be more fully represented? These are the sorts of questions pondered in Agnes Scott's Women's Studies program and in the 600 other similar programs nationwide. "Women's Studies seeks to place women in the curriculum in every respect," explains Christine Cozzens, assistant professor of English and director of ASC's Women's Studies program. "It's not just recognizing the Harriet Tubmans and Sojourner Truths but in bringing to light the perspectives, problems and creativity of women to in- clude them in every sense." Nationally, women's studies courses be- gan to surface some 20 years ago as a natural outgrowth of the women's movement. On the academic front, women were no longer tolerating the omission of women from the canons of academic research and learning. Photographs By Nancy Marshall Photographs accompanying this article are by Nancy Marshall, an Atlanta photographer whose works were included in a Fall 1993 exhibit at Agnes Scott. Marshall uses an 8-by- 10- inch view camera with a portrait lens that softens images. She hand tints her photos with gold, platnium and palla- dium to accomplish a dream-like qual- ity. Marshall's daughter and her friends are her primary subjects. Recent exhibits of Marshall's works include Jackson Fine Arts Gallery and Georgia State University in Atlanta; Macon (Ga.) Museum; and McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La. She is a teaching affiliate in photogra- phy in the art history department of Emory University and is past director of Atlanta's Nexus Photography Gallery. AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE WINTER 1994 '^ fW Here, feminist scholarship cook shape. Explains Bari Watkins, a contributor to the book Theories ofWomen's Studies: "What distinguishes feminists from other scholars is their commitment to a movement tor so- cial change, and their conviction that women have been excluded, devalued and injured by many aspects of human society, including the traditional academic disci- plines. "Feminists have also found that they must challenge the institutional arrange- ment of the university," continues Watkins. "The models and paradigms ot existing scholarship did not simply leave women out; they did not permit satisfactory' expla- nations of women's experiences. It was therefore necessary to transform and recon- struct traditional ideas and methods in or- der to include women." While the women inside academe began the search for their lost histories, women outside began to push for recognition and equal status. TO WITNESS THE CHANGING VIEW of women in the decade from 1960 to 1970 one needed look no further than television. The happy homemaking (and occasionally dancing) wife/mother Laura Petrie, por- trayed by Mary Tyler Moore on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" in 1961, was replaced by the independent-minded, single Mary Richards on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" in 1971. Laura Petrie smoothed out the ripples so that husband Rob did not alienate his boss or lose his client or get a demotion. A decade later, Mary Richards was a woman at loggerheads with her boss over pay or authority or their portrayal of women. These sorts of societal shifts helped spur Women's Studies programs. The first pro- grams emerged at larger institutions the "grandmother" of them all was University of California at Berkeley then cropped up later at smaller institutions such as Smith College. "Formal studies came much more lately to women's colleges," observes ASC Women Studies Director Cozzens. "Women's colleges may have been ahead of others, originally, because they were teach- ing women and thought that women's per- spectives were being addressed." But women's colleges often continued the more traditional, male-centered canon. AT AGNES SCOTT, a kernel of interest in WOMEN'S STUDIES DIRECTOR CHRISTINE COZZENS women's studies sprang up in the mid- 1970s. Gail Cabisius, associate professor of classical languages and literatures, taught the first course at ASC in 1976 "Women in Antiquity," dealing with the lives of women in ancient Greece and Rome. She had taught the course at Boston University and remembers when she offered to teach it at Agnes Scott, the former department chair seemed "a little reluctant to put it on the schedule." Within a year, the College scheduled both Cabisius' course and a woman-centered psychology course. A year later, "Women in Antiquity" boasted an enrollment of more than 40. "That was the very beginning," says Cabisius. "We were developing a brand new field." Among those joining Cabisius to shape the Agnes Scott Women's Studies program were Caroline Dillman in sociology, Kathy Kennedy in history', Sally MacEwen in clas- sical languages and literatures, Ayse Garden in psychology, Beth Mackie in Bible and religion, Linda Hubert in English, Rosemary Cunningham in economics and Cathy Scott in political science. Formally, the fac- ulty accepted Women's Studies [WS] as a program in 1987; Mackie served as its first director. "Getting a separate listing in the catalog was a victory," remembers Cabisius. The number of WS courses has grown to 20, yet some question the College's commit- ment to the program the director must split her time between directing the Writ- ing Workshop and the WS Program. "The administration wants to have Women's Studies but doesn't want to spend any money on it," observes Cabisius. In the university structure, explains Dean of the College Sarah Blanshei, "you might find Women's Studies as a depart- ment but 1 don't think any small liberal arts school has a separate department." To crit- ics who question whether Women's Studies should be a part of the liberal arts at all, Blanshei answers: "Women's Studies is the Perhaps because women were teaching and thought women's perspectives were being addressed, "formal Women's Studies programs came much more lately to women's colleges." A WOMAN'S IMAGE In Martha Rees' class on women, health and society, students profile a doctor as an "Anglo shaman" wealthy, white, male, all-knowing. In the culture, say students, doctors are "holy men." offspring of the liberal arts." The move to take a fresh look at history "came not out of a political movement" but from an histori- cal standpoint firom the realization that there was more history. "As part of the de- velopment of liberal arts, we were taking a newer approach to history. A new social history was emerging. Women's Studies came out of this. I think you will find that those classes are well enrolled." Of the 573 students currently enrolled at Agnes Scott, 1 7 percent have taken or are taking a Women's Studies course. Today those courses range from "Women, Health and Society" to "Female Identity and the Making of Theatre." "These classes are charged the way no other classes are charged," observes Cozzens. In "Women, Health and Society," Soci- ology/Anthropology Assistant Professor Martha Rees uses Our Bodies, Ourselves, The Woman in the Body and Medical Anthro- pology in Ecological Perspectives as class texts. Ever>' student is required to interview a woman from another culture about her life. Each student leads a discussion on a topic ranging from body image to religion, trances and mental illness. During a class last semester, Rees' stu- dents gather around a table to discuss health practitioners in the Western world. In previous classes, students explored West- em attitudes toward women's puberty and Rees had asked about students' "first bra experience." This time she asks if students remember their first visit to the doctor. "1 remember stepping on a big, old, rusty nail and 1 had to go to the doctor to clean it and get a shot," volunteers a student. "The doc- tor got mad at me for being scared and my mother got mad at me, too." An interna- tional student tells about biting her attend- ing physician as he was preparing her for a tonsillectomy. He left her tonsils in. Rees also asks students about their first visits to the gynecologist, and the group intones a collective "ugh." The student's profile of a doctor takes shape as an Anglo shaman wealthy, white, male and all-knowing. "They are holy men." After the lively discussion, a senior says, "This is one of the only classes I really look forward to going to." SINCE THE ASC PROGRAM began five years ago, nearly 260 students have taken a WS course. Now they may pursue either minors or self-directed majors in Women's Studies. Karen McNay '92, one of two ASC graduates who hold degrees in Women's Studies, hopes to use her specialized knowl- edge in a career in immigration law with a focus on women. "There was a real empha- sis on feminist critical thinking," says McNay of her courses at ASC, which she thinks will be a life-long benefit. The Agnes Scott WS program is driven largely by faculty and student interest, says Cozzens. "Some of the most fruitful research here has been in Women's Studies." In a recent Women's Studies 100 course, stu- dents produced a variety of essays about women's service organizations in the At- Women's Studies for Alumnae "Today was one of the most invigorating days I've spent in a long time. It re- minded me of how I felt as a student at Agnes Scott: the passion and intensity of all involved." This was the response from one of 50 Agnes Scott alumnae and friends who gathered last year for a Women's Studies seminar for alumnae. Speakers included Michele Gillespie, ASC assistant profes- sor of history'; Kent Leslie, a fellow from the Institute of Women's Studies at Emory University; and Tma Pippin, ASC assistant professor of Bible and religion. The success of this program "took us by surprise," admits Christine Cozzens, assistant professor of English and director of ASC's Women's Studies Program. Younger alumnae were targeted as most likely to attend. But "older ones were also enthusiastic. Many have lived through experiences we talked about." Lucia Sizemore '65, director of alum- nae affairs, says the idea for the seminar came from a survey of alumnae. The seminar was so well received that a fol- low-up, "Women's Creativity," was held recently. ^M.A. Durrett 10 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE WINTER 199') lanta area. In her essay on the National Black Women's Health Project, Malikah Berry '95 writes, "Visiting the project vali- dated feelings and thoughts that heing an African-American woman was much more than being bom female and black. Vital Signs [the newspaper of the NBWHP] was of particular interest to me now because of my goal to start Nandi, the African- Ameri- can student newspaper on Agnes Scott's campus. Vital Signs' unique voice is neces- sary for healing black women all over the world as is Nandi necessary for healing the black women on this campus." Other topics run the gamut from "Girls Scouts: Not Just Cookies" to "The Women's Basketball Coaches Association." In ad- vanced level courses, students have ex- plored on a scholarly level a range of sub- jects from the life of a slave mistress to les- bian ethics. Even though classes at ASC are well at- tended and students are engaged in class discussions, Cozzens says WS remains on the academic periphery', nationally. Women's Studies programs fall when bud- gets are cut. "At Agnes Scott," says Cozzens, "our curriculum has grown over the years and more and more faculty [hired in other departments] have Women's Stud- ies backgrounds. It's what's hot out there right now." ASST. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH CHRISTOPHER AMES Bringing information about women into the courses has depended on the level of interest or commitment of individual pro- fessors. There is no institutional mandate to include women in every course. A quick scan of titles in the College bookstore hints at what's being taught: Lucy: Beginnings of Humankind in anthro- pology; Soviet Women, Victorian Women in England, France and the United States, A His- tory of Their Own, and Black Women Aboli- tionists in history; Engendering Democracy in political science; and Women In Love, The Girls of Slender Means, }anc Eyre, Orlando and Wide Sargasso Sea in se\'eral English courses. To redress a one-sided curriculum, "We have a two-pronged approach," explains ASC Associate Professor of English Chris- topher Ames. "We look at the canon, the great books, asking new questions, such as, 'What do they say about women in their time?' and we look to new sources col- lected works of women, diaries, letters, nov- els and ask, 'Is there a women's tradition that has been ignored or overlooked?' It's hard to believe that there was a time when we didn't ask these questions." Cathy Scott, associate professor and chair of political science concurs. In her PS 103 course, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Fe?7iinist Setise oj International Politics is the primer. "We look at the ways women have been excluded from politics and the ways women's roles are affected by interna- tional politics. It's a revelation to ask these sorts of questions," says Scott. "I try to ad- dress them in every class. It makes the classes much more interesting." In natural sciences, the approach is being modified as well. For the past two years, the biology department has been studying its programs, says John Pilger, associate profes- sor and chair. As a result they are develop- ing a new curriculum which will be imple- mented in 1995-96. It will reflect both changes in classes offered and, says Pilger, changes in "the way we organize classes, to include all that we know about feminist pedagogy." AN EMERGING EMPHASIS is to teach science in a female-friendly manner. "Women don't like to he distanced from the data; they like to have more contact with the subject. Women approach problems dif- ferently; they form different hypotheses, often devise different experiments,' " ex- plains Pilger. The department intends to build a support system to help the young woman scientist establish a sense of confi- dence in her knowledge and work that will carry her into graduate study and into her profession. Helping women students overcome low self-esteem in certain academic fields is an- other challenge being addressed by ASC Mathematics Chair Larry Riddle who tries to counter stereotypical attitudes formed during high school concerning gender-re- "We look at the books, asking new questions: 'What do they say about women in their time?' 'Is there a women's tradition that has been overlooked?' It's hard to believe there was a time when we didn't ask these questions." 11 A WOMAN'S IMAGE lated aptitudes in math. "A lot of our stu- dents report that they don't teel prepared for calculus even though their grades might reflect that they are capahle." As women and women's issues receive greater attention, in the broader academic community there continues a national de- bate over whether Women's Studies ought to be a separate discipline, or whether women's contributions should be a compo- nent of every course, fully integrated throughout the curriculum. From the autonomous approach to women's studies, argue some, grows an "in- tellectual ghetto." Eventually, say others, an integrationist approach could transform the prevailing curriculum so that women's stud- ies as a separate discipline were no longer necessary. Others question both the content and the approach to women's studies, and they wonder which brand ot feminism or feminist theory should be advanced. Wendy Kaminer's article "Feminism's Identity Cri- sis," in the October The Atlantic Monthly, addresses this issue. "A majority of Ameri- ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ART LX1NNA SADLER The Artist Within Young Artemisia Gentileschi was a creative woman of promise living in 17th-century Rome. Under her father's tutelage, she mastered the rudiments of drawing; then began advanced instruc- tion from Agostino Tassi. Although Tassi and Arte- misia were chaperoned, she accused him of raping her and stealing some of her father's paintings. In a trial that followed, Artemisia was subjected to cross examina- tion under torture; Tassi maintained his innocence. Tassi spent a few months in jail for the theft, but was acquitted of the rape charge. Artemisia fled Rome. She was later cred- ited with bringing the style of Michel- angelo Merisia da Caravaggio (dramatic representations of humans, brightly lit against dark backgrounds) to Florence, Genoa and Naples. By age 23, Artemisia had joined the Academy in Florence. Women Artists: An Illustrated History describes Artemisia as "The quintessen- tial female painter of the Baroque era." The portraitist's reputation eventually rested on a group of religious paintings heroines of the Old Testament in which she depicts biblical characters with great drama and emotion. Among them is ]udith Beheading Hob/ernes (below) in which a maid servant restrains a writhing Holofemes while Judith, elbow locked and jaw set, bears down on a blade that severs Holofemes' head from his body. What adds to the drama of the work, points out Donna Sadler, associate pro- fessor of art at Agnes Scott, is that the face of Judith is drawn in Artemisia's likeness. Perhaps the artist's frustra- tions over the alleged rape and subsequent trial moti- vated her to project her own image into the work and cast herself in a role of power. In her courses, Sadler discusses the general lack of texts offering examples of women artists. A sparse 19 women are among the 2,300 artists in H.W. Jansen's History of Art. In her classes, Sadler not only discusses women artists' abilities, but also addresses society's expectations and treatment of women. She believes inclusion of artists such as Artemisia Gentileschi "is a way to redress the imbalance." This spring Sadler focuses on women artists in "The Rise of the Woman Artist," a Women's Studies art course. M.A. Durrett "In my courses, I talk about the absence of examples of women painters." Only 19 women are included among the 2,300 artists in the History of Art text. 13 A WOMAN'S IMAGE } # \ can women agree that feminism has altered their Hves for the hetter . . . But the same polls suggest that a majority of women hesi- tate to associate themsel\-es with the move- ment." Some puzzle o\-er which, in a long list ot often vying factions, to support: Poststructural feminism, political feminism, different-voice feminism, pacifist feminism, lesbian feminism, careerist feminism, liberal feminism, anti-porn feminism, eco-femi- nism and womanism. . . . "FEMINISM HAS NEVER been a tranquil movement, or a cheerfully anarchic one," continues Kaminer. "It has been plagued by bitter civil wars over conflicting ideas." An article in a recent Mother Jones, also calls into question the quality of many WS classes, accusing professors of "coddling and counseling" the so-called oppressed, rather than requiring of students the mastery of objectively conveyed subject matter. In the article "Off Course," writer Karen Lehrman notes, "Most of the courses are designed not merely to study women, but also to improve the lives of women, both individual stu- dents and women in general. Professors of- ten consider a pedagogy that nurtures voice just as, if not more, important than the cur- riculum. In many classes, discussions alter- nate between the personal and the political, with mere pit stops at the academic." ASC senior Mary Wohlfeil of Charles- ton, S.C., expressed her own disappoint- ment over a recent Women's Studies/history course in which members of the grtiup "seemed to reinterpret history for their own convenience. Too many times I think people take these specialized courses with- out having taken the basic courses. I thought there was too much emphasis on feelings and not enough on logic." She also expressed dismay that the student who in- troduced a differing point of view in class was looked upon as if she "hadn't 'seen the light.' There wasn't much respect tor the other side." But Wohlfeil admits her re- sponse to the class was atypical. "A lot of students like Women's Studies because classes are more informal and there's not the academic pressure felt in other classes." How women study and what women study, believes Cozzens, is central to Agnes Scott's Women's Studies. These is- sues are also critical to a woman's sense of value and self-understanding. It could be that one goal of women's studies to attain gender-balanced curricu- lum will put the program out of business, admits Cozzens. "But since I don't see that happening in the next century, we don't really have to worry about that. The best scenario is to have both [autonomous and integration approaches] working together, side by side. We have to continue to ask 'Are both genders fully represented?' " Women's Studies Booklist If you are interested in learning more about Women's Studies' theories or topics, you may want to consider, in addition to books mentioned in this article, some that Agnes Scott students are currently reading: After Patriarchy: Feminist Transforma- tions of the World Religions, edited by Paul Cooey, William R. Eakin, Jay B. McDaniel, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y., 1992. A History of Their Own, Vols. 1 & U, Bonnie Anderson, Judith P. Zinsser, Harper Perennial, 1988. Becoming Visable, Women in European History, edited by Bridenthal/Koonz/ Stuard, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, Dallas, Palo Alto, 1987. Engendering Democracy , Anne Phillips, Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pa., 1991. Feminist Research Methods, edited by Joyce McCarl Nielsen, Westview Press, Boulder, San Francisco, 1990. Gender Issues in the Teaching of English, edited by Nancy Mellin McCracken and Bruce C. Appleby, Boynton/Cook Publishers, Ports- mouth, N.H., 1992. Southern Women, edited by Caroline Dillman, Hemisphere Publishing, New York, 1988. Working Together: Gender Analysis in Agriculture, edited by Hilary Sims Feldstein, Susan V. Poats, Kumarian Press, West Hartford, Conn. 1989. "It could be said that the goal of Women's Studies to attain gender-balanced curriculum is to put itself out of business." Since that isn't likely to happen anytime soon, educators worry about how best to autonomize and integrate WS into curriculum. 15 A WOMAN'S IMAGE "^'piijU f: H;!; Im^ ^i Im i ..* ; >s '^^^1 ^; ~'l\- y/y.*^ ^ ikiv. ^H v fcr :v:-i ^^^ ^iw WT?^ :.'. ^ Ml! H MOTHER TONGUE, FATHER TONGUE Written by Emily Style Illustrations by Ralph Gilbert -^'^"^".'.'i^-'^""-.--" Remember the sky that you were bom under, know each of the stars' stories... Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life and her mother's, and her's... Remember the earth whose skin you are Red earth yellow earth white earth brown earth black earth we are earth... yemember that all is in motion, is growing... member that language comes from this. ' Rei^imber the dance that language is, that life is. Remeii^jer to remember.^ From the poem, 'Re^^^emt^ef," f^ni Used by permission of the puhli.?h : Has Some Horses by Joy Harjo. 198^ by Joy Har;o. ' nder's Mouth Press. ^l^j:^:ffMM w hen 1 first encountered this poem by Native American Joy Harjo, I began using it in my high school English classes to teach about Native American un- derstanding of the web of connection th;it sustains our human lives. Language is very important in that it helps us acknowledge what grows in our hearts and what meaning we make of life. Let's consider, again, what Joy Harjo says: Remember that all is in motion, and that it is growing. Remember that language comes from this. Remember the dance that language is. Another writer who has instructed me on the dance of language is Ursula JLe Giiin. In the 1986 commencement address at Bryn Mawr (in Dancing at the Edge of the World, Grove Press, 1989), she made what I find an illuminating distinction .^tWeen mother tongue and father tongyij.; 1 Want to offer them to you on Found^i:% Day since this place was named fofethe mother of a founder. FATHER TONGUE^'TO Le Guin's view, is traditional public discou^ and one dialect of it is speechmaking. It lfe4tures and no answer is expected or heatiji The audience is expected to be silent; -''1 Le Gain insists that fatlfer tongue isn't everybody's native tongue. Furthermore, using father tongue one can speak of mother tongue only, and inevitably, tS dis- tance and distort it. It comes off as inferior ^ because mother tongue is, for example, the primitive ahs and uhs of telephone conver- sation, it seems repetitive like the work sometirhes called "women's work," like do- ing the dishes and laundry, like the work ordinary people do, like the common, ordi- nary dimensions of all our lives. As you probably already know, all the founders of this College, the institution es- tablished for women and named in honor of a woman, were men. It was not until 1982 that the College would have in Ruth Schmidt its first woman president, and not until its centennial year in 1989 that the College would have its first woman, Betty : Cameron, as chair of the board of trustees. It was rare, indeed, in earlier times for women to have any role iii the public sphere of society. A woman's sphere was a domestic one, her talents and poteritial for fulfillment were to berealized in the home, % Mother tongue is language not as mere speechmaking, but as relationship. Its power is not in addressing or debating, but in relating. as wife and mother. Agnes Irvine Scott was not the founder, hut a mother of one of the founders of the College. The male founders believed that curricu- lar strength and rigor for women were to be tempered by the ideals of womanhood char- acteristic of the times. As late as 1932, an Agnes Scott biology professor told students at a major College ceremony that the "primary career of woman is in the home, but the responsibil- ity of training a girl tor practical housekeep- ing does not lie with the college." In other words, get educated in father tongue, speak mother tongue at home and never imagine an intertwined language useful in both pub- lic and pri\'ate places. To further flesh out Le Gum's distinc- tion, as a way of honoring the founder's mother, one might conclude that mother tongue is language not as mere speech- making, but as relationship. Its power is not in addressing or debating but in relating; not in establishing superiority or making finished speeches, but in evoking conversation. MOTHER TONGUE is language always on the verge of silence and often on the verge ot song. It is the language stories are told in. So I want to offer to you, as part of this quilted speech, some stories to make this public discourse a dance of mother tongue and father tongue, a multicultural discourse that invites you into a conversation with your own reflections. First, I would like to retell two brief sto- ries told by Peggy Mcintosh, who co-directs the National SEED Project with me. It is about teaching science. Her own high school physics teacher introduced that course by saying in father tongue that understanding physics is like climbing Mount Everest: many attempt it, but few can accomplish such a feat. In contrast, Peggy's daughter had a physics teacher who began the course by saying in mother tongue, that when you were a baby in your crib, batting around a ball, you were doing physics; in this course we're going to put names on some of the physics you have been doing all of your life. In the spirit ot Founder's Day, I invite you to remember the crib you came from and I hope that you might be open to learning new names for your ways of being, then and now. I am Emily. I'm the daughter of Emily, who was the daughter of Elizabeth who was the daughter of Dorothy. Now Dorothy was an unwed teenager in 1909 v\'hen she was sent away from her Presbyterian preacher father's house to give birth to the Elizabeth who was to become my grandmother. The midwife who delivered the baby, and whose name was also Emily, adopted Elizabeth and raised her for the first years of her life. And that's as far back as I can name the female caretakers who are responsible for my being here, in the tiesh. I am not a Native American, but a web of connection has brought me forth. ONE OF THE REASONS I became a teacher is because I wanted to "be some- body" other than my mother who "just" had seven kids. Now, a history teacher never stood up in front of class and told me directly that a "mother" never did anything, but I learned this from the culture at large, and from the silences in school. Mothers were not taught about, but were mentioned only in relation to the really important people like the founder of this college, for instance, whose mother is actually honored in relation to him. A couple of years ago, my own Women's Studies scholarship (and my lived experi- ence) reached a point at which I had to 18 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE WINTER 1994 re-think my own mother's role in history. 1 put together, belatedly, for myself, tor my own daughters and for my mother. Mom's History Book, which documented with photos and words my mother's \-er\' worthy "ordinary" life. All parents/caretakers are one part of the web of connection that I want school cur- riculum to stop evading. Historian Sara Evans taught us years ago, "Having a history is prerequisite to claiming the right to shape the future." For me, that has involved some very intimate homework, taking what 1 like to call the textbook of my life as seriously as any other text. Marilyn Schuster and Susan Van Dyne, two women who teach at Smith College, first taught me (also a teacher) that it is just as important for students to have an acknowledgements page as part of their research papers as it is to have a bibliogra- phy page. In the latter, they remember the scholarly sources they used; in the former, they remember the web of connection that supported them so that they could complete the project because no one does a research paper without help from family, friends and pets, and strangers, too, sometimes. To be silent about the realities ot our interdependent lives when we teach and structure curriculum is to dismiss them, institutionally, as lesser, inconsequential, not worth noticing or studying. The fact of the matter is, to use the words of Peggy Mcintosh, another woman from whom I've learned volumes, the lives of us all are sus- tained by what she calls the "making and the mending of the daily fabric." It is not sentimental or inappropriate to structure attention to this dimension of life into the school curriculum, to speak mother tongue in school. In fact, to ignore this dimension of life is to reproduce within the school a deeply inaccurate version of what life is really like. The teaching of father tongue without mother tongue breeds barrenness, a monolingual climate, which cannot create new life in the way that mother tongue and father tongue, spoken together, can. I OFFER ONE MORE STORY from my life text. This story took place over time, in- volved change and continuity like culture itself. It's about my husband's Mom and Dad. You see, his mother, who is gone now, was a homey quiltmaker who kept scraps of material in piles all over her house. When I married their oldest of tour sons, it was clear to me that my father-in-law regarded my mother-in-law's rag piles as a nuisance. (In the face of so much father tongue spoken in the house, this dear woman was often found silently quilting.) We all lived long enough, thank good- ness, to watch the curriculum frame ot the culture change: quilts turned into art and so eventually Dad proudly drove Mom to senior citizen fairs where she would display and sometimes sell her quilts. He even took photos to document her work. Time changes and so frames lite in new ways. I'd like to conclude with words from Susan Griffin: I know J am inade from this earth, as my mother's hands were made from this earth as her dreams came from this earth and all that I know, I know in this earth these hands , this tongue speaking, all that I know speaks to me through this earth and I long to tell you, you who are earth too. . . Listen as we speak to each other of what we know: the light is inus.- As you venture forth into the future, may you measure your steps so that you under- stand the rhythm of your own stride; may you be open to dancing with others, and may you become skilled in speaking mother tongue and father tongue, even as you in- vent sibling tongues tor a globe becoming more and more conscious of its mutlicultural nature. And don't forget to see the world in a grain of sand in your own shoe as you savor the privilege and responsibility of walking paths forged by those who've come before. Do your own dance on them, though! Style co-directs of the National SEED Project on Inclusive Curriculum, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women. This excerpt is from a speech made at ASC in February 1 993 . - From the book. Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, by Susan Griffin. 1978 by Susan Griffin. Reprinted by arrangement with HarperCollins Publishers. Time changes and so frames life in new ways. The speech of mother tongue and of father tongue blends into the sibling tongues of a multicultural globe. 19 MOTHER TONGUE, FATHER TONGUE New studies are proving the old admonition that "it is more blessed to give than to receive" is not only true, but underrated. There's also a matter of influence . . . A DAUGHTER of the Rockefellers i ^ told a gathering on National ^^^^L Philanthropy Day in New I % York City that when she was J^ J^ a child her father had her label three boxes: mine, sai'ings, and ot\\eys. Each week he gave her a 15 -cent allowance and she put one nickel in each box. Before Christmas, she and her father would open the o^ts box, count the nickels and thoughtfully select a charity. As an adult she continues to give one- third of her income to charity. "People helping other people has distin- guished American society," notes Bonnie Johnson, former ASC vice president for development and public affairs. As with the Rockefellers, for many, giv- ing reflects family values and tradition. Yet according to preliminary research, there are distinct gender patterns in giving. For instance, women who give generally divide the amount into a number of small gifts; men give more. In its 1990 report on phi- lanthropy, the Independent Sector, a non- profit coalition of groups that encourage giving, reported that women give 1.8 per- cent of their income; men give 3.1 percent. For men, giving often has been wrapped up in business and business relationships philanthropy comprises a real investment with returns that include recognition and power. "Few women understand the power equation," says Johnson, now executive director for development and assistant dean of Emory University School of Medicine. "The power of associations with others who give men understand that." "We are ceding power," Nicky Newman Tanner told Wellesley women who did not want to talk about money during the college's five-year campaign (which resulted in Wellesley College raising $167 million, a record for all liberal arts colleges). The power of giving often translates into the power of serving on boards and influencing the use of funds. Today less than five per- cent of corporate/foundation giving flows into programs for women and girls, says Joan Fawcett, member services director for the National Network of Women's Funds. Women are ceding power even as an in- THE POWER OF GIVING Written by Celeste Pennington Illustrations by Ralph Gilbert 20 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE WINTER 1994 creasing number of women are moving into positions of leadership, according to statis- tics published by the National Network on Women as Philanthropists [NNWP]. Women account for 55.2 percent of college enrollment. By A.D. 2000, 63 percent of new entrants into the work force will be women. Already women are assuming greater responsibility for an array of finan- cial resources, from earnings to inheritance. Over the next 20 years, baby boomers will inherit $8 trillion and, as NNWP re- minds, "women outlive men by an average of seven years." So the future of charitable giving will be in women's hands. Philanthropy, Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Ser\'ices, told women during her address to the NNWP last year, is the last frontier of the women's moi'ement. THE ESSENCE OF PHILANTHROPY is one-on-one contact, writes Douglas M. Lawson in his book. Give to Live. More than half of all American adults men and women volunteer 20 billion volunteer hours yearly. It's that personal expression that Frances Freeborn Pauley '27 recalls as a youngster accompanying her mother, a volunteer at the cotton mill day care. "I remember how terrible the place was, how dirty," says Pauley. "The experience was so upsetting to me, I went home and cried." Pauley never forgot her mother's compas- sion. Later, she helped establish the school hot lunch program throughout DeKalb County. She also helped start the DeKalb Clinic. "During the Depression, my family had a hard time, but we had everything we needed I couldn't stand the fact that chil- dren didn't have enough." There is strong evidence that, for both genders, attitudes toward service and giving are closely tied to religious belief Deeds of giving are the very foundation of the world, admonishes the Torah. The Old Testament tithe (a plan for offering 10 per- cent of one's income) is a philanthropic thread that also runs through both Catholic and Protestant giving. It is a part of life that Holly Markwalter '86, daughter of a Methodist minister, con- tinues within her own family circle. She is also motivated by New Testament models ot sacrificial giving like the widow who gave two mites, a small offering except in the sense that it was all she possessed and by the modem philanthropy of a Christian friend who feels compelled to give some- thing to any stranger who asks her help. ACCORDING TO STUDIES, women tend to give from the heart to causes that can make a tangible difference, often to im- prove life for others. Women also give to bring about change. In contrast, a man of- ten gives to preserve a cause or institution and is usually more receptive than a woman to have a building or institution named for him. "Men give for self-glory and football tickets," jokes Faye Allen Sisk '73, former executive director of product development tor HBO &. Co. in Atlanta and now teach- ing at Mercer University. Women tend to invest in a cause or orga- nization only after gaining an understand- ing of its operation. Notes ASC's Acting Director of Development Jean Kennedy, "Women want to know that their money is used for a good purpose." Often women donate their time first, then money. When approached to give, men are more apt to open the checkbook and ask, "How much?" IN THE PAST, women of means often re- lied on men fathers, brothers, husbands or other advisors to administer their wealth. Yet with shifts in the distribution of wealth, and as more women are managing their resources, that picture is changing. Today, 6.5 million women own their own businesses. Of all executive, administrative and managerial positions in the U.S. today, 43.6 percent are held by women. Even though women make only 75 cents for every dollar earned by men, women now control 60 percent of America's wealth. Of the 3.3 million Americans with gross assets of $500,000 or more in 1986, 41.2 percent were women, according to the IRS Statistics of Income Bulletin. On the aver- age these women were 6 percent wealthier than the men, held slightly more corporate stock and were considerably less in debt. As donors, these women are giving to causes that reflect their range of concerns. For instance, a retired school teacher re- cently donated $345,000 to help provide equal women's/men's basketball programs at a co-ed institution in the Midwest. A pro- lific children's author funds a foundation supporting a variety of children's education projects; a top fashion model has donated $70,000 to a hospital to help families of Women's new and rising economic status has opened doors of opportunity for women's philanthropy. But will old patterns of giving (and not giving) dictate how women in years ahead will spend their money? 21 THE POWER OF GIVING "I can't see how any person can possibly be happy without sharing either her money or herself." children with cancer. A businesswoman donates 50 percent of her gross sales com- mission to charities; in 1992, that fund distributed nearly $1 million to grassroots organizations serving battered women, the homeless and people with AIDS. As both donors and fundraisers, accord- ing to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, women play substantial roles. Women now account for 75 percent of the chief development of- ficers in museums. Fifty-eight percent of the 13,500 members ot the National Society of Fundraising Executives are women. And about one-fourth of foundation CEOs/board members are women. WOMEN HAVE BEGUN to develop their own philanthropic networks. Since the mid-1980s, women have organized more than 60 funds (mostly financed and directed by women) to support women's causes; their assets now exceed $50 million. Nationwide, the number of funds that provide money for organizations that educate women concern- ing charitable giving has exploded. Since the 1980s, the dollar amount of grants designated tor programs for women and girls has increased nearly five-fold, from $36 million to $184 million. This may also have implications for the philanthropic or- ganizational structures themselves, notes Marsha Shapiro Rose in a paper prepared tor the 1992 Conference of Association tor Research on Non-Profit Organizations and Volunteer Action at Yale University. Instead of hierarchy and rigid division of labor found in male-directed organizations, women may bring a less bureaucratic, more interactive structures, stressing collective decision-making/de-centralization of authority. MARY REIMER '46 REMEMBERS her mother hand-wrapping edible food scraps to give to hungry transients during days of the Depression. Reimer also remembers donat- ing food stamps to Agnes Scott to help the College purchase sugar and meat. "That," says Reimer, "was a lifetime ago." Reimer, who later "married a Georgia Tech man and helped rear six children," now volunteers from 8:30 a.m. until noon each day at the Decatur Emergency Assis- tance Ministry, which operates a food pan- try and offers money to people who need help with utility bills or "other necessities." For two or three weeks out of the year. when she gets home from her volunteer work, Reimer sits down at one corner of her large dining room table and writes a few notes to Agnes Scott classmates, encourag- ing them to give to the College's Annual Fund. She methodically bundles the notes and mails them in groups of 20 until she has ticked off all 117 names in her class. "Some people say they are on a fixed income and can't send the College any- thing. I ask, 'Can you send $5? That will raise our percentage goal as quickly as will the $1 million gift.' "1 can't see how any person can possibly be happy without sharing either her money or herself," says Reimer. IN WOMEN'S PHILANTHROPY, the newsletter for the NNWP, directors Sondra Shaw and Martha Taylor encourage women to begin viewing charitable efforts, espe- cially giving, as central to life. Like children and professional achievements, philan- thropic investment outlives the giver. It is also an important part of managing resources. The woman who earns/spends $2,000 a month throughout adulthood will have handled and managed more than $1 million. The person who consistently gave a simple tithe of those earnings, for instance, would have given $100,000 over that same period. "We are helping women from all walks of life to learn about financial planning," says Fawcett of the National Network of Women's Funds, "from what to put back tor retirement to how to invest, to finding ways for giving. Women are care givers. We think in terms of having money tor grocer- ies and paying for rent. What do we do with our discretionary money? "We need to look at how we use that money. Giving may require sacrifice: brown bag lunch once a month or look twice at that $110 suit we want to buy. Just save back some money and learn to give. "Whether the gift is $5 or $10,000, it will make you feel good to be a giver." In the final analysis, writes Lawson in GiVe to Live, the act of giving is an act of love. Recent studies, he says, show that acts of charity and devotion to worthy causes improve physical well-being in the giver and are key to mental health. "Instead of the old slogan, 'Give until it hurts,' " writes Lawson, "it seems we should say, 'Give until you feel great.' " 22 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE WINTER 1994 For an ASC Retum-tO' College student, two candlesticks became a symbol that her present struggle prepared a brighter future. This is a thank-you that is long overdue. Someone I don't know who bought me a pair of brass candlesticks tor Christmas 1982 during my senior year at Agnes Scott. That was the year 1 turned the bend on a 12-year journey toward my college degree. 1 began accumulatmg college credits in 1972, and by 1977 had completed more than a year's work. In 1980, my marriage came apart, and consequently my family income shrank to less than half. Against this back- drop, 1 registered as a Return-to-CoUege student at Agnes Scott. A partial scholarship answered the question of how to pay the tuition, but how were my two children and 1 to live? 1 didn't know. 1 sold our house. This was the first of three moves during my ^^^^^^^^^^^^ years at college, and each was "downward." '' In my journal 1 noted: The temperature has been 105 for days; we can open the windows only three inches, then secure them with nails. Our neighbor, Mr. E., believes that his wife is mess- ing arowid with R. , who lives across the street. Mr. E. went over with a small cannon and blew holes in the walls, roof, and his own foot. Later we would remember that neighborhood as one of the better ones. But our eyes were open. We never doubted that our circumstances could be worse. Each move meant letting go of things we valued. ' Fall 1980: Goodbye oak china cabinet, sofa that I upholstered, lace curtains, antique desk. Two ladies fought 23 THE GIFT i^^ One day in fall 1981, 1 checked my campus mail box, 612, and in it found an envelope with $60 inside. I had no idea what it was for or who had put it there. m over a bicycle I sold to the highest bidder. In fall, 1981 and 1982, Agnes Scott's financial aid increased my scholarships; I was named a Dana Scholar. Clearly, some- body believed in me. That was one of the things that kept me going. The other was that half my life had been spent typing. If I didn't keep moving forward, that was what I had to go back to. I took student loans, and the annual ar- rival of those checks was bonanza time. Dance lessons for my daughter the one extracurricular activity I could give her in a decade. For both of the children, the biggest boom boxes I could find in K-Mart. For me, pantyhose. The rest: brakes for the car, emergencies, bills. In late fall of my senior year, English professor Pat Pinka informed me that I had won a scholarship from the American Association of University Women. My rent was due so I was amazed at the timing of this gift. The recipients were honored with a beautiful reception at the home of the Presi- dent of Spelman Col- lege. I remember the candles on the mantle, the earnest hand- shakes from a hun- dred women I did not know, the surprise of finding my daughter's school librarian in the crowd and the fear that someone would spot my scuffed, run-down shoes. FROM MY FIRST DAY ON CAMPUS, personal difficulties were laced with academic challenges. Early winter 1981, I met with Seiiiorita Eloise Herbert about my procrastination in her Spanish classes. She wanted to know everything. So 1 told her. She said, "You know, we live inside our- selves. We must do that." 1 had no idea what she meant. The stress I was experiencing was a visible pox. I could not afford insurance or health care, so I worried endlessly about every twinge. Elizabeth Zenn, at the time chair of the department of classical lan- guages and literatures, packed me off to her own ophthalmologist when I feared my vision was failing. Psychology professor Miriam Drucker tactfully probed and reduced the shattered bones of my life: J am so angry. I should have kept on typing. This isn't fair to my children. I feel so helpless. One day in fall 1981, I checked my cam- pus mail box, 612, and in it found an enve- lope with $60 inside. 1 had no idea what it was for or who had put it there. 1 hid it deep in my wallet for three days. Then I took it to the grocery store. Shortly after. Dean Julia Gary asked me to help her move into a beautiful new home. She had a wall of bookshelves in the den. My job was to unpack her books, in- cluding fragile volumes of Dickens. This is how I want to live someday, I thought. IN JANUARY 1982, Senorita Herbert invited her Spanish students to celebrate El Dia de los Reyes . She created a tasty Christmas tree of greenery and boiled shrimp. On the table were three kings, whose crowns were candleholders. I tried not to be nosy, but my eyes wandered from room to room. Her home was glowing with warmth and serenity. Someday, 1 told myself. If not the serenity, at least the wannth. I was keeping my apartment thermostat at 58 degrees we were always cold. In spring 1982, I had just begun Beowulj the center on which my love of the English language turns when I fell and shattered my right wrist. This cost $600, two months in a shoulder-to-fingertips cast, and several missed classes. On my return to campus, Margaret Pepperdene who taught the Beowulf course, summoned me to her office. I would report to her, regularly, at such-and-such a time, for one-hour sessions. In those hours, she delivered the entire lec- tures that I had missed. Under her shrewd, watchful eyes, 1 knew what was expected of me: finish that course. My notes on Beowulf are scrawly and unbound, the best I could do with my left hand. I love those notes and take them out often to marvel at them. My scratchy journal entry on May 7, 1982: Aced Beowulf. Envelopes continued to appear in Box 612. Enough to buy books. Enough to pay the phone bill. Enough to buy some grocer- ies and a pair of pantyhose. Sometimes the handwriting was different. Clearly, my benefactor preferred to be anonymous. 24 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE WNTER 1994 There was a great kindness embedded in this arrangement. Even with the "care packages," each month seemed harder. At the end ot tall 1982, when I used $6 from one of the envelopes for a ticket to a performance ot Benjamin Britten's "Cer- emony of Carols," I telt like a thief. The music billowed through my soul, sweeping away ever^'thing: my own screeching when the children ate all the cookies in three days the snarling man at the electric com- pany; the knowl- edge that our power would be turned off because our payments were three months behind. For in this rose conteined was/Hevene and eanhe in litel space. Res Miranda. In the litel space between the final breath and the rise of applause, it occurred to me that 1 had read Paradise Lost, had studied Chaucer and medieval civilization and Biblical literature and the history ot art. And I understood every one of the allusions in the libretto of the "Ceremony ot Carols." I was rich! A few days later, an envelope arrived in the mail at my apartment with $300 in it. I put the money on the kitchen table and stared at it. The heat wouldn't be turned off. We would be warm for Christmas. TTie next day, after I paid the electric bill, I took a walk through Stone Mountain village. In the window of my favorite shop glimmered a pair of brass candlesticks. I had just enough left to buy them. I put them on the table where, the day before, 1 had stared at the money. I thought of Senorita Herbert's abundant kindness, of her kings with candles on their heads. Finally, her message made sense. With a six- dollar concert ticket and a college educa- tion and a pair of brass candlesticks, I was learning the serenity of living inside myself. THE WEEK AFTER CHRISTMAS, I labored at my desk typing a story about four children trapped in a blizzard that had taken their power. Grandma placed her candle ill the window. A layer of frost covered the pane, except for a warm, moist circle where the tiny candle flame danced. 1 finished the story in six days and tore the last ot 1982 off the calendar with vigor. The early weeks of 1983 were a nightmare. My son was assaulted. We had to move again, this time into a house with a sister Return-to- College student, Sally Stevens. Among the things we moved were the beginnings of a novel, an indepen- dent study project which had to be com- pleted by June. I broke down in Dean Marty Kirkland's office. She hugged me with her voice and promised that a better day was coming. Spring 1983: The magnolias are peeking open, its graduation time. My mother and brothers drove from Mississippi and New Orleans to witness my graduation. I was the first in my family to have made it. That morning, while I set out a hasty breakfast, my-brother-the-fireman taught my son to shave. I remember people bumping into each other in the hall, rush- ing to get out of Sally's house on time. I remember a breeze billowing the last of my lace curtains, flicking at the brass candle- sticks that graced the table that day. They grace it still. Whoever you are, 1 want you to know that this decade of silence has not been an ungrateful one. 1 have been busy, among other things, paying it back. We have our own house now, with a wall of books and lace at the front door. Recently I received the check for my first, soon-to-be published book. The money is earmarked for renovations to my kitchen nails and pipes and such but first, I live inside myself. First, something beautiful for my table, to go with the brass candlesticks. Zanca '83 is a writer for the American Cancer Society, Atlanta, Ga. -66- My job was to unpack her books, including fragile volumes of Dickens. This is how I want to live someday, I thought. 25 PLUGGING INTO THE FUTURE Written hy Sheryl S. Jackson Photographed by Phillip Spears BACKHOES and shovels, loops of wire being dragged through each and every build- ing, the fragrance of dozens of freshly unpacked computers and discarded cardboard boxes, noisy telephones and the unflagging work of computing services staff as they double-checked instal- lations and made adjustments all added to the hubbub of students' arrival at Agnes Scott this fall and spring semesters. As Director of Computing Services Tom Maier surveys the scene he says, wryly, "We are succeeding beyond our wildest night- The new information technology project will link ASC computers across the campus and around the world. 26 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE WINTER 199') mare." He refers to the project's ambitious timetable: in one year the College will es- tablish a system that would normally require three-tO'five years to put in place. The project, called the Information Technology' Enhancement Program [ITEP], will provide a comprehensive computer net- work throughout the College and will link this community with institutions and librar- ies and scholars around the world. When complete, the technology (includ- ing upgraded student and staff PC systems, computerized classroom, Macintosh lab, library automation system, new administra- tion system and campus network) will move with ASC into the 21st century. "Our students are used to working with computers in high schools and they expect the same convenience when they arrive in our classrooms," President Ruth Schmidt says. "The ability to communicate elec- tronically and collaborate with colleagues at other institutions is also crucial to faculty members as active scholars." THE IDEA FOR ITEP grew out of Agnes Scott's Strategic Plan, 1990-91. In her follow-up report, Choosing Our Future, President Schmidt noted the critical need for technological improvements. During its January 1993 meeting, the ASC Board of Trustees unanimously passed a resolution to provide $5.1 million dollars for the project. In addition to these funds, the College received grants, including a $1 million grant from The Lettie Pate Evans Founda- tion Inc. and a $75,000 grant from The Tull Charitable Foundation Inc. of Atlanta. "Students are used to working with computers in high schools and they expect the same convenience when they arrive in our classrooms." INDERGROUHD PR01?'"^TS Both The Coca-Cola Company and the IBM Matching Grant Program provided computer systems to upgrade existing per- sonal computers around campus. Already underway are computer up- grades, installation of specialized labs and introduction of new software. The project will be complete in September 1994 when the network links all computers on campus and offers access to outside networks. The most time-consuming aspect involves wiring each building to provide necessary links. It is also costly, says Director of the Physical Plant Elsa Pefia more than $500,000 to wire the buildings and another $1.2 million to lay under- ground cables. To add to the complexity, Pefia notes that the work is scheduled to cause minimal disruption to students. This year's calm has been disrupted by the roar of earth moving equipment (above) . Chair of Mathematics Larry Riddle demonstrates equip- ment to Emily Pender '95 in the nevu Macintosh Lab in Dana Fine Arts (left) . 27 PLUGGING INTO THE FUTURE: TECHNOLOGY INVADES ASC Installing state-of-the-art equipment now will move the College into the future , says Director of Computing Services Tom Maier. Because Agnes Scott must compete with many technologically advanced institutions fof the same pool of students, ITEP's initial focus has been academics. Forty-two student computer stations located in the academic computer center and at satellite locations in various build- ings, including residence halls, have been upgraded to DEC '486 personal computers capable of running the latest software. To meet specialized needs of art students, eight Macintosh computers with state-of- the-art graphics and design capabilities have been installed in the Dana Fine Arts Building. These computers are capable of being expanded as new software is released. The new computerized classroom. The Interactive Learning Center, contains 22 work stations. The classroom name offers a clear sense of the benefits of this technology and reflects changes in teaching as well. Math/physics major Elizabeth Cherry '95 describes that center as "wonderful." "Before, we had only one computer, the image on its monitor was projected on an AV screen the professor was the one who entered the information. Now," says Cherry, "each student is able to have a one-on-one conversation with the computer and to dis- cover solutions to problems by herself. "For instance, in my Differential Equa- tions course, we plug in the equations and specifications, then the computer automati- cally plots the points and draws the graphs. Having these computers not only helps us find new solutions to our math problems but it also breaks the harrier between stu- dent and computer. That's important be- cause employers really expect graduates to have a working knowledge of computers." ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION is what Chair of the Mathematics Depart- ment Larry Riddle enjoys most about the new capability. Before, he was limited to a lecture/demonstration format. Now students are "able to share ideas and solutions with classmates since the computers are net- worked and information can be projected onto a screen to promote class discussion." 28 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE WINTER I994 Associate Professor of English Christine Cozzens beheves the ease of moving blocks of copy or making other adjustments to manuscripts on the computer should also help her students produce better work. "Word processing," says Cozzens, "makes it much easier to change things you would like to change but might not if it meant re- typing or rewriting an entire page." AS STUDENTS BENEFIT from the aca- demic application of this technology, so will Agnes Scott faculty members who now have personal computers. Once these are linked to the network, says Maier, it will "not only help faculty with administrative activities like writing memos and reports and developing tests but it will improve their ability to advise students as they have convenient and ongoing ac- cess to student records, class schedules and grades." Just as these new tech- nologies facilitate work. Dean of the College Sarah Blanshei, who serves as chair of the oversight committee for ITEP and coordinates the disparate parts of the pro- gram, acknowledges that learning to use the technol- ogy poses distinct challenges. "Never have we asked any other generation of teachers to learn so much, so fast and to embrace a new way of thinking and doing things," she notes. Maier agrees. He emphasizes that the project requires close teamwork and he calls the faculty "the driving force" behind the ITEP success. "That is why we're offer- ing workshops, individual training and at- tendance at national conferences to help faculty members enhance their current skills and develop new uses for technology." In support of the academic program, ITEP will include library automation. As a first step, the library has reclassified its in- ventory, moving from an outdated Dewey Decimal to the Library of Congress system. The second step will update the system with an automated check-out /check-in using bar codes and scanners. Then the database will list everything in the College library and that information will be "on-line" so a stu- dent may search for the book and discover, immediately, whether it is on the shelf. "Another benefit," says Maier, "is an im- proved collection development process. We will have data about the use of books and periodicals. This will enable us to add to OLir collection more effectively." OTHER UPGRADES in the administrative computer system include staff computers with access to software developed for spe- cific administrative tasks. "ITEP means that all staff members' computers will be networked so we will be able to share information and communicate by electronic mail," says Manager of Stewardship Anne Schatz. "We are also converting all of our current development files into a new program. Benefactor, which allows us to expand the amount of informa- tion we keep on alumnae and friends. "This will help us keep more detailed, more cur- rent records." Tying the campus' computers together will be the third phase, called Agnes Scott's Local Area Network (SCOTTLAN), which carries the new telecommunications sys- tem, the computer network and the capability for cable television throughout the campus. Maier notes two primary benefits of installing the cable network at this time. First, new wiring will not only replace the out-of-date telecommunications system but will offer additional features such as Voice Mail for each telephone. The other benefit involves ASC's par- ticipation in INTERNET, a world-wide computer network system accessed through PeachNet, a statewide network operated by University System of Georgia. This network will enable faculty and students to access information from other schools and librar- ies. Everyone will have an electronic mail address making it easy for Agnes Scott fac- ulty and students to collaborate on projects with other people at other schools. If Maier jokes a little about the pressures inherent in this project, he fully appreciates its ultimate accomplishment. "Implementa- tion of ITEP at this time makes it possible for us to install state-of-the-art equipment that not only meets today's needs, but also prepares us for the future." Benefits of the new system range from instant lookup of library books to an E-mail system that connects faculty and students with other schools. 29 PLUGGING INTO THE FUTURE: TECHNOLOGY INVADES ASC CLASSIC For ASC s alumnae gardeners, it's proved "the best work. " same time, the College hired a landscape architect to rework the garden. The pergola had rotted and he replaced flower beds with grass and four dogwoods. The high standards of Frances Stukes, Caroline "Callie" McKinney Clarke '27 and other alumnae were offended, briefly, when the College wrested control of the garden in the 1970s. But by 1974, an alumnae proposal to re- sume managing the garden was accepted with mis- givings. Wrote James Henderson, vice president for business affairs: "I'm delighted we have people who are interested in shouldering some responsi- bility, although I have real reservations as to how long this committee will last." By 1991, committee mem- bers Nelle Chamlee Howard, Lewis, Stukes and a Winthrop College gradu- ate Louisa Wannamaker, each had 16 years of con- tinuous service. Clarke donated the fountain in the lily pond to honor her mother, Claude Candler McKinney, who "was on the front steps of the Decatur Female Institute as it opened its doors in 1889." Wannamaker's con- ALUMNAE GARDEN: AN EASY ROW TO HOE Toward the little foun- tain nestled between the hydrangeas marches Bella Wilson Lewis '34 with toilet brush in hand. She scrubs away the algae that have accumu- lated since the previous Wednesday when she joined a handful of others to work in the Alumnae Garden. Frances Gilliland Stukes '24, clad in blue jeans, waits patiently, then the two walk over to Evans Dining Hall. Stukes recalls when there was no Alumnae Garden. During her ASC years, she spent a lot of time looking down from her Inman window onto Faculty Garden, where faculty women and wives maintained plots. "As to who had the first gleam in her eye about putting a formal garden behind Inman, there's contro- versy," she says. But by the late 1920s, the alumnae "took the garden away" from the faculty and ex- cept for a few years have managed the garden since. Young Stukes served on the first Alumnae Garden committee with chair Louise Brown Hastings '23 (whose husband's family owned an Atlanta land- scaping business). Hastings had both a "knack" and the right connections she gave hundreds of Hastings' bulbs to ASC. The lily pond in the garden was part of a gift from the Class of '3 1 . Its landscaping included a pergola of wooden slats and brick pillars planted with rambling roses which tumbled over its archway. Stukes remembers a wed- ding there. Actually, what she recalls with a laugh, is the bride's long, delicate veil picking up twigs and leaves as it trailed along the Garden path. In the 1930s, couples seeking a bit of privacy found the garden's kissing comer, where shrubbery formed a high screen around a small bench. Engagement dunkings in the pond escalated by the 1960s as a College tradition took firm root in the garden. About that 30 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE WINTER 1994 tribiitions are highly re- garded, as well: "She's the best weeder we ever had," notes Lewis. The wonder ot the gar- den has caught the inter- est and comments of on- lookers trom faculty to Decatur neighbors. Students who drop by the Alumnae Garden to sun or spend a peaceful moment away from books, sometimes volunteer to work side by side with these gardening experts. While the Alumnae Garden committee meets infrequently now, Stukes shows up regularly, carry- ing her basket of garden tools. Her strong, gloved hands pull weeds or plant flowers or coax growth. Before Alumnae Week- end, Lewis slipped on wet leaves and broke her hip. Now she, Howard and Wannamaker are "retired." Lewis admits, "Never have I done anything in my whole life that has re- ceived so much praise from the casual garden stroller to faculty, students and parents. It's no won- der we work so hard; it's the best work." Caroline Bleke '83 is manager of alumnae pro- grams, Agnes Scott College. ETCETERA Beauty amid Moscow's crumhling infrastructure, update on the President search, Mexico outreach, news from several College fronts, and lots of letters NEW PARIETAL RULES The Board of Trustees passed new parietal regulations and accompa- nying guest regulations in its January meeting, responding to students' desire to have a choice concerning individual living arrangements. Based on a proposal by the Parietals Committee, the Residence Hall Asso- ciation and the Represen- tative Council, and subse- quently modified by the Judicial Committee and the Student Affairs Com- mittee of the Board of Trustees, the new regula- tions offer three options. The first option is identi- cal to policy stated in the student handbook with male visitors in the resi- dence hall rooms until midnight Sunday through Thursday and until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. The other two options are set hours for male visitors until midnight Sunday through Thursday and all of the weekend beginning at 2 p.m. on Friday, and 24-hour visitation, seven days a week. All current students have the option to change current living arrangements for the re- mainder of the 1994 spring semester. Each upper-class stu- dent may choose among the three options during room sign-ups this spring for the fall 1 994 semester. First-year students will not have 24-hour visitation. The Board also adopted a series ot rules for all male visitors. Among the rules, males must sign in with the resident assistant and must be escorted. They must use men's restrooms and abide by Agnes Scott residence hall policies. Associate Dean of Stu- dents Mollie Merrick '57 who worked closely with the students as they framed different versions of the policy says Agnes Scott has had set parietal hours for more than a de- cade. "Parietals have been on the national scene for years now and 24-hour parietals are common across the country not universal, but common." While some colleges (like Presbyterian in Clinton, S.C., and Wesleyan in Macon) do not have a 24/7 (24-hours a day, seven days a week) policy, students in a grow- ing number of institutions have pushed for extended residence hall visitation. Terry Sichta, director of housing at Georgia Insti- tute of Technology, notes that for 20 years Tech had limited in-room visitation policy then about two years ago Tech involved students in a vote on the 24/7 option, by dorm. "I don't know of any Tech dorms that have gone with less than 24 hours," says Sichta. Emory University also offers a 24/7 option each year in a dorm by dorm vote, with most choosing that option. This past fall Agnes Scott student leaders called for a 24/7 visitation policy. Instead of taking the proposal through es- tablished channels to the Board of Trustees, they took the vote to the stu- dents, by residence hall. "We knew that every change to rules in the stu- 31 CLASSIC & ETCETERA ETCETERA dent handbook had to be approved by the board," says Residence Hall Asso- ciation President Jessica Lake '94, "but we felt that we should be the ultimate decision makers in this case." After two-thirds of the residents voted in fa- vor of the change, student leaders indicated that resi- dence halls would no longer uphold the old pari- etal regulations. Student Government President Missy MuUinaux says for her it was an issue of power as much as pari- etals. "Parietals was some- thing that students could rally behind." For Dean of Students Cue Hudson, the issue of parietals was heightened by immediate concerns for maintaining trust and a working relationship be- tween administration and students, and also for the College's traditional stance on student self-gov- ernance and the honor system. Hudson noted that the honor system is one of the aspects of life at Agnes Scott that she values. She wanted to work to pre- serve that system, in and outside classrooms. Hudson, who took an informal survey of private and public institutions. says that compared to other southern women's colleges, Agnes Scott's parietal policies "started out as more conservative. Recently I have thought we were out of step with student needs and with other colleges, and I think some changes were defi- nitely needed in college policy. But 1 was very grieved for the students to go around a process that had not failed them." Although students wanted to be the ultimate decision makers in this case, Hudson noted that as dean of students, she is accountable for what hap- pens in residence halls. She said, "You can't have total power in setting rules unless you have full responsibility." Even as students have new freedom to choose how they live, the College is urged to take a "more proactive role in providing an opportunity for discus- sions about values so that all students can carefully work through the life deci- sions they are making," says Trustee Wardie Mar- tin '59, chair of the Board's student affairs committee which finalized the policy that later was passed by the Board. Trustees and others at Agnes Scott wonder how the change will affect the College. Students who don't want the pressure of time restrictions on male visitors say they feel more relaxed with the new policy. The student who chooses not to have a male guest may at times welcome the roommate contract it requires her full consent to her roommate's male guest; the student without a male guest has priority right to the room. To some alumnae, the change marks the end of an era. "By allowing men access to the dorms at all hours, the women at Agnes Scott risk altering the unique character of the college they attend," laments alumna Caroline Bleke '83. "Male visitation is fine, in moderation. Twenty-four hours, seven days a week the Univer- sity of Georgia provides that kind of atmosphere at a fraction of Agnes Scott's tuition." Agrees Katie Pattillo '90, "These stu- dents may never know what they are missing in terms of that bond among women." For this reason, and for reasons of transition from home to college, restric- tions on first-year students is probably a good idea, thinks Junior Class Presi- dent Charmaine Minnie- field '95. "First-year stu- dents need time to under- stand how things are done here, the traditions of the College, the honor code. This gives them time." The policy puts responsi- bility on upper class stu- dents, where she believes it belongs. "I don't feel that we come to college to be in a parentally con- trolled environment. . . . My support of the 24-hour policy is not in any way HOW ASC RATES As of June 30, 1993, Agnes Scott's endowment had X Va market value of more than $205 million. The College received an "AA-" from Standard and Poor's and an "Aa" rating from Moody's Investor Service. These ratings place ASC among the elite of U.S. higher education institutions in terms of credit rating. 32 Ar;K]Fc;<;rnTTUAr.A7iwp w/iwtfp looj ETCETERA supporting premarital sex aren't we women enough to tell a man when it's time to leave ?" On many levels, the change in parietals "has been a very difficult issue," admits Director ot Alum- nae Affairs Lucia Sizemore '65. "Students today view their space not just as a place for sleeping but more like an apartment. It's where they have their ste- reo and television. It's where they like to spend time and entertain their friends. "All of us are aware that it's a changing world. Each generation has dealt with difficult questions. For the Class of 1947, it was whether or not stu- dents should be allowed to dance with men. "We as alumnae need to trust that today's stu- dents will be as thorough and thoughtful in their adult decisions as we thought we were in our day." SUMMER ARTS The buttressed walls of the Dana Fine Arts Building will be burgeon- ing with creative energy July 18-24, when 15 artist instructors and their stu- dents converge for "Sum- mer Studios at Agnes Scott College." This expanded arts pro- gram (in its second year) will feature 15 weekend workshops in visual arts, music, creative writing, theatre and expressive therapy; and six, week- long studios: monotype, watercolor, creative book structures, ceramic sculp- ture, paint programs and digital image processing and photography. The sessions will be presented by Frances Anderson '63, Carol Barton, Amanda Gable, Valerie Gilbert, Roy Grant, Anthony Grooms, Ann Kresge, Carol Lee Lorenzo, Tom Love, Michele McNichols, Kathryn Myers, Mark B. Perry, Karen Robinson, Karen Sullivan and Betty Ann Wylie '63. The program offers "serious students a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the creative process." Workshop and studio tuition ranges from $125 to $300; room and board is $75-$ 195. Some continu- ing education (CEU) credit courses are included in the offerings. Registra- tion deadline is June 1. For more information, contact Myrna L. Goldberg, director of special programs, at (404) 371-6184 [after March 12, 638-6184]. MOSCOW SKETCHES Polluted water pouring out of hotel faucets, technical school hallways dark for lack of lightbulbs, crumbling city walls and unkempt campuses are among the graphic de- scriptions and sketches that Elsa Pena, director of the physical plant at Agnes Scott, brought back from Russia and Estonia this fall. "We thought Rus- sia would have standards of maintenance close to ours," comments Pefia, "but what we found there was evidence of deteriora- tion over a long period of time. We were shocked." Pefia was among 15 maintenance supervisors who visited technical uni- versities, hospitals and clinics, a factory, churches, hotels, an architectural firm, and the offices of the mayors of Tallin and St. Petersburg. They talked with officials on site, then followed up the visits with written evaluations and reports. Over and over, the group was questioned about the possibility of U.S. investment. "All the 33 NEV^ei^^tJ^Tpis^ people know is that it will take lots of money to fix things. They see this as a big mountain. It over- whelms them. They don't know where to start." Russians face difficult choices, including whether to use limited re- sources to restore architec- turally unique buildings or repair public facilities and rebuild crumbling infra- structures. At one time the gov- ernment had a large force of workers responsible for making repairs throughout the country, but since the quasi-privatization of property, physical plant maintenance, says Pefia, "does not exist." At a large St. Peters- burg hotel, Pefia noticed that the elevator only to the third floor. "Three years before, the hotel caught fire. Rather than make repairs, they just closed off the upper floors. h was unbelievable." -r- ''5. COMPUTER CRAZY IN MEXICO The same year Salinas, a small village in Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, got electricity, ASC Assistant Professor of Sociology/ Anthropol- ogy Martha Rees intro- duced computer technol- ogy. "They went crazy," says Rees. That was in 1988. Since then, Rees has been visiting Oaxaca each sum- mer to help where she can and to observe the differ- ent co-operative groups who grow food to sell and who purchase food in mass quantities to resell. In the blazing heat of July 1993, she returned to her friends in Salinas. "We reviewed spreadsheets from last year, and I taught them about word process- ing," says Rees, "so they could document their community history and what they are doing in their co-op groups." This year Rees took three students with her. Ken Sturrock from Geor- gia State University "tuned-up" the computers for the trip and helped with computers on-site. The Research Experience for Undergraduate stu- dents [REU] program which promotes women and minorities to partici- pate in current research made it possible for Meg McDonough '93 and Mimi ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW An administrative review committee has been set J. \. up to examine areas of administrative responsi- bility and coordinate with the academic review, man- dated in 1993 by the Board of Trustees, to plan the most efficient and effective administrative support for the College and its evolving academic program. Both academic and administrative reviews will report regularly to the trustees. Final reports will be given no later than the May 1995 Trustees' meeting. This new committee will have six administrative staff, the officers of the College, two faculty members, two students and a trustee liaison. 34 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE WNTER 1994 ETCETERA Saunders '93 to work alongside Rees in Salinas and to do research in other villages in the val- ley. While in Mexico, Rees and students stayed in middle strata urban houses with dirt floors and no running hot water. Others who hear about Rees' trips realize the importance of her efforts and are generously provid- ing support. After reading about Rees in December 1992 Main Events, Barbara Gerland '43 and her hus- band decided to donate a computer. Later, after speaking with Rees about her work in Mexico, Carlos Seville of the com- pany Saw Horse donated seven computers. Rees holds in high regard the people of Salinas. "Ninety-nine per- cent of the time, they know exactly what they want. They're an inspiration." Elizabeth Cherry '95 THE PRESIDENT SEARCH Agnes Scott has begun L a search to fill its president's office which becomes vacant June 30 with the retirement of Ruth A. Schmidt. The first woman president, and the fifth president in the College's 105-year history, Schmidt has held the of- fice since 1982. Chairing the presiden- tial search committee is Clair McLeod MuUer '67, Atlanta City Council rep- resentative and a member of Agnes Scott's Board of Trustees. The committee has held its initial meetings and plans to enlist the services of an executive search consultant by February. "We want to be as thor- ough as possible and gather as much informa- tion from as many con- stituencies as possible," notes MuUer. "We do not want to rush the process and certainly having an interim president would not be ruled out." Serving with MuUer are trustees Louise Isaacson Bernard '46, JoAnn Saw- yer Delafield '58, Frances Bailey Graves '63, Douglas W Oldenburg, Jesse J. Spikes, WG. Tittle Jr., Sara Ector Vagliano '63, and Joseph Gladden Jr., chair of the board (ex- officio); faculty members Michael J. Brown, profes- REPORT FROM SACS Following the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) regular 10-year reaccredi- tation process, a peer committee submitted its exit report dealing with Agnes Scott College, its faculty, staff, resources and students. The visit on January 26 followed a campus self-study. The written report of the committee with the recommendations to which the College must re- spond will be forthcoming. After the exchange of information necessary in the review process, the College will receive word concerning accreditation in a later meeting of the Southern Association. sot of history; Gail Cabisius, associate profes- sor of classical languages and literatures; and Karen J. Thompson, assistant professor of biology; presi- dent-elect of the ASC Alumnae Association Lowrie Alexander Fraser '56; registrar Mary K. Owen Jarboe '68; students Sylvia Martinez '96, sophomore class president; and Charmaine Minnie- field '95, junior class presi- dent; Lucia H. Sizemore '65, director of alumnae affairs; and Lea Ann Grimes Hudson '76, special assistant to the president (ex-officio). "The committee not only reflects a desire for full participation by all. but represents a composite microcosm ot the strengths and diversity of our community," said Gladden. "Each member brings a reserve of experi- ence, judgment and per- spective to the task, and each will make a signifi- cant contribution to a most important under- taking." According to the Washington, D.C., -based Women's College Coali- tion, Agnes Scott is one of five women's institutions (Converse, Randolph- Macon, Stephens and Texas Women's Univer- sity) currently conducting presidential searches. Locally, Emory University, Georgia Tech and DeKalb 35 ETCETERA College are also reviewing candidates for their presi- dents' offices. Commenting on the number of presidential positions open, MuUer said: "I do not think that the current climate will change the way we con- duct our search. The aver- age term of a president is now five or six years so there will always be other searches going on. "This will be a very attractive job because ot our quality, our financial strength and our location." If you have nominations or other suggestions , please send them to Clair McLeod Muller, chair, Presidential Search Committee, ASC, 141 East College Ave., Decatur, GA 300^0-3797. ASC AFFIRMS CONVENENT WITH SYNOD A covenant between ^ Agnes Scott Col- lege and the Synod of the South Atlantic of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been formal- ized by the Board of Trust- ees of the College. The Synod should ratify this covenant at its next meeting in Septem- ber. The new affiliation will give Agnes Scott greater access to potential students and supporters in Presbyterian churches in the three states which comprise the synod of the South Atlantic: South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Though affiliated with the Presbyterian Church since its founding by Presbyterians in Decatur in 1889, the College has had an unclear relation- ship with the Church in recent years, given its reunification and the reconfiguration of bound- aries. The text ot the cov- enant is based on a state- ment approved by the Board in 1989. The addi- tions to the statement deal mostly with the responsi- bilities of the Synod to- ward Agnes Scott. The College will con- tinue its custom of being financially independent, not requesting funds from the Synod. The Board will continue to be a totally independent and self-perpetuating body. A statement is available to those who request it. Write the College for a copy. FEEDBACK J* Interesting summer is- sue of ASC Alumnae Magazine . Good work you do. Of interest to me, especially: Jane Zanca ["Scratching Out a Mind"] was my "Big Sister" in 1982. But I beg a question: The article by Mary Alma Durrett ["A Matter of De- grees"] and specifically page 29. Why no mention of financial aid in the Bo Ball RTC Scholarship? It's specifically for RTCs. Sally Ann Stevens Portland, OR 1 am completing my Ph.D. in counseling psychology and two of my specialty areas are the homeless and gender/ women's concerns. I found the article on homeless- ness to be written well and with respect for her sub- jects. I was also very pleased to read about the involvement of ASC with several homeless shelters, etc., in the Atlanta area. My dissertation topic addresses the main article of education for women from a self-efficiency view- point. Specifically 1 am researching when the change occurs in boys' and girls' self efficiency for specific academic and life tasks such as athletics, close friendships, math, science, etc. I believe there is a major shift for girls to start believing they are not smart and capable in school subjects about the 6 or 7 grades. . . . I agree wholeheartedly with the premise set forth in the article of working very hard to keep women's only colleges open and viable. Laurel Allegra Kramer '75 Columbia, MO In 1 836, Wesleyan Col- lege was chartered by the Georgia General Assembly as the first college in the world authorized to grant degrees to women. Mount Holyoke, which was founded in 1837, one year after Wesleyan, was a female seminary and only later became a college. Your time line noted the founding of Mills College, Wellesley College, Smith and several others. I am very surprised in all your research you did not come across Wesleyan. Kathy A. Bradley President Wesleyan College Alwmvxe Association Macon, GA EDITORS NOTE: Presi- dent Ruth Schmidt notes that we missed Salem College in Winston-Salem N.C. , founded in 1 772 . ? Unfortunately you have missed another milestone in women's educational history! In 1850, the first medical school for women was founded, the Female Medical College of Penn- sylvania. The college has been committed to, and involved in, educating women to be physicians, and preparing them to serve as researchers, edu- cators and practitioners in all parts of the world. 36 AGNES SCOTT MAGAZINE WINTER / 994 FEEDBACK The Medical College of Pennsylvania [MCP] as it is now called, was the first and is the only extant medical school founded exclusively for the educa- tion of women physicians. Now coeducational, MCP first admitted male medi- cal students in 1969 (the last college to go coed). Deborah S. S tames Administrative Coordinator Office of Faculty Affairs MCP Philadelphia, PA Heartiest congratula- tions on the Agnes Scott Alumnae Magazine [Sum- mer, 1993]! Jane Zanca's article, "Scratching Out a Mind," was superb. It is amazing what a mindset we men main- tained over the centuries regarding the "appropri- ate" role for women. The greatest feminist influence in my life has been my wife, Ruth, who completed two years at Agnes Scott before she transferred over to Emory to supervise my last two undergraduate years. . . . When the Coral Gables chapter of NOW staged a sit-in in my office at the University of Miami in the spring of 1972, the greatest ally the women had was my Ruth. Fortunately, I had already appointed a Women's Commission about a year before to ex- amine the status of women on our campus. . . . Jane Zanca's article re- minded me that it was 40 years ago last week that the Regents of the Univer- sity System of Georgia dis- patched me to Milledge- ville from Atlanta, where 1 was Assistant Chancellor, to be president of the Georgia State College for Women and "save it as a women's college." I was tremendously im- pressed with the quality of the education there in those distant days and with the enthusiasm of the young women on the cam- pus. Yet 1 faced tremen- dous political and finan- cial problems. We had two large resi- dence halls in the middle of campus completely va- cant, and yet the Univer- sity System institutions in Statesboro and CarroUton were having to turn away students, both men and women, because of lack of space. 1 once suggested to the chairman of the Board of Regents, Robert Arnold of Covington, and the Chancellor, Harmon Caldwell, that the College would have to admit men in order to become politi- cally and financially viable. 1 will never forget Mr. Arnold's retort to that suggestion, which revealed the chauvinist view of the day: "Henry, we must maintain one woman's college in the University System of Georgia, where we can provide culture and refinement for the young women of this state and where they can eat supper on white table- cloths with white nap- kins!" 1 remember observing during my years at old GSCW the advantages that Ms. Zanca's article proclaims for women' s colleges. Forgive me for having dictated such a long letter. Henry King Stanford President Emeritus The University of Georgia and University of Miami It's gratifying to know that my efforts have some value for others, and that the message gets conveyed by other hands. Your ar- ticle ["Scratching Out a Mind]" was incisive and compelling. Right now I'm working on the compan- ion volume [to A World Without Women], The Mas- culine Millennium, about the religions/mythologies informing Western Tech- nology an equally grim tale, I'm afraid. (A World Without Women is in pa- perback, published by Ox- ford University Press.) David T. Noble North York Ontario, Canada Just arrived an abso- lutely stunning issue of the Agnes Scott Alumnae Magazine! Margot Gayle '31 New York, NY 1 just finished "A Mat- ter of Degrees" in the [Summer '93] Alumnae Magazine and felt com- pelled to write to tell you how well it captured the spirit of the RTC program as I experienced it. Each RTC has a different story to tell and yet each story carries a common "thirst for learning" theme that 1 believe binds all of us. 1 "knew" those students you interviewed even though I attended from 1983-1989 and their names were dif- ferent then. Thank you for putting our spirit into such eloquent words. Linda Harris '89 Decatur, GA Your article on Lucie Barron Eggleston was so good! She happens to be a member of my church, Eastminster Presbyterian. Lucie and a few others went to Africa this summer to help build a hospital. Lots of plain physical work, as well as a spiritual awakening to re- alize you can live one day at a time. . . . Elizabeth By num Columbia, SC 37 ETCETERA Agnes Scott College 141 E. College Ave. Decatur, GA 30030 Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Decatur, GA 30030 Permit No. 469 ^ After March 12, anyone and Lcveryone connected to Agnes Scott College (who wants to be connected to the College) will have three important numbers to remember 6, 3 and 8. Those numbers comprise the new prefix for ALL telephone numbers to the College. The sub- sequent four numbers on all lines will remain the same. For example, the alumnae office number before March 12 is 371-6323; the number after March 12 will be 638-6323. The telephone number change is a result of campus-wide networking project that will link all ASC phones and computers (see story, page 26). ftTndale Estates, GA 30002 'rinted on recycled paper k'^- End of an Era ASC's First Woman President Retires EDITOR'S NOTE Decades since Kwai Sing Chang broke ASC's faculty color harrier, the College has learned to view diversity as promise , difference as grace Only three Changs were listen in the Atlanta telephone directory when Kwai Sin Chang, an American of Chinese ancestry, came in 1956 to teach Bible and philoso- phy at Agnes Scott. He says he experienced isolation, not discrimina- tion in his new hometown. But his anec- dotes of those early years are peppered wi moments of "that stereotypical response" to himself, his young wife Miyoko, of Japanese ancestry, and their two daughters. With a polite chuckle, he remembers the confusion of a census taker who "didn't know how to list the kids." Chang had done his Ph.D. work at the universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge and moved freely in academic circles, both overseas and in the United States. He found it no different at Agnes Scott College. "I came when Dr. Wallace Alston was president. Because Alston and I had known each other at Princeton Theological Semmary we had been roommates for a year I felt completely at home." As professor, Chang extended that kind of support and academic freedom to his students at Agnes Scott. Karen Green '86, remembers. Chang encouraged her when she wanted to explore African-American works that he also read and sometimes discussed in class. "When I chose to write a paper comparing Jewish and Black church tradition through music both spoke about being oppressed Dr. Chang said, 'This is excellent, Karen. We need to be sharing this with the class.' I was reared in the Black church tradition. Kwai Chang gave me the opportunity to fuse the curriculum with my experience." In turn Green who characterized herself as a "38-year- old African-American Retum-to-College student who would not be shaken" reached out often to traditional-age stu- dents. During their formative years, these students had few mature female African- American role models on campus. Green empathized that in the midst of trying to discover their own identities, almost by virtue of their presence, these young people "were the model African Americans in the dining hall, on the playing field, in the resident halls, in the student center." Explains Green, "Often, the 18-22-year-olds are not savvy enough to know they are carrying that burden. They just know they are tired and feeling isolated." Green, a member of the ASC dean of student's staff for nine years, encouraged students to effect change by working within the institution and she helped the College make its philosophical commitment to diversity supportive on a "day-to-day basis." Says Green, "I planted many seeds at Agnes Scott, but I wasn't going to be around for gathering the harvest." Today, almost 40 years since a seminary friendship drew Kwai Sing Chang to Agnes Scott, the professor emeritus who broke the faculty color barrier here can open the Atlanta telephone book and find his name listed among more than 1 20 Changs. He talks about diversity not in terms of harvest but as pockets of progress. He would be pleased to learn that in 1990 his former student Karen Green went on to advise multicultural stu- dent organizations at another college (and will soon enroll in Emory's Candler School of Theology). Green would be pleased to see evidence of her influence reflected in the first edition of Nandi, a newspaper by and for African- American students at ASC. It contains an impressive list of 14 young African- American women who in 1992 held various elected student offices (including president of Honor Court, vice president of Student Government Association, president of the sophomore class and editor of the Silhouette). Breaking ground through friendship and as mentors, planting seeds Chang, Alston and Green join a host of others, including retiring President Ruth Schmidt, who have helped shape and enlarge Agnes Scott's circle of diversity. "Different Values" (see page 14), by staff writer Audrey Arthur, fills in with broad strokes ASC's diversity story that began nearly 30 years before the landmark Supreme Court integration decision. Brown vs. Board of Education. A time- line ("Milestones and Steppingstones in Diversity" pages 24- 25) also compiled by Arthur, juxtaposes the growth of diver- sity at Agnes Scott with national policies and events. As Arthur's report makes clear, we have learned to see ASC and our nation more as a mosaic than as a melting pot. Like the mosaic, each piece each person is different, but each makes a most valuable contribution toward creating the overall image of beauty, grace and promise that is today's and tomorrow's Agnes Scott College. CONTENTS Agnes Scott College Alumnae Magazine Summer 1994 Volume 71 , Number I 6 The End of An Era By Celeste Pennington Colleagues and friends consider the life and work of ASC's first uioinan president. The Beginning of an Era By Tish McCutchen This time of transition for the College is also a time of testing for higher education . Different Values By Audrey Arthur On the 40th anniversary of Brown vs . Board of Education, ASC takes stock. Tripping the Light Fantastic By Carole Siracusa Agnes Scott pirouettes into the future with a dance minor and a generous gift. Redressing the Student Body By Mary Alma Durrett f Noting some highs and lows of Scottie hemlines j)](S!) and hairdos, from the Marcelled bob to Spandex. DEPARTMENTS 2 Lifestyle 35 Et Cetera 37 Feedback COVER: ASC President Ruth Schmidt poses hetore the portrait of Agnes Scott, the College's namesake. Editor: Celeste Pennington Contributing Editor: Mary Alma Durrett Editorial Assistant: Audrey Arthur Design: Everett HuUum and Harold Waller Student Assistants: Elizabeth Cherry '95 WiUa Hendriekson '94 Teresa Kelly '94 Emily Pender '95 Vicki Vitelli '97 Publications Advisory Board: Jenifer Cooper '86 Christine Cozzens Carey Bowen Craig '62 Sandi Harsh '95 WiUa Hendriekson '94 Bonnie Brown Johnson '70 Randy Jones '70 Kay Parkerson O'Briant '70 Edmund Sheehey Lucia Howard Sizemore '65 Copyright 1994, Agnes Scott College. Published two times a year by the Office of Publications, Agnes Scott College, Buttrick Hall, 141 E. College Avenue, Decatur, GA 30030, (404)638-6315. The magazine is published tor alumnae and friends of the College. Postmaster: Send address changes to Office of Development and Public Affairs, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA 30030. The content of the magazine reflects the opinions of the writers and not the viewpoint of the College, its trustees or administration. LIFESTYLE From tip-toeing over active volcanoes to walking on coals, from help for the harassed to hope for a new novel, alumnae ''sail' along SOME LIKE IT HOT Earthwatcher Evelyn Angeletti '69 Parking a well-oiled body, lemonade in hand, under a big beach umbrella constitutes a dream vacation to many. For Evelyn Angeletti, the ideal getaway is perching atop a volcano, camera strapped around her neck. The Greenville, S.C., attorney has spent four vaca- tions globe-trotting with British scientists on a mis- sion to decipher the warning signs of volcanic eruption. Through an environmental research organization called Earthwatch, Angeletti has ventured to volcanoes in Sicily, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. During these e.xpeditions she has peered into the deep, bot- tomless void ot a volcano; been within 100 yards of 10- to 20-foot pieces ot red-hot tumbling lava; and descend- ed with gas mask to the crater floor of a volcano which housed a boiling, yellow-green acidic lake. Earthwatch funds the work of several volcanolo- gists and other scientists in fields ranging from archeol- ogy to zoology. Tliey are assisted by teams of graduate students plus volunteers, such as Angeletti, who pay their own way for two-week work stints. As South Carolina's vol- unteer field representative, Angeletti recruits potential Earthwatch volunteers, emphasizing that the only requirement for the tax- deductible trips is curiosity. "Agnes Scott graduates are extremely well-prepared to do these things," she says. "A Scott education encour- ages a lot of curiosity." On her first Earthwatch trip Angeletti helped researchers study bear populations in nearby North Carolina mountains. Her volunteer work pro- vides an expression for her "adjunct profession ot pho- tography, something more than just a hobby," she says. TTie Decatur, Ga., native frequently has vacationed solo photographing volca- noes in New Zealand, Hawaii and Iceland. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in various states. Angeletti is currently in private practice, specializing in real estate, business and estate law. Her newfound knowledge of geology has proven useful in representing real estate clients, including the city ot Green\ille which she represents on solid waste issues. For more information, write: Earthwatch, P.O. Box 403, Watertown, MA 02272, or call (617) 926-2200. HELPLINE FOR THE HARASSED Attorney Juliana Winters 72 ASC graduate Juliana Winters has helped the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suc- cessfully address sexual harassment. As an FAA senior trial attorney. Winters serves as a legal adviser to the organization's Sexual Harassment Helpline and has been cited by its south- em region for her work on The Sexual Harassment AONRS SrOTT TOl I FOF ^1 JWMPR IQQ4 LIFESTYLE Helpline's Adiisor Haridhook. The 20,000-employee southern region is the first F.'V,'\ region to institute such a program. With one excep- tion, the 1 5 cases reported to the Helpline during its first year were resoK'ed without litigation. "Our program is part of a trend to resoK'e prohlems before they get to trial. Our courts are overburdened. If we can resolve things short ot litigation, we're obliged as public ser\ants to do so," says the Gainesville, Ga., native. Winters has received feedback from non-govern- ment employed peers that the Helpline is progressive. "Often, legal departments have trouble convincing management not to transfer or give a se\'erance package [to a person who has filed a sexual harassment com- plaint]," she explains. With the Helpline, a worker who believes he or she has been harassed may telephone the toll-free num- ber and tile a complaint with a trained FAA ad\-isor who takes the concern to two le\'els of management. Facts about the situation are veri- fied and the employee is contacted within two days alter the initial call. "Sexual harassment is a drain on the workplace. Productivity goes down. Efficiency and effectiveness are lost among workers even among those who are not the victim. Employees THE FIRE WITHIN Adventurous retiree Gwen McKee Bays '38 \"\7' Talking on hot coals ple, can be changed into a not to look down and con- enormously in dealing with VV is a quest most folks state of power." stantly repeating the words, some difficult problems." would gladly forego. Not Bays felt open-minded "cool down, cool down." The Bayses call Atlanta Gwen McKee Bays. When about participating in the The ASC Greek major home in summer and she took early retirement in NLP seminar, a gift from still marvels over the expe- Hilton Head, S.C., their 1981, Bays and her hus- her son who is an employee rience. "It's flesh touching winter residence. In band both former foreign of Robbins. However, when hot coals that can bum between those two stays language professors deter- she saw seminar leaders you," she puzzles. "The far- the couple has lived in a mined this new phase of dump a wheelbarrow of hot reaching, profound and Buddhist house in Berkeley, their lives would be "an coals on the ground, Bays unseen effect this has had Calif., and spent time at advennare." recalls wanting to run. on my life is the lesson that Buddhist meditation cen- Part of that adventure Instead she crossed the when faced with difficulties ters in Virginia. began when they attended glowing embers you can solve whatever is Bays meditates faithfully a seminar in Orlando unscathed being careful at hand. and is devoted to Buddhist taught by Anthony . f^ . "It has helped my family teaching. Combining Robbins, author of best- \ her devotion with selling Awaken the Giant ^4 y 1 her skills as a retired Within, and a lead trainer in '^w professor of French Neurolinguistic mw and German, she has Programming (NLP). V 'mVl^f i] f accomplished another According to Bays, NLP Xifi' / \vO ^L^Y^i . feat that she believes teaches "attitude is every- 9 J "^i "A state of fear, for exam- ^f ^^^^^ ^^^ w.- J / French to English. '^^^fipi ^^ ^^w^ ^ LIFESTYLE are not able to thrive in an intimidatint; atmosphere." Winters finds work with the Helpline gratifying- Her other duties include prosecuting civilians who carry guns beyond the air- port checkpoints, airline captains who deviate from assigned flying altitudes, plus violators of no-smoking regulations, and providing counsel on the environmen- tal impact ot airport development. Winters is the past presi- dent of the ASC Alumnae Association and a former member of the Board of Trustees. In May 1994, she was honored as an outstand- ing alumna in recognition of her service to the College. FAIR TREATMENT EQR ALL Press Secretary Louisa Parker '89 During a typical work week, Louisa Parker may talk with the producers of "60 Minutes," provide sta- tistics to PBS "MacNeil/ Lehrer Newshour," pitch a story idea to the producers of "The Brokaw Report," fax demographic charts to The Washington Post, talk with a reporter at a Seattle paper and be interviewed on a radio talk show. The interviews, the faxed information, the leads all pertain to what has become an American "crisis": each year 300,000 to 500,000 ille- gal immigrants make their honie in the United States. As press secretary for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Parker explains that these numbers are in addi- tion to the 900,000 legal immigrants. These annual population surges, according to FAIR, affect numerous A NOVEL MODEL Author Robyn Perry '84 Scotties soon may find themselves between the covers of Robyn Perry's first novel, Leo's Electric. The author admits her first attempt at the great American novel has much in common with her alma mater. TTie fictitious setting for her 300-page book is Margaret Chaser College, a small, proper school , for women in Atlanta. Agnes Scott graduates may also recognize a favorite Ponce de Leon Avenue hangout, the Majestic. After "breaking out of the gates" of Margaret Chaser College, the young protag- onist of the book, Maura, eventually becomes entan- .^^^ i^7..^ "v4^ . ^3>.^25fc gled with a man who owns a Majestic-like restaurant called Leo's Electric. Perry is a native of small town Bartlesville, Okla. After graduation from Agnes Scott she earned a master's in writing from New York University and worked for a publish- ing company. Then she moved to Los Angeles, where she married an inde- pendent filmmaker. Currently she is seeking a publisher for her first book and, with a tape recorder, is composing a children's novel during long commutes to her cur- rent "real job" as advertis- ing representative for LAN, a computer magazine. LIFESTYLE aspects of American life, from health-care and natural resources to education and employment. The ASC graduate is responsible for conveying the message behind the Washington, D.C.-based, nonprofit, member organiza- tion's goal: to stop illegal immigration and hold annu- al legal immigration to the national historic average of 300,000, which she says would not add significantly to U.S. population growth. Parker keeps a watchful eye on current e\'ents and calls reporters to tie those events to issues of immigra- tion. During the current health-care debate, the ASC classical studies and history major called reporters' atten- tion to the dilemma of pro- viding universal coverage to a population that, according to current immigration fig- ures, is ever-expanding. When the World Trade Center was bombed, Parker led "60 Minutes" to a story on political asylum. The Gainesville, Ga., native trains and critiques FAIR colleagues for televi- sion and radio interviews so they make their points clear- ly and succinctly. She also edits reports and publications as a part of fair's mission to educate U.S. citizens. ^, ON THE WINGS OF A DREAM Anne Christensen Pollitzer '61 In September 1992, Anne Christensen Pollitzer, husband Rick and their youngest son set sail in their 42 -foot sailboat Egret. The first month, the Egret sailed calmly from Miami to Key West. But the adventures began in late November as they entered the open sea, headed for Mexico. Amid an ink- dark night, the v\'ind hurled 10-foot waves soon Anne was battling sea sickness and the anxiety of sailing with a broken mdder. At midnight the Egret narrowly missed a tanker. By dawn the Pt)llitzers reached the boat of friends who had radioed ahead for a rescue boat. The next night the Pollitzers i again navigated against a strong Yucatan cuiTcnt. Rut by the time they crossed the Isla Mujeres reef they were gaily singing tunes of Jimmy Buffett. The next six weeks the Pollitzers docked the Egret off a small, remote island near Cancun, ferning to Yucatan where they studied local history, enjoyed Mayan dance, music and art and toured ancient ruins. Nine subsequent days found the family sailing the rugged coast of Belize and finally anchoring inside the Belizean reef for a month. That, says Anne, was the idyllic life. Bathing in blaz- ing red sunsets. Donning backpacks and Reeboks for rugged climbs. Enjoying the serendipity of a rousing sere- nade by a small Mexican Navy crew who upon rou- tinely inspecting their boat had discovered the Pollitzers' son's guitar. The southernmost point of their sea travel was Guatemala. The Egret wove through a coral rect where they scuba-di\ed, swam with exotic fish and cut one salt- water bath short due to a visit by bull-nosed sharks. A 300-page log of that 10-nionrh journey accounts the trip of their dreams and a welcome antidote to the world of work. For 20 years, Anne had directed the Montessori school in Beaufort., S. C. Rick is a retired pilot with Eastern Airlines. At Agnes Scott, Anne was a math major who later joined the Peace Corps, using her second degree { in education from Emor^' University) to teach high school in Nepal and assist officials in redesigning the country's science curriculum. Currently she's working v\ith the board of directors with the Montessori school (that she founded), assisting with its capital campaign and substitute teaching. She's also redecorating her home on St. Helena Island, southeast of Beaufort. But she admits, several months after their return home, she and her husband were still not adjusted to "inside" living. They wonder, "when are we going again: Leisa Hammen-Goad is a jreeLmce ximter m Nashville, Tenn. I THE END OF AN ERA By Celeste Pennington with Tish McCutchen 73 and Carolyn Wynens After 12 years as the first woman president ofASCRuth Schmidt is retiring. She leaves a legacy of financial solvency, educational exploration and "a forever better institution." A FTER THE RECENT "Hats Off to Ruth" retirement celebration honoring Agnes Scott President Ruth Schmidt, she told alumnae gathered in Presser Hall that on more than one occasion she had been introduced as Agnes Scott. Laughter rippled through the audience. "I'm certain," said Schmidt, "that this never hap- pened to my predecessors." As the first woman to serve as chief execu- tive officer of Agnes Scott, Ruth Schmidt holds a unique place in the history of an insti- tution named for a woman and founded for the education of women. Betty Scott Noble '44, trustee and descendant of College founder George Washington Scott, thinks Scott would have valued both the personal commitment and force of character Ruth Schmidt has brought to the task. "George Washington Scott believed not only in education for women, but in equal education for women. That was a revolution- ary idea," says Noble's daughter Betty '71 an idea articulated now 100 years later, in the life and work ot Schmidt. Like the founders, she has acted on the belief that a Christian world view provides a sound intellectual framework for investigation of all fields of knowledge. The younger Noble reflects a moment. "You have to factor in that Col. Scott li\ed ui a paternalistic society. But when it comes to Agnes Scott College having this woman presi- dent, I think he would have been pleased, very pleased. Ruth is such a strong person. She has been a strong leader. For 1 2 years she has provided an ever-present model for what this College advocates." RUTH Schmidt has been an advocate for women's education. "In my view, Ruth has been one of the leading advocates for women's colleges and women's education dur- ing the last two decades," states Secretary of Yale University Linda Lorimer. "She has had a profound influence on the national scene as a catalyst: for too long women's colleges had seen each other as competitors rather than as complementary forces at work. Ruth not only talked about coUegiality, she was exemplary." As former president of Randolph Macon Woman's College, Lorimer worked with Schmidt on the Women's College Coalition. From 1986 to 1988, Schmidt served as WCC chair. She shared counsel with members and helped them think more ambitiously about ways to translate the benefits of women's col- leges to the nation. "Ruth has long understood the importance of gender issues in education," notes Marcia Sharp, a former WCC director of 14 years. "While provost at Wheaton College [in Massachusetts], Ruth worked on ways to create gender-neutral curriculum. She helped women's colleges focus on this issue and deal with it collaboratively. She was prescient if you consider all the attention being paid to gender issues in education today." Schmidt's concern for balanced curriculum was reflected in the 1981 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education: "If liberal arts really have to do with human life," Schmidt noted, "and you haven't looked at half the human race, you don't know very much about the human race." Her concern for equal education for women is evident in curriculum development and focus at Agnes Scott, and in those early skirmishes over matters such as gender-inclu- sive language. "We had a great debate in some comers about titles," recalls Mary Alvera "Bertie" Bond '53, administrative assistant to the president, "as we determined whether people would be called chairmen, chairpersons or chairs." Bond, who has served as administrative AHKipt^ t^rriTT rni i cnp > ' lonely." Rather than experiencing first-day-of- school excitement, Bradley remembers her introduction to Greensboro High as a time overshadowed by protest and anger. "There was no physical violence from those gath- ered, but I could feel the hatred and there was a lot of verbal protest." To her surprise, students, rather than their parents, reacted. Some dropped eggs on her head as she made her way into the school. Later, students harassed her as she ate m the cafeteria. But Bradley recalls three students Jenny, Monica and Julie bold enough to step outside that gathering tide of hatred. They would walk to class and eat lunch with her. "Doing what they did, I think, instilled in them a sense of sisterhood and Christianity," she says. "Rather than just talking about it, they lived it out. The cen- teredness that Christ gives allowed them to do what they did and feel good about it." The experience reinforced Bradley's own spirit ot "patience, tolerance and inner strength. Even though there were people who were kind, 1 still had to rely on what 1 took with me. 1 had to sharpen my survival skills." Her historical journey began after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on desegrega- tion. Brown vs. The Board of Education. As public school systems across the country began to integrate, Bradley's mother, father and maternal grandfather decided to trans- fer her from the all-Black Dudley High School to the all- White Greensboro. "The quality of the education at Dudley was good, but my parents felt I should not have had to ride 10 miles to go to school. Then too, my grandfather felt that school should be for everyone." Evaluating efforts to break through the status quo ot "separate but equal," Bradley says, "Integration has had limited success. Even within fully integrated schools, stu- dents tend to group with those like them- selves. But 1 can say it has afforded African Americans the opportunity to come to places like Agnes Scott. So, educationally and economically, integration has been beneficial." From Greensboro she went on to become one of two African- American students at Clark University in Worchester, Mass.; she earned a bachelor's degree from North Carolina Central University and later a master's from Michigan State University. In December, she expects to complete her doc- torate at the Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University, concentrating on American and African-American studies. Bradley's career, first as a counselor in government work and then as a teacher, has given her opportunities to move among cul- turally diverse people. This, along with her personal struggle for integration, affords her a perspective that other people can only speculate about and a riveting message of tolerance. Audrey Arthur 16 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE SUMMER 1994 in more thinj^s than I did. She ran cross coun- try and worked on the yearhook, sang in Joyful Noise and was a memher of Witkaze (African- American student group). She telt more a part ot the campus than 1 did." More than a decade earlier, in 1956, the faculty color harrier w'as broken by Kwai Sing Chang. An assistant professor of Bible and philosophy of Chinese ancestry, Chang joined the faculty under the presidency of Alston with whom he had roomed at Princeton University. He immediately felt at home. "1 was completely accepted on campus," recalls Chang. "The only problems I encountered were in non-academic settings." For instance when he and his wife went to Sears to buy pots and pans, the salesperson asked if Chang were employed in a restaurant. It was a stereo- typical response. "All in all it was a happy experience at Agnes Scott," says Chang who retired after 30 years of teaching at the College. With a steadily increasing minority popu- lation, in the 1970s and 1980s, many U.S. academic institutions, including Agnes Scott, began looking to minorities as crucial to future enrollment. "The motivation for me [in terms of cul- tural diversity] is educational, but it we want the institution to grow we need to find out where and who the students will be," com- ments President Ruth Schmidt. At an ASC convocation in 1991, Schmidt noted the College's commitment: "Diversity is desirable and essential to a rich and stimulat- ing intellectual community, but it does take more effort on everyone's part to learn to live with and appreciate the contribution of per- sons and groups quite different from one's own. We must therefore create a climate within our community that goes beyond simply acknowledging our differences and learn from one another," she stated. "We must create an environment in which individual students, faculty and staff feel welcome, appreciated and understood for who and what they are." UNDER Schmidt's guidance, several programs have developed, both to help build understanding and to cope with situations encountered in culturally diverse college communities. One of the first was the President's Committee on Com- munity Diversity. It took shape soon after Cue Hudson '68, dean of students, and Jenifer Cooper '86, director of admission, attended a diversity seminar at Swarthmore College in 1985. They telt Agnes Scott needed to acti\-e- ly address dix'ersity issues. "The conference was an eye opener," recalls Hudson. "It made us ask 'Are we meeting the needs ot our African-American students?' It made us realize we didn't ha\e an ongoing sen- sitivity training tor faculty and staff. We were just not talking about the differences between being African American, Hispanic, Asian American, etc." "The Committee on Community Diversity was designed to be inclusive because we have all types ot people on campus," explains Schmidt. Reflecting the character of the College, the committee set out to make recommendations and to lay the groundwcirk for non-con - fronti\'e means to deal with issues surrounding diversity. Since its inception in 1986, the committee has passed a resolution concerning the need for faculty to hire more African- American members. It has brought influential, racially diverse speakers to campus. The com- mittee has also sponsored workshops including Racism Free Zone (RFZ) and the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBl). The goal of RFZ, a non-profit organization based in Baltimore, is to encourage individuals and groups to "take the responsibility to elimi- nate racism," says RFZ founder and executive director Bahati Ansari who helped organize the first chapter at Agnes Scott. Under the wing of RFZ, in 1991 a diverse group of stu- dents, faculty and staff banded together to deal with racial tensions on campus. That fall dur- ing a convocation, RFZ members stepped for- ward to declare the Agnes Scott campus a "racism free zone" and almost 400 members of the community joined them by signing an RFZ statement (see page 20). Although that effort gained good support, later evaluations of RFZ effectiveness have been mixed. A more recent (and some believe the most successful) effort is NCBl. The organization addresses discrimination related to visible dif- ferences like race, class, gender, age and physi- cal handicaps as well less visible differences like sexual orientation and religion. TTie NCBl premise is that all have experienced some form of discrimination. Associate Professor of Biology John Pilger is a founding member of Agnes Scott's chapter of NCBl. He has trained several of Agnes Scott's staff, faculty and students in facilitation tech- HEATHER A, GOOCjE '97 {left) AMANDA LOCKHART '97 "Each race or group doesn't face just one type of racism, but several different kinds. All people have stories to tell." 17 DIFFERENT VALUES AYANNA WHITFIELD '95 "Over the past decade, Agnes Scott has been opening up all kinds of new perspectives that reflect the changing interests and needs of our society." niques and the philosophy of NCBI. "Each race or group doesn't face just one type of racism, but several different kinds. All people have stories to tell." During NCBI workshops, participants move in and out of groups and subgroups to explore and confront the dis- crimination in their own and others' lives. A Catholic male feels isolated on the campus of a Presbyterian-related college for women. A young African- American student vents anger at race/gender bias she encounters in a class led by a white male and she laments the color-difference discrimination she finds off- campus among peers in her own racial group. Explains Pilger, "By understanding these many facets of our own diversity and by understand- ing how we hurt people, we can begin to learn to build bridges. The NCBI philosophy is to be pro-active, rather than reactive." Pilger says that NCBI recognizes both indi- vidual racism and institutional racism. Rather than attack either, he says that NCBI tries to bring a sense of wholeness and healing to the individual, so eventually "we can bring heal- ing to the institution." Being involved in NCBI has heightened Pilger's awareness ot diversity at Agnes Scott and it has "opened up communication. People miss the opportunity for friendships of all kinds because of barriers." WHILE THE FIRST African American was admitted to Agnes Scott in the 1960s, other minorities Asian, Cuban, Portuguese had attended the College as early as the 1920s. Philrey Kim Choi from Korea became the first Asian stu- dent to earn a degree at the College in 1926. But for decades, diversity here and in institu- tions around the country, was on a small scale. However, the idea for greater diversity was on the minds of many including Priscilla Often '73 who wrote an editorial in the stu- dent newspaper. The Profile: "I feel that Scott must take the initiative; we must seek after these students. If minority students will not come to us, then we must go to them. We must encourage these students even more than others who apply." By 1978 Agnes Scott's minority student population consisted of 1 2 African Americans, four Asian Americans, 10 Hispanic and 25 international students. By 1988 these numbers had increased to 36 African Americans, eight Asian Americans, two Native Americans, 1 1 Hispanics and 1 7 internationals. In 1992 the College's total undergraduate student enrollment was 605 with 75.6 percent White; 17.6 percent minorities and 5.3 per- cent internationals (457 Whites; 77 African Americans; 1 1 Asian American/Pacific Islanders; 17 Hispanics; 32 internationals; two Native Americans and nine, race unspecified). Generally, those percentages compare well against other small private colleges in the South and across the country. Shorter College in Rome, Ga., for instance, has a total enrollment of 773 students with an 1 1 percent minority. Southwestern College in Winfield, Kan., has 747 students with 14 PINKY BALAIS M 18 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE SUMMER 1994 percent minority. Observes Dean of the College Sarah Blanshei, "We have a higher percentage of minority students than other colleges our size because we've evidenced a strong commit- ment to diversity in the last 10 to 12 years with our faculty hiring and our curriculum." In 1982 only 19 courses in the College's cur- riculum concentrated on diverse cultures. In 1993 students could choose from 56 courses that included Latin American and Caribbean Civilizations and Culture, African Diaspora, Native Peoples of the Americas, Asian World to Modern Times and the Psychology of Cross-Cultural Contact. "Over the past decade we haxe been open- ing up all kinds of new perspectives that reflect the changing interests and needs ot our society, with study and with international experiences in Latin America, Japan and Africa," says Blanshei. Another evidence of the College's com- mitment to diversity is its work to increase the Hispanic presence. In 1991 a $163,000 Knight Foundation challenge grant was awarded, reqLiiring that the College provide TWINS KEISHA AND KREISHA SHROPSHIRE '96 LAURA SPICZKA '96 19 DIFFERENT VALUES KARINA HERNANDEZ ASSISTANT DIRECTOR ADMISSION "Higher education has to cease being a European- American para- digm in terms of policies and pro- grams. These need to be re-oriented." matching funds. The grant is a three-year, three-told project (recruitment, retention and special programs for cultural awareness/train- ing). With money from this grant, each year Karina Hernandez, assistant director of admis- sion, travels five weeks to states with large concentrations of Hispanics to recruit stu- dents. At the onset, the goal was to enroll 1 5 Hispanic students per year. However, for 1992-93, the College admitted seven. "The College did not realize how hard it is to recruit 15," says Hernandez. "It's difficult partly because Hispanic fami- lies like their sons and daughters to stay close to home." Some also have the misconception that education in a small, private colleges is unaffordahle. To help retain those Hispanic women who enroll and to aid in the transi- tion to college the office of the dean of stu- dents has established a mentor program invoK-- ing professionals from Atlanta's Hispanic com- munity. R ETAINING MINORITIES is paramount to Racism Free Zone'' Declaration, 1991 We believe the racism that exists in our society also exists on our campus and is hurting everyone here. In order to establish a safe and taisting environment that recognizes the worth of all individuals and the value of their differences we will; Recognize that no one who is privi- leged by our society is free from racism. No longer remain silent or tolerate racist remarks or actions in ourselves or in others. In taking responsibility for them we will reach past blame and guilt toward dialogue. No longer be threatened by confronta- tion. We will he receptive to others when they help us recognize the pain we cause them and the injustice we condone. Strive to create an atmosphere con- ducive to the advancement and fulfill- ment of all people on this campus. Establish a Racism Free Zone of trust and goodwill to stop the abuse of power that is the heart of racism. maintaining a culturally diverse environment, says Darlene York, visiting assistant professor at Agnes Scott. York, a White American, has studied cross-cultural conflict, culture shock and methods to train people who work with members of different cultures. She notes that although a number of minorities attend predominantly European- American colleges, graduation rates among these groups are often low. A report released in March by the American Council on Education indicated that 56 percent White students obtained bachelor's degrees, com- pared with 32 percent of the African Americans, 41 percent Hispanics and 30 per- cent Native Americans. However, Asian Americans outstripped all groups with 63 per- cent graduates. To increase retention of minority students, York suggests, "Higher education has to cease being a European-American paradigm in terms of policies and programs. These need to be re-oriented. Study what makes historically Black colleges tick because African-American students are graduating from these schools. We also need to look at ways racism occurs through student/faculty interactions and peer/peer interactions. "One of the things my colleagues fail to do is take the time to examine cultural differ- ences. Because a person who is in the minority comes on our 'turf,' we assume she is willing to become desensitized/ deculturized. True, as a part of college you grow and change; but that does not include complete cultural dis- tancing," says York. Another concern for administrators today is hiring and retaining minority faculty. The minority faculty at Agnes Scott stands at nine; two Africans, two African Americans, one Asian and four Hispanics. In 1992 there were four minori- ty members. Ten years ago there were two. Harry Wistrand, an associate professor of biology at ASC for more than 20 years, con- cedes the faculty was partially responsible for these low numbers. "We were dragging our heels in hiring minority faculty. There was a gulf on campus few middle managers were Black and with the lack of Black faculty, the dean and the president put pressure on the faculty to diversify." In response, in May 1988, the faculty passed a resolution: We, the Faculty of Agnes Scott College, recognize the importance of having a diverse faculty in an academic envi- ronment. . . . The addition of minority faculty members, particularly Black faculty members, will not only foster that appreciation but will also aid in recruiting and retaining minority students. We believe, therefore, that we must dedicate ourselves to exploring every opportu- nity to recruit faculty from all minority groups, especially Blacks. 20 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE SL/MMER )<394 Wistrand adds, "I don't think we were afraid to hire we were afraid to tire. It they [minority faculty] didn't work out, there was a fear of backlash. My attitude has been that you don't hire the most qualified, but rather you hire a qualified person who fills the role who fits the niche." Assistant Professor of Chemistry Vincent Anigbogu, a native of Nigeria, has been in a number of academic settings where he was the only minority faculty. Through one-on-one relationships, he tries to promote understand- ing and to diminish stereotypes. "No one can PRIYA SIVANESAN '97 see the whole picture," he says. "But with cultural diversity you can see the world through the lens of another culture and that can only be beneficial." And he admits, "The willingness to be cul- turally diverse is an individual journey. It doesn't come immediately for all." AS CULTURAL DIVERSITY increases on campuses, often tensions escalate. According to a Justice Department report, in the last five years racial incidents on college campuses have increased 50 percent. At Georgia State University in 1992, African- American students protested against racially derogatory messages scrawled on a campus garbage can. Last year at the University of California at Los Angeles, Hispanic students erupted both in riots and peaceful protests after the administration decided not to turn the Chicano-studies program into a full- fledged department. Last February at Claremont College in California, 100 African- American students forced the closing of administrative offices to demand the col- lege hire more minority faculty members. Gladys Brown, director of human relations at University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP) has studied the causes and results of such conflicts. She believes the problems are exacerbated by tough economic times and the dramatic shift in the ethnic make-up of stu- dent populations. "We also find more com- plaints involve things professors say in the classroom which are not illegal, but stupid. Our solution is to say to faculty this is an aca- demic institution and you are smart and edu- cated. Act on what you know but keep an open mind that this is a life-long process of learning." Brown coordinates a task force, sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League and UMCP, which put together a conference "Bigotry 202: Developing a Pro- Active Campus Approach," providing college administrators with resources, expertise and ideas for policy to help their institutions deal with difficult issues surrounding diversity and bigotry. Agnes Scott has not been immune to race- related differences. As violence broke out in the streets of Los Angeles and in Atlanta over the initial Rodney King decision (not to con- vict the L.A. policemen who beat King), racial tensions also erupted here with students writing racial epithets on a sheet posted on the bulletin board in the Alston student cen- ter. In the fall of 1991, Black and White stu- dents alike protested with posters and mes- Some believe increasing racial tensions on campuses are exacerbated by tough economic times and the dramatic shift in the ethnic make- up of student populations. 21 DIFFERENT VALUES ELIZABETH CHERRY' '95 As retired professor Miriam Drucker points out, in issues of diversity, what pleases one is often opposed by another. sages scrawled on sidewalks the administra- tive withdrawal of African-American senior Tara Somerville. In a formal statement to the community, the College indicated that the action was not racially motivated but taken to safeguard the community against threats made by Somerville. The case is still in litigation. "Problems on college campuses are a sign of the times," says Victor Wilson, Agnes Scott's first African- American assistant dean of students. "It used to be 'un-chic' to say any- thing racist. Now, it's getting to the point that people like David Duke are looked up to." Since coming to Agnes Scott in 1992 Wilson has worked on several cultural diversi- ty projects including the introduction of a multi-cultural component to Orientation Weekend for first-year students. The compo- nent touches on stereotypes of various cul- tures and poses questions about how students deal with discrimination. After the multi-cul- tural workshop last August, responses from students in the Class of '97 included: "I feel fortunate to be in an ethnically diverse school." "The problem with being politically cor- rect is that it keeps a person from learning about controversial subjects." "Is calling people 'Black,' insulting to them now?" "Everyone 1 meet has things to teach me." IRONICALLY IT MAY SEEM, tensions arise in institutions officially seeking cultural diversity when policy denies minority stu- dents the option of being separate. Supporters of the Harambee House at Brown University (a residence hall set aside for African Americans) say it promotes cultural awareness and identity. Its detractors call it separatism. That debate could occur daily in dining halls at almost any college or university Asians tend to sit with Asians, African Americans with African Americans, Whites with Whites. According to a study from the University of Michigan, students from every ethnic sec- tor are less likely to mingle with those of other ethnic groups when their own group represents a significant percentage of the pop- ulation. Nearly 69 percent of Asian-American and 78 percent Mexican-American students dined with someone of a different ethnic group, compared with 55 percent of African- American students and only 21 percent White students. Says Bing Wei of China, ASC instructor of physical education, "We simply feel more comfortable with those speaking our own language." Yet Pinky Balais '94, who is Filipino and Spanish, counters, "I don't like it. I'm tired of letters in The Profile about the lack of cultural diversity. The problem is obvious students haven't changed their consciousness on this campus. They talk about it, they preach about it, but don't actually do it. The dining hall is a prime example." As Miriam Drucker would point out, in issues of diversity, what pleases one is often opposed by another. For Kahni Tang '96, issues of cultural OSJHA ANDERSON '96 ANL:) CLAIRE LAYE '94 SINGING "LOLLYTOODUM" 22 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE SUMMER ISP-I diversity at Agnes Scott should liLU-e gotten beyond Black and White. Ptiya Sivanesan '97, a native ot Madtas, India, expresses suq^rise that "people at Agnes Scott are so accepting ot different views and ideas. Maybe they don't .share the same beliefs as I do, but they accept me." Malikah Berry '94, founder of Nandi, the African-American student newspaper, says she was deeply disturbed by what happened to Tara Sommerville. "I'd sum up Agnes Scott's efforts at cultural di\-ersity as bittersweet. It's been a hard road." Dean Hudson, who works day in and day out with students, and has struggled with com- plicated relationships growing out ot a small and an increasingly complex population, says, frankly, "It I had to grade Agnes Scott com- pared to of other colleges and unixcrsities 1 would give us a strong C+, because we are talk- ing about diversity. There is no college or uni- versity that would honestly rate itself an A. We all have to impro\'e our grade. We at Agnes Scott are doing that with NCBI tech- niques and Racism Free Zone." What it boils down to, she believes, is that "we need to listen to each other respectfully. We need to learn from the oppression we have all experienced and we need to learn to trust." THE WAY OF NONVIOLENCE Two generatiofis oj Bashirs are committed to "help people learn to get along. " TOGETHER, LAYLI MILLER BaSHIR '93 and her mother have volunteered at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change: Bashir, a facilitator, has trained others to understand and use King's methods ot nonviolent con- flict resolution. Her mother is a representa- tive for Coretta Scott King and a consultant to the Center's multi-cultural education projects. At workshops and seminars for college students at the King Center, Bashir has taught King's six principles of nonviolence: nonviolence is a way of life for coura- geous people; nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding; nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice and not people; nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform; nonviolence chooses love, not hate; nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice. During the workshops Bashir has noticed a marked difference between the reactions of her own and her mother's peers as they confronted issues surrounding diver- sity. "My mother's generation was involved in the civil rights movement. They had a vision and they were fighting for that. My generation thinks it's tried integration and the process is too painful. We are backing off and going back to our own groups where we are comfortable." Bashir, however, has not backed off. While a student at Agnes Scott, she was a vocal advocate for racial harmony. Charmaine Minniefield '95 recalls an inci- dent during an intercollegiate non-violence seminar (held shortly before the trial ot Los Angeles police officers charged with the beating of Rodney King), that illustrates Bashir's assurance. "A lot of students arrived at the seminar with preconceived notions of nonviolence, that it basically was not work- ing. The conference provided an opportuni- ty for them to vent their frustrations. Layli was leading a seminar and she got a lot of negative feedback because she was white and the students felt she could not relate. But Layli never backed down. She kept pre- senting the message ot nonviolence and told of her personal experiences. She was a woman giving her testimony and no one could dispute that." To help open campus avenues for insti- gating change, she participated on the President's Committee on Community Diversity, in CHIMO, an organization for international students, and she served as a trainer on the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI). "I think in many ways Agnes Scott tried sincerely to promote cul- tural diversity. But the College could per- haps focus more on everybody's needs to address this issue and not just point fingers. I think NCBI is a wonderful step toward this. It does not focus the blame of prejudice on anyone, and that elevates the discussion to solution." Now at American University, Bashir is working on a master's in international rela- tions and a juris doctor in international law. Armed with both degrees, Bashir hopes to "help people to get along." Audrey Arthur TRACICORUM DUNN FIFTH YEAR STUDENT WITH SON GREGORY, 2 DAYS "My mother's generation was involved in civil rights. They had a vision. My genera- tion thinks it's tried integration and the process is too painful. We are backing off and going back to our own groups." 23 DIFFERENT VALUES MILESTONES (AND STEPPING 9 1 ASC's YWCA chapter w^ J. sponsors forum to dis- cuss race issues with SpelmanfMorehouse students. O '2 Three ASC students ^^ attend Southern Student-Faculty Conference in Atlanta marking "first time white and colored students have planned and ccndwaed such a meeting for the consid- eration of mutual problems of both local and international importance." l/ll/H Agonistic. ^ASC 'hires first minority faculty member, Kwai Sing Chang, assistant profes- sor of Bible arvi phibsophy. ^1 CM u j^M A p ^ 63; ^ ^Nine African- ^ I American students integrate all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas ASC students donate part of the Junior Jaunt proceeds to Natiorud Scholarship Furid for Negro Students. About 200,000 gather in Washington, D.C., to support African- American demands for equal rights. Martin Luther King Jr. shares his dream: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. . . one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers." /T '^Thurgood Marshall \J I named first African- American U.S. Supreme Court Justice. /T Q Assassins kill Martin vJO Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. 26 31 33 41 42 52 53 54 56 57 61 62 64 65 66 6' A ^ US confines I ^Japanese- Americans on Pacific Coast to intern- ment camps during WW II. [T '^ Passage of the U.S. ..J ^Immigration and Naturalization Act removes last racial and eth- nic barriers to immigration. ^ ^ Student Chor w/^Jee Goh Chow '54 of Singapore chairs ASC World Affairs Committee. M Brown vs. Board of Education prohibits segregation of public schools. /T 1 First African-American \J L student applies to ASC. Acceptance denied due to "incomplete application." ASC facidty (97 percent) signs statement urging public schools to remain open despite the Georgia governor's threat to close schools if U.S. government forces desegrega- tion 426 ASC students issue similar statement. I ASC enrolls Trina Lopez Perez '44 of Cuba. /T O University of vJ^ Mississippi enrolls first African-American student, James Meredith. ASC Board of Trustees issue statement that student applicant consider- ations will be based on academic qualifications without regard to race. /T /f ASC Christian \J I Association declares: "It is our conviction that as Christian students we are compelled to encourage and to work for understanding and acceptance of indi- viduals of all races . " ///2/64 Profile. Omnibus Civil Rights bill bans discrimina- tion in voting, jobs and public accommo- dations. /T/rT/iree "special \J\J students" arrive at ASC from Peru, Denmark and El Salvador. U.S. /India Women's College Exchange Program brings from India visiting professor Aley Thomas. ' Aleida Martinez joins ASC Spanish department. '^^'^^C students form / k) Students for Black Au^areness (SB A). Name later changed to Witkaze. 24 AfiNRS sroTT rni i fcf 9i mmfr iodj 5TONES) DM DIVERSITY ^ /^Ayse llgai Garden '66 / \Joj Turkey, retim\s to ASC as psychology professor. Q 1 \V. Bur/ette Oi Carter '82. African American , first ASC sttident Truman Scholar. n yj ASC hires first ( / I African American faculty member Carolyn Deriard. 'Students elect African- American Mia Puckett as president of ASC Honor Court. 3 71 72 75 76 81 84 85^^61 r\ /^.ASC begins summer y \jord Scholars Teachers Vroffam to recruit minority high school students jor careers in teaching. r\ 1 Administrative with- y drawal of African- American student Tara Sommerville . ASC receives Knight Foundation grant to increase Hispanic stu- dent presence on campus and to develop Hispanic pro- gramming. 91 92 93 94 861 ' President Schmidt 'institutes President's Committee on Community Diversity . ASC hires Africari American Karen Green '86, director of student activities ar\d housing. 88: ) ASC faculty pledges no recruit minority members . 89{ kASC Student Government Association (SO A) approves designated CHIMO seat. ASC names Joyce Essien, M.D., first African- American member of its Board of Trustees. To promote Hispanic awareness at ASC, students organize Espin'tu Latino f 9i Students elect SGA denies seat to Students for Black Awareness (SBA) . With encouragement from President's office and faculty, SGA later approves SBA seat. gn Fifty- j7 Z^ two peo pie killed in Los Angeles riots after jury acquits white policemen accused of beating African- American Rodney King. A/rican-American ' '~ Charmaine Minniefield '95, class president (and continue to re-elect her she serves as class bresident aR four years) Kinjo Gakuin University in Japan and ASC establish exchange program. 25 DIFFERENT VALUES TRIPPING THE LIGHT FANTASTIC By Carole Siracusa Photography hy Bill Denison Illustrations by Ralph Gilbert Agnes Scott is enhancing its dance facilities and has added a minor in a discipline where in grace and beauty balance "the college's rigorous academic demands." 'Tou CAN HAVE IT all" That's what a mentor told Mar>-Un Darling when she began developing a dance program at Agnes Scott College. That idea guided Darling, now chair of theatre and dance, during her more than 20 years as head of the program. That same idea she tries to instill in each of her students. With a new minor in dance at Agnes Scott and with the more recent establishment of the Martha Wilson Kessler Dance Fund, having it all will be even more possible for the students and the College. The accumulated gift of almost $400,000, donated by Martha Kessler '69 and her husband Richard, will enable Agnes Scott to add a new dance studio and greatly enhance its dance facilities. It also will bring nationally- and internationally known professional dancers and choreographers to the campus. At the dedication of the new dance studio during Alumnae Weekend, Martha Kessler, who began studying dance at age five, remem- bers that dance at Agnes Scott brought bal- ance to "the rigors of the academic demands." She also expressed pleasure that ASC dance had led to fulfilling careers for classmates. 26 Ar:wp; ^irrvrr roi r pnp cf tkaxapp ioqj 27 DANCE: TRIPPING THE LIGHT FANTASTIC "It will be like bringing New York and Europe to Agnes Scott. The Kessler gift will move our students from regional dance to international ways of thinking." With humor, Richard Kessler said at age five he had also had a brush with dance tap dance and he hoped that their gift would be used to further Agnes Scott dancers and dance in its many forms. The gift will equip the main studio for per- formances by adding a lighting and sound sys- tem, a new marley floor (a rubberized mat) and motorized shades. The gift will be used to purchase instructional equipment including a video recording system, tapedecks and CD players, pilates machines to help dancers build strength and flexibility and two new studio pianos. It will provide live accompaniment for every class. The gift also provides $100,000 to be allo- cated to the College's endowment to provide residencies by visiting artists, ballet and mod- em dance accompanists, commissions of choreographic works and student internships for the ne.xt five years. As a result of the gift. students have already enjoyed changes in the dance program last fall with the residence of New York choreographer Jane Comfort who has worked with Merce Cunningham, Maggie Black and Janet Panetta. She set a new dance for Agnes Scott's Studio Dance Theatre titled "Pretty Is as Pretty Does." The gift also provid- ed a four-week residency for two of the four artistic directors of Pilobolus to adapt a piece for the Studio Dance Theatre. Darling, professor of dance, theatre and physical education, is especially pleased that the gift will allow Agnes Scott dance to attract outstanding artists to campus. "It will be like bringing New York and Europe and Australia to Agnes Scott. People speak differ- ent languages through dance," she explains. "The gift will help move our students from regional dance into national and international ways of thinking. The Kessler money will do wonders, more than wonders." 28 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE SUMMER 1994 "But if YOU LOVE dance" STARTING IN 1971 WITH A GROUP of SIX Students who had concentrated on mod- ern dance, Darling has deliberately shaped Agnes Scott's program to embrace a variety of dance forms. "Agnes Scott's program is very diverse and rich for its size," acknowl- edges Sally Radell, director of the dance program at Emory University. "Marylin is an inspiring leader and she brings wonderful opportunities to her students." Today, Agnes Scott's Studio Dance Theatre features 25 students who perform modem, jazz, ballet, tap, forms of Baroque and Renaissance dance. In April, for instance, Pilobolus set a piece, "Duet," tor physics major Kara Moore '96 and political science major Vicki Sturdivant '97. Pilobolus dancer Jude Woodcock worked with them on basic steps and movement. Then they rehearsed with artistic director Robby Bamett from 4:45 p.m. to 9 p.m. daily for more than a week, working on the "mood and feel of the piece." "This was not your traditional dancing, a tendu here, a jete, there," says Moore." It was mostly partnering. It took a lot of physical strength we didn't know we had. At first we said, 'We can't do that lift.' It was an intense, unbelievable experience. It gave me a whole new outlook on what dancing is." She laughs. "I am completely inspired to go off and dance." The program brings that kind of experience to many students. "We give dancers a wide range of styles, whereas some companies only do ballet," explains Darling. "We do it all, and I think we do it all very well." In many ways the program reflects the breadth and intensity of Darling's own experi- ence. She has studied with many of the out- standing dancers and choreographers of the last half of this century, from Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Bob Fosse, Jose Limon Alwin Nickolais of New York to David Roche and Vlaria de Baroncelli at Florida State University. "She has tremendous drive to explore dance m all its art forms, and her choreography is extremely well rounded," comments alumna Mary MacKinnon '85, an Atlanta choreographer. Agrees Joanne Lee, director of the Chastain School of the Atlanta Ballet: "Her knowledge of all forms of dance is her greatest strength." Moore, whose career dreams may now include dancing on Broadway, says, "If you are serious about academics, but you love dance, Marylin is the best. She knows so much." Already, the Agnes Scott program has produced dance students with strong academic credentials who have gone on to perform professionally with Erik Hawkins, Alvin Ailey, Bella Lewitsky and other well-respected companies. The Agnes Scott Studio Dance Theatre is a dance company housed on a college campus (to be distinguished from the more commonly formed college student dance groups). For more than a decade, student performances The Agnes Scott program has produced dance students with strong academic credentials who have gone on to perform professionally. 29 DANCE: TRIPPING THE LIGHT FANTASTIC "At Agnes Scott, we've always taken a holistic approach to education. Dance is a wonderful bringing together of the mind, body and creative aspect." have been framed by professional choreogra- phers. Since 1978, visiting artists have taught master classes here. And now the Kessler gift will enable the College to engage such artists for whole semesters at a time. This, says Darlmg, "makes a dancer a better dancer, and the better the dancer, the better the program." Having a dance major at Agnes Scott would attract an even greater number of students who would pursue careers in dance. But right now the College is concentrating on the new minor and progressing one step at a time. "At Agnes Scott, we've always taken a holistic approach to education, emphasizing the cognitive, spiritual, physical and social aspects of learning. Dance is a wonderful bringing together of the mind, body and cre- ative aspect," says Dean of the College Sarah Blanshei. "The minor in dance was a coming of age for Agnes Scott's dance program. With the minor and the establishment of the addi- tional studio, we will have a program that not only is enriched in its own right, but also is a significant enrichment of our fine arts program." With pleasure. Darling points out, that no matter what their majors or career choices, Agnes Scott dancers "never stop dancing." Meda Stamper '87, an employee of The Coca-Cola Company, regularly performs in community theatre and musicals. Sarah Campbell '81 was a junior biology major mulling over career paths when Darling hooked her up with a dance therapist to study dance movement. Today Campbell has a mas- ter's degree in dance mo\'ement therapy and works at the Moses Cone Memorial Hospital in North Carolina. Darling, says Campbell, "is very powerful as a mentor and a motivator." MacKinnon experienced that. "When I first joined the company, 1 never thought 1 would choreograph." Yet Darling recognized MacKinnon's potential and urged her to choreograph several pieces while at Agnes Scott. MacKinnon slowly discovered that she enjoyed the creative aspect of dance more than the performance. Today she does free- lance choreography. "It's unusual for a dancer to come from a liberal arts college, but 1 have students who can dance professionally and later pursue other careers. For instance, one young woman who was a professional dancer is now a lawyer," says Darling. She smiles. "You see, you can do it all." 30 ACNES SCOTT COLLEGE SUMMER 1994 REDRESSING THE STUDENT BODY A History in Hairdos and Hemlines By Mary Alma Durrett .. '"^H^' ^k .-^^ H. 4^s ,f>- *,% W N, Ah fashion! German economist Werner Sombart called it "capitalism's favorite child." Every mother is fond of tossing out fashion axioms to her daughters before sending them off into the difficult world of dress. You remember: "You will not leave this house without the proper foundations . . . without creaming your elbows . . . without painting those toenails, girls, if you're going to wear sandals. . . . Avoid horizontal stripes. . . . Remember, no white shoes after Labor Day." Every mother has them. Every mother 31 REDRESSING THE STUDENT BODY The truth is, the crisply- dressed, well- heeled Hottentot of old has been replaced by a new Scottie with casual inclinations. hopes her daughters will retain a few. In the world of today's young fashion adventurer, these maxims are likely met with a yawn, or perhaps a more \'ehement gesture. TTie truth is, the crisply dressed, well-heeled Hottentot ot old has been replaced by a new Scottie whose casual mclinations tend toward dusty Dr. Marten battle boots over pretty pumps. She is a fashion soldier ot this genera- tion Agnes X we'll call her. She, not unlike the late comedian Gilda Radner, bases much of her fashion taste on "what doesn't itch." Agnes X personifies the confluence of social, economic and ethnic change. Her cache of togs no longer hears the wears of a century ago corsets (a hobbling device of the first order) and floor-length skirts, or of 50 years ago pullover pastel sweaters, plaid skirts, pearls, ankle socks and saddle oxfords. Comfort rules the '90s Scottie who crosses campus in high-top Chuck Taylor sneakers, cut-offs, a T-shirt (not unlike her '60s-era mother) and a hall cap with the bill flipped to the back or treks about the Quad in plaid boxer-style shorts and running shoes. Her hair (if anything is done to it at all) may be pulled back in a ponytail or secured with a wide sweat band. On alternate days, Agnes X may don a thigh-high spandex skirt (a hobbling device of the highest otder) or a long, tie-dyed (bolder than ever) sarong or tights and an oversized blouse and toss back her head- ful of cascading curls or comrows or crimped locks. Occasionally she might wear heels. On rarer occasions she even wears makeup. There are days when students break out in preppy chino skirts and cotton sweaters or crisp khaki pants and dirty bucks. But those of today's world of fashion experimentation grew up accepting underwear as outerwear: TTianks a lot. Madonna. From her part to bet heart, Agnes X may also hear a dozen pierces for earrings, noserings and other decorations. Her gauzy dark rumpled dress brushes low against her tattooed ankle (yes, tattooed) and she is likely footed in Birkenstocks. Through dress and ornamenta- tion, she enunciates the angst and interests of an age. Grunge rules! "There's the mainstream kind of fashion that's not markedly different from generation to generation," says Vicki Vitelli '97 of Florence, Ala., whose cranberry -on-brunette shoulder-length locks hint at her fashion lean- ings. "I think a trademark of today is subver- siveness. Fashion today challenges traditional beauty standards. Anything that's against the norm makes us question traditional \alues. I think that's a good thing, whether it means questioning gender stereotypes or fashion." The fashion "whys," naturally, are among the many questions that emerge in healthy youthful debate. Why is one thing pretty and another not? Do we have to define beauty the same way our mothers did? "My guiding clothing philosophy is (com- ing from a small conserx'ative southern town and being a raging liberal at heart), I want to be as big a freak as humanly possible during my college years," says Vitelli. "I'll settle down later and drive the Volvo." Contrast that with the "white bread" world into which MoUie Merrick '57, asso- ciate dean of students, arrived as an ASC student in 1953. "We were wearing those Villager blouses with Peter Pan collars and dainty flower patterns." To Miami-native Merrick's surprise, classmates were also wear- ing socks with their shoes. "There was homo- geneity. This was the way you dressed and ever^'body did it. Ever>'hody was in sync." For years, dress was one of many aspects of student life dictated in loco parentis by the College; dresses were the standard. "The College assumed authority over student dress as part of its efforts to graduate accomplished and proper young ladies," explained Lee Sayrs '69 and Associate Professor of English Christine S. Cozzens in their book, A Full and Rich Measure. Varying notions ot "appropriate dress" or "beauty" have been, through the history of the 32 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE SUMMER 1994 College, exactly that varied. Mayhe Coco Chanel said it best: "Fashion is made to become unfashionable." The earliest Silhouettes capture the whims ot student fashion. In those first years students cut hour-glass figures in late-Victorian corset- ed garb, despite specific instruction in the College catalog that "dress ot schoolgirls be simple and inexpensive." Within a few years (the 1910s), the look moved toward man- tailored ensembles (better for bicycling you know) with Scotties wearing classic Gibson- girl hairstyles, swept up off the shoulder and rolled or folded with ratting into a bun. Their skirts were floor-length; blouses, high-necked, often accented by a tie or bow. On their feet they wore tight-fitting, laced or buttoned, ankle-high boots. By 1925, nearly every Scottie had a varia- tion of bobbed hair: Egyptian, mannish. Marcelled, windblown, the Charleston or faun. Skirts, likewise, were shortened a dozen inches; white hose dominated and shoes fea- tured modem, slender, high heels. Mainstays on the athletic field and in the gymnasium: bloomers and middle blouses. he twenties fostered a "Beauties" oto section in the yearbook judged by some outside, objec- tive highly visible writer or artist or group of cadets from West Point. In 1946, Hollywood photographer Paul Hesse chose the beauties, a majority of whom sported shoulder-length, wavy, war- time hairdos. In 1951, Princeton University's Student Body President Richard W. Murphy was charged with the task. He lamented: ". . .you have an unusually good-looking crop of girls; and my selections have to be made on the basis of pictures and not the girls themselves." After three days of poring over photos of 20 Scotties, Murphy chose Mary Beth Robinson (Stuart) '53 with her tiny pearl choker and "Love That Red" lip color, to top the beauties list. "We just wore what other Southern girls were wearing at the time," says Stuart, who ph ^\ k remembers sewing many of the skirts that she brought to College. "I look at what they're wearing on campus today an^l it's just a hoot. We weren't really dressing like anyt>ne as they seem to do today. Of course Lana Turner did stand out and I guess I thought my hair did kind of look like hers. 1 relished that." By 1969, the "beauties" section of the Silhouette had gone the way of the hula hoop, hut a good amount of attention was still paid to dress. The ASC Lecture Committee and ushers retained their standard black dress and pearls as a "uniform" at guest lectures. "Of course there was that whole con- tingent who wore stuff ovet their pajamas to class," notes Bonnie B. Johnson '70, executive director for development and assistant dean of Emory University School of Medicine, one of eight students who served on Representative Council's Special Commission on Rules and Policies (SCRAP) in 1969. "Our focus was on the 'non-negotiahles.' It was a kind of stripping down and rebuilding the rules on that foundation. We dealt with smoking, drinking, drugs, sign outs. Dress was one of those things that was evolutionary, the changes had already begun to emerge." But SCRAP clinched the decision to nix dresses as required garb. Good-bye fish-net hose; hello bell bottoms! Until 1970, shorts and slacks were anathema in Buttrick, the galleries of Dana, Agnes Scott Hall (e.xcept to sign in and out of the Dean of Students' >./ fe-Sal 33 REDRESSING THE STUDENT BODY Nowadays, the advice Mary Beth Robinson Stuart's mother sent her away with: "Pretty is as pretty does," would probably fall on deaf ears. office), the library, and in faculty and adminis- trative oftices, classes and science/art labs. For about halt the students the "mane attraction" was long, straight "Cher" hair the other half rolled and teased their hair into astronaut hel- met-like styles. They could only appear in pub- lic en curlers covered with a scarf on Friday night or Saturdays in the lower Evans Dming Hall. "Rolling ban- was definitely an issue peculiar to Agnes Scott," says Merrick, "and an issue in the rewiring of the build- ings because we wanted to have enough electrical power for dryers and electric rollers." With the SCRAP landmark deci- sions, the dress code itself moved from maxi to mini a single paragraph: "Each stu- dent is urge[d] to dress neatly and appropriately for all occasions. Responsible consideration for faculty and staff members, administrative offi- cials, other students, and tor campus visitors is expected." Cutoffs, here we come! "Students are much more casual now," concludes Merrick. The student of the '90s, she believes, has "other things to worry about economic concerns, social issues, what goes on in dating situations, career choices, mobility." Choices do make the "clothes thing" seem a bit insignificant. And trying on a new "look," whether grunge or prep or funk, has got to fit today's youthful pocketbook already drained by college costs. So contemporary clothes are not just saying the wearers are the picture of con- vention or that they hate what mainstream America wears; they're also saying, this outfit is pulled together tor $10. Or some may be speaking a very subtle lan- guage to a small group of people perhaps even one. Explain Joanne B. Eicher and Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins in Dress and Gender, ". . . some of the information that is transmitted from person to person by dress is not easily translatable into words." With a single article of clothing or a piece of jewelry or a tattoo, a young woman may be propelling herself along the road toward her own personal psycho-sexu- al destiny, hoping along the way to attract some interested party. When she dons an off- white chemise, she may be simultaneously ask- ing "who am 1.'" and saying "this is who 1 am." "Beauty is a very personal, outward expres- sion of yourself," acknowledges Vitelli, who emphasizes her looks with a pierced nose. "Attractiveness is power." Many of today's authorities would agree. Like Valerie Steele, in her Fashion and Eroticism: "The concept of beauty is sexual in origin, and the changing ideal of beauty apparently reflects shifting atti- tudes toward sexual expression. At the deepest level, the meaning of clothing in general and fashion in particular is also erotic." Eros, who according to Bidfinch's Mythology, "issued trom the egg of Night," has always lived in the clothes closet. What Eros present- ed for wearing has depended on who was standing at the closet door and at what time she arrived. Vitelli's loose and flowing garb bears a striking resemblance to that ot her favorite period of costume the Italian Renaissance. "It managed to be breezy and bohemian but sort of formal." Vitelli and her cohort of Scotties are cut- ting their feminine and feminist teeth on such tomes as Backlash and The Beauty Myth, not Dress for Success or The Official Preppy Handbook. Nowadays, the advice that Mary Beth Robinson Stuart's mother sent her away with: "Pretty is as pretty does," would probably fall on deaf ears. Either that, or become a tattoo forever etched on her . . . arm. 34 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE SUMMER 1994 ET CETERA A new garden, outstanding alumnae, Fulhright scholars, culture shock for Japanese, high marks from Princeton Review and other campus news RENEWING THE SECRET GARDEN On a sketch oi the small terrace attached to the back of the McCain Library is a quote from John Milton: "Beholding the bright coun- tenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." It captures the orig- inal intent of the library architects and the more recent hcipe of a generous alumna who wished to cre- ate such a space on campus. Spring l'-)94 marks the restoration, and April 20 (during Alumnae Weekend festivities) the dedication and renaming of the enchanting and secluded Secret Garden. Designated originally as the outdoor Reading Terrace when McCain Library opened in 1936, the ' Alma Durrett ASC's Office of Career Planning arid Counseling helps graduates make the transition into "the real world." COVER: Mar>- Jordan '94, a TV reporter in Dothan, Ala., found hard work, preparation and time- ly tips from ASC's career coun- selors helped her land just the job she wanted. PHOTO BY GARY MEEK Fifty Years Ago-A Remembrance By Marybeth Little Weston Lohdell In half a century, a lot has changed at Agnes Scott College, but the basics have remained the same. DEPARTMENTS 2 Lifestyle 34 On Campus 35 Classic 37 Et Cetera il Feedback Editor: Celeste Pennington Contributing Editor: Mary Alma Durrett Editorial Assistant: Audrey Arthur Design: Everett Hullum and Harold Waller Student Assistants: Rolanda Daniel '98 Jennifer Odom '98 Leigh Anne Russell '97 Samantha Stavely '97 Ashley Wright '96 Photo Archivist: Willa Hendnckson '94 Publications Advisory Board: Christine Cozzens Bill Galley Ellen Fort Grissett '77 Sandi Harsh '95 Tish McCutchen '73 Kay Parkerson O'Briant '70 Emily Pender '95 Sara Pilger Edmund Sheehey Lucia Howard Sizemore '65 Copyright 1994, Agnes Scott College. Published for alumnae and friends twice a year by the Oflice of Publications, Agnes Score College, Buttrick Hall, 141 E. College Avenue, Decatur, GA 30030, (404) 638-6315. Postmaster: Send address changes to Office of Development and Public .affairs, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, GA 30030. The content of the magazine reflecrs the opinions ot the writers and not rhe viewpomt of the College, its trustees or administration. LIFESTYLE A true kids' teacher, the molecular structure of patents, caring for the people of other cultures and a job that puts out fires literally. THE DANCE OF LEARNING School Teacher Ellen Grmmm '62 Inspired hy music she was playing for her class from the "Sleeping Beaut^'" ballet, elementary school teacher Ellen Granum '62 began twirling around the room like a ballerina. In the midst of the dance, she says, "One shy little girl got out of her seat, pulled on my skirt, looked up at me and said, 'Is you a child?' "The music makes me want to dance," said Granum. "So we all began to dance like ballerinas. I loved opening the chil- dren's eyes and their expe- riences to a dilferent per- ception of adults and the world around them." Granum's strategy hasn't changed much since the mid-'60s, when she began teaching the chil- dren at Center Hill Elementary School, the first integrated school in Atlanta. TTiere, changes in the school system and in the neighborhood weren't easy adjustments for any of the teaching staff. But 2 Granum arrived, a "young idealist, full of energy and wanting to change things." Later, stimulated by the issue of the "culturally deprived child," Granum earned a master's degree at Bank Street College of Education in New York, highly regarded for its innovative and creative approaches to teaching. For the last seven years, Granum has taught at the National Presbyterian School, a small, Washing- ton, D.C., school that enrolls 200 children in nursery through grade six. Situated in a low stone building on Nebraska Avenue across from the Japanese embassy, National Presbyterian is a private Elementai-y school teacher Ellen Granum: A mission to reclaim the soul of teaching. school. Students include children of diplomats, congressmen and women, corporate executives, doc- tors and lawyers. Tuition ranges from $8,000 to $10,000 annually. Each year, only 20 percent of those who apply are accepted. It is a competi- tive situation, she admits. "Psirents get ver^' uptight about it. They think if their children go to a cer- tain school, they'll be fixed for life." Students are screened primarily during a 45- minute session of interac- tion with other children. Teachers and administra- tors observe a child's language devel- opment and perception of surroundings. Granum, who has taught in both settings, admits that teaching in a private school does not insulate her from problems like child neglect. "Parents, out of ignorance of what young children need, abandon them to nannies and au pairs. It's very sad. Children become neglect- ed in a situation where you would not expect it." In the classroom, these students often seem more needy and demanding. "A child will be half asleep, because their routines are unsuper\''ised," says Granum. "Or a child will come to school perennial- ly late, because the parent is rushing and wants to drop the child on the way to work." On this particular day, rays of light filter through a rain forest canopy as kindergartners reach toward the huge tree in I LIFESTYLE the center of the classroom. Vines, gigantic leaves, flowers and parrots cover the ceiling. Butterflies dance in the mist while the peculiar music ot chatter- ing monkeys mingles with the notes of songbirds. The children focus their atten- tion on a 6-foot hoa con- strictor (made of felt and stuffed with tissue) that Granum twists around the limbs of the tree. "Teaching is as much theatre as it is training," says Granum who has taught early childhood edu- cation for 1 7 years. "I've often felt that I was as much an actress as a teacher." A nurturing, imagina- tive woman, Granum creates a place where chil- dren feel confident and free to learn. "You make it a place that children want to be. You want them to come in and say, 'WOW! What's this?' " Children respond to having their environment turned into the place you're trying to teach," Granum explains. "The way you project the infor- mation and present it, is as important as the informa- tion itself You want to capture the child's imagi- nation and interest." When teaching about marine life, Granum created an ocean realm, hanging paper streamers from the ceiling so that the child moving through the room felt like a swimmer. Huge sea creatures hung from the walls and ceiling. The children dissected a real squid and wrote their names from the "ink of the squid" and sang songs about the ocean. "I love building on the excitement of something the children are interested in," she explains. "To see a child's eyes sparkle, and know the children are really excited about some- thing, is very rewarding, very rewarding." Recently, Granum, 53, has taken a sabbatical. "It's very tiring at my age bending over little tables," she admits. "Buttoning, zipping and picking up, and teaching the children to do it as well. As much as 1 love kindergartners, 1 don't have the energy anymore." She serves on a com- mittee to determine admis- sion for the following year, judges science fairs, and on occasion substitutes in one of several private acade- mies. It's just one more way for Granum to ensure involvement in her passion of education. Carolyn Blunk is a freelance writer in the Boston area. A PATENTED CAREER Molecular biophysicist Jasemine Chambers 77 For more than a decade, molecular biophysicist Jasemine Choy Chambers '77 worked in laboratories from EXike University to the National Institutes of Health, cloning antigens linked with auto-immune diseases and identifying genes that could one day revolutionize medicine and drug development. Part of her research involved cloning genes from strands of DN A in an effort to find clues to diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis. In 1989, Chambers left her laboratory work for a post as a patent examiner for the U.S. Patent and Trademark office in Arlington, Va. Discoveries in gene sequencing and molecular biophysics during the 1980s had fueled phe- nomenal growth in the number of biotech firnis seeking new ways to halt deadly or debilitating dis- eases and a "gold rush" among major drug compa- nies seeking exclusive rights to their discoveries. Weekly, Chambers reviews an average of 6 to 10 patent applications. Her job includes literature searches to "see if the invention has been described by others" and ultimately, her judgment of the validity of each patent application claim. (A patent grants exclusive rights for a period of 1 7 years which excludes others from making, using or sell- ing a drug or invention without permission or licensing agreements.) "It's very interesting work because 1 get to look at the scientific data before it's published," explains Chambers. "1 get to read about science at the cutting edge." Chambers specializes in patents involving transgenic animals. Recently she approved patents to Harvard University tor a "mouse that's a model for studying prostate cancer, and to NIH for a rabbit infected with HIV, useful in monitoring and developing a treatment for AIDS." Five years ago, when Chambers began at the patent office, she was among 45 scientists special- izing in biotechnology. Today, with the flood of patent applications steadily rising, her division has grown to include 175 examiners in a patent office employing 1,500 examiners. Zarolyn Blunk LlFESTlTE LIFESTYLE FLICKERING IMAGES CARE'S Kathy Doherty '67 Climbing among the volcanic shards out- side Goma, Zaire, Kathy Reynolds Doherty '67, pub- lic relations manager for CARE, came across the peaceful form of a child. It took a few moments for her to reconcile her first impression that he was sleeping, with the reality. Once again she was staring into the face of death. "Tliis was a healthy looking boy, about to bloom into adulthood," she reflects. "It broke my heart to see he was not alive. I stood there awhile, just to be certain." It was the "casualness of death" that struck Doherty in July during her second trip to African refugee camps where CARE is KATHY DOHERIY PHOTO Scenes of starvation and deprivation are common for ASC alurmuie Kathy Doherty (below, right) with Country Director for CARE Somalia, David Neff. Doherty travels the globe for the international hunger relief agency CARE. helping those who escaped civil war-torn Rwanda. (Earlier, in May she was with 330,000 Rwandans who had fled their country to neighboring Tanzania, in the largest refugee camp in the world.) Among images still moving through her mind are Zaire's dazzling land- scapes with grassy hills and JAMES MITCHEU PHOTO, ABC sharply rising cloud-cov- ered peaks juxtaposed with the river of displaced and dying people. She found frail, orphaned babies "that looked like ancient people," tents crowded with cholera patients and a road leading north toward Uganda, "bodies piled up along the side." Temporary camps of Rwandans dressed in rags and "dying, right and left" she contrasted with a "city of satellite dishes" quickly set up at the airport where hundreds of writers, pho- tographers and camera crews from the major U.S. and international networks and news services had con- verged to gather and trans- mit their reports. "It was an intersection of two cul- tures," says Doherty. "Camera generators, high tech equipment on one side people scrounging for firewood on the other." Much of Doherty's work is at these intersec- tions, helping members of the international media report on crises among the 53 countries where CARE is already at work. From care's national head- quarters in Atlanta, she also trains CARE workers in media relations and coordinates coverages. Relationship-building is how she describes the work which may include lining up an interview for the BBC one moment, answering questions for Reuters Ltd., news service or providing leads to The New York Times or mem- bers of the media in Ai~;vicc cr'i-^TT r^t-\i i cr'-C m ta LIFESTYLE Europe, Canada or Africa. Her first overseas expe- rience with CARE was in Somalia, December 1993. Her job was to accompany CBS's John McWethy as he worked on a piece deal- ing with United Nations peacekeeping. They flew to projects in Somalia and Mozambique where CARE provides food security and is retraining soldiers for other work. Sometimes Doherty can track the results of their work, as in Somalia. "CARE was instrumental in bringing pictures of the victims of the famine to the United States. That resulted in an outpouring of aid," notes Doherty. "Once 220 were dying in Somalia every day. That number dropped to 20, once Americans responded. "Americans" Doherty says, "made a difference." CARE has been mak- ing a difference since 1946, and Doherty will help bring focus to the celebration of the organization's 50th year celebration. "We started with small CARE packages after World War 11," says Doherty. "Today CARE is big and its 'packages' are in the form of emergency relief with huge supplies of food, health care and equipment." For instance, in Haiti, CARE feeds 660,000 people, six days a week, regardless of who happens to be in power. "The U. S. State Depart- ment evacuated all depen- dents in Haiti, but CARE doesn't evacuate. When things get rough, we keep doing what we are doing." Doherty, the daughter of a minister, majored in English at Agnes Scott, took some journalism courses at Georgia State, then turned a varied career (newspaper experience in the '80s, press secretary in three political campaigns and later work with international contacts for Ketchum Public Relations, organizing the Ramses II exhibit for the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N. C.) into a job that she says "feeds my soul." The need she encoun- ters through her work can be haunting. Like the two children, maybe aged five and six, she saw waiting alongside a road in Zaire: "I drove back and forth along this road, three times. Each time I found these two lit- tle children just sitting. Not knowing what to do. Totally alone." Celeste Pennington SOME LIKE IT HOT Firefighter Adele Clements '88 After driving all night from Florida, Adele Clements '88 remembers much of her Agnes Scott College graduation cere- mony as a blur. She had to be nudged by a friend when her name v\as announced for the Suzanne Goodman Elson Award for 1988. In disbelief she made her way to the stage amid cheering and a shower of cham- pagne. Her peers had voted her undergraduate who reflects "those qualities of kindness, decency and integrity Scott experience e\en more meaningful for her fellow students." Four months later, in September, Clements found herself in a world starkly different from the one she had left at College. As a new fire- fighter for the City of Decatur, working out of a firehouse across the street from her alma mater, Clements found those qualities of character recognized by her peers being put to the test. While fire fighting school had prepared Clements for the physical rigors, she still shudders as she describes her first day at work: the scotching sum- mer afternoon when she walked into which com bined with an unusu- al intel- lectual curiosity on her part would make the Agnes Scott LIFESTYLE discover the body of a dead woman. The odor "I could not get out of my system for days," says Clements. "It really did affect me. ... I was very saddened that this woman was discovered because of the stench and not because anyone missed her." The same day after dinner, Clements found herself in the middle of a shoot-out in the south side projects. While competently han- dling the situation the nervous, excited crowd, the hysterical mother, the wounded teenage son, bullets flying up the hill Clements had only one other thought: that "this was not in my job description." As the second woman to work at the Decatur Fire Department, Clements discovered that many challenges were just as unexpected. While she knew that rookies go through a rite of passage with some initial harassment, throughout her training she had the confi- dence of her commander. Bob Stills. Yet Clements soon learned that few of the firemen shared his con- fidence. "They were skepti- cal," she admits, then says with a smile, "They also thought that if I came from 'that woman's college,' I must be a leftist feminist, and they wanted to see how far they could push me." Commander Stills acknowledges that Clements had to tough it out with the men. She slept in the same barrack- like dorm rooms. She com- plained about the "girlie magazines" left around the station and she has stood her ground when some sug- gested that women might be better suited to secretar- ial tasks or kitchen duties. Stills compares working out the new relationships among fire personnel to learning to relate as sib- lings "there are differ- ences, but they get along." Getting along is neces- sary to the teamwork required to fight fires. Clements vividly recalls her first fire assignment at a construction site burning in the middle of the night. After the fire was extin- guished, the crew was over- hauling, checking for remaining hot spots, when an eight-foot wall col- lapsed on Clements. She suffered no injuries but had to be pulled out. Her peers seemed surprised that she was ready to go right back to overhauling some seemed more shaken by the incident than she was and took her back to the truck to rest. Her feeling was that if she had been a man "they would not have pampered me so much." After six years, Clements has seen some change in attitudes and acceptance as part of the team. For one, the department has finally banned the girlie magazines from the fire house. And while some co-workers still hold the belief that a fire station is no place for a woman, says Clements with a shrug, "We agree to dis- agree. That's one of the most important things I learned at ASC not to blur the lines of difference, but to respect and learn from them. We all don't have to be alike to get along. We can learn from everyone to make ourselves better." While working full time, Clements has one contin- ued her education she has one master's degree and is currently working on a second. She looks back at her ASC education and experi- ences as favorably shaping her identity as a woman, providing many strong role models and encouraging her independence and sense of self. Clements believes that the college atmosphere, vibrant with debate, not only made her fearless to voice her opinions but also open to respecting other people's ideas and values. She also looks back with a sense of nostalgia. Although she studied racism and world hunger and was involved in com- munity-based projects like Habitat for Humanity, as a student, Clements remained unaware of those who lived just blocks from campus. "At ASC we never saw the worst of society the poverty and hopelessness that can lead kids to shoot each other over a pair of basketball shoes." She has lost some of the idealisrn of her student years. "ASC encouraged me to make a difference, but this job has taught me just how difficult it can be to do so." Yet that occasion for making a difference sus- tains her: "Out of every ten rescue calls we get nine might be nothing, but then there is that one person, one family, that needs and appreciates our help." When asked why she ever picked this job, she laughs and says, "They pay me to climb roofs! Can you believe it? That's what got me into the most trouble at ASC." Monika hlikore is a freelance writer/ photographer in Atlanta AnMCQ QnnTT r^ni i cnc d; r iqqa THE SCIENCE OF LIFE By John F. Pilger and Christine S. Cozzens At work on her dissertation at the Marine Biological Laboratory' at Woods Hole, Mass., in December of 1922, the young biologist Mary' Stuart MacDougall feared she had reached a dead end. The problems suggested by her dissertation director at Columbia University had already been solved, and even her cul- tures of protozoa microscopic, single-celled life forms had died. Accepting what appeared to be her fate, she wrote President Frank Gaines to say that she simply could not do research and would be back to resume her teaching duties at Agnes Scott College in February. While packing to leave the MBL, MacDougall rediscovered her micro- scope slides of abnormal pro- tozoan cultures that she had almost discarded months before. Now armed with a better understanding of genetics and cell biology gained through courses taken at the MBL, she looked at the slides once again and noticed something new. By morning, a tri- umphant MacDougall had outlined her dis- sertation on chromosome behavior in proto- zoa. From this moment, the words of Louis Pasteur, "Fortune favors the prepared mind," would drive her research and provide mean- ing for her teaching. Mary Stuart MacDougall brought a com- prehensive scientific imagination, intellec- tual rigor and a sense of the thrill of discov- ery to her research and to her teaching at Agnes Scott, where she was a member ot the faculty and chair of the biology depart- ment from 1919 to 1952. With two doctor- ates, a Guggenheim Fellowship, 14 pub- lished papers, significant contributions to malaria research and a major textbook to her credit during those years, she also defended the value of science at a time when the humanities dominated the liberal arts curriculum. MacDougall challenged the assumption that the study of science held only practical value and that it was devoid ot cultural worth: 'the highest service ot Science to mankind has been in the emancipation of the mind, in freeing men from the bondage of superstition, and in help- ing man to know himself. The message of science has ever been the message of intel- ectual enlighten- ment and liberty To know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.'" For MacDougall, the study of science underlay all great intellectual achievement: "Science has so enlarged the mental hori- zon," she wrote, "that the imagination may take a bolder flight." That soaring imagina- tion made faith possible: "The mystery of life means more to the biologist than any- one else that marvel of a bit of proto- plasm, a single celled animal, self-sustaining, repairing and perpetuating, presents a sub- ASC biology professor Mary MacDougall challenged the assumption that the study of science held only practical value and that it was devoid of cultural worth. Her legacy endures at Agnes Scott. THE SCIENCE OF LIFE BUT FOR A TWIST OF FATE, MACDOUGALL MIGHT HAVE BEEN A HISTORY MAJOR. BECAUSE OF HER MORNING JOB, SHE RECALLED, "l COULD ONLY TAKE THE SCIENCE COURSES SCHEDULE IN THE AFTERNOON." Autographed copies of classic biology texts and a microscope are among the items in Agnes Scott's MacDougall collection. (Art Lassek Photos) ject for wonderment beside which the seven wonders of the world are foolishness." Bom in 1882 in Laurinhurg, N.C., MacDougall lost both parents when she was a teenager, and to help support younger brothers and sisters, worked as secretary for a local civic leader who encouraged her to attend college at North Carolina College for Women and later at Randolph-Macon Woman's College. An M.A. from the University of Chicago and several teaching positions pre- pared the young scholar for the duties she would take up at Agnes Scott. According to Margaret W. Rossiter's Women Scientists in America, until the 1950s women's colleges with their surprisingly substantial endowments, their "almost feminist commitment to excellence in wom- en's higher education," and their enthusias- tic students were the primary employers of women in science. Agnes Scott was deter- mined to prepare students for the best grad- uate and professional programs in the coun- try', and MacDougall's commitment to research suited this vision. A permanent job with demanding teaching responsibilities only increased MacDougall's desire for further education. The MBL, where she completed her disser- tation research, had been founded in part to educate women in science. The presence of so many other women scientists in courses and laboratories must have inspired young researchers like MacDougall, who regularly brought Agnes Scott students with her when, summer after summer, she returned to Woods Hole to teach and carry out her research. Beginning with her dissertation, MacDougall investigated the cell biology of the protozoan, Chilodon Uncinatus Strand 1926 (protozoa whose locomotion is mediat- ed by cilia or hair-like appendages). Although she performed basic studies on the cultures and morphology' of subcellular structures, her more important contribution was a description of chromosome behavior during maturation. MacDougall was the first to induce sustained mutations in protozoan cultures (1929) using ultraviolet (UV) radi- ation. Today, we hear often of the power ot AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FALL 1994 MACDOUGALL CONSIDERED THE WORLD-FAMOUS CELL BIOLOGIST DR. E.B. WILSON, WHOM SHE MET WHILE DOING GR^ADUATE WORK AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, TO BE "HER GREATEST TEACHER." UV light in sunburn indices, SPF numbers on sunscreens, and precautions to reduce the risk of cancer. Though relatively new in this country, protozoology was already well entrenched in Europe, and the labo- ratories of several prominent scientists were within MacDougall's reach for study, if only she could get there. In 1931, she won one of the first Guggenheim Fellowships in science awarded to women a group that included Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock which took MacDougall to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut fur Biologie in Berlin. The allure of the great city and the welcome she received at many laboratories and marine stations of Europe captured her imagination and influ- enced her science for years to come. In his popular book. Of Scientists and Salamanders, Stanford University biologist Victor Twitty remembered meeting MacDougall in Berlin: "Professor Mary Stuart MacDougall . . . complained to me one day that as in unescorted woman she was unable to explore Berlin's celebrated nightlife, and frankly proposed that she subsidize an evening's tour of some of the better known spots under my guidance. ... I had feared that Dr. MacDougall might disapprove of what we would encounter; instead, she enjoyed the evening immensely and could not have been less abashed. Her most mem- orable reaction came after surveying with objective detachment a group of well- endowed young women posing in their full epidermal glory: 'Humph, I've seen lots prettier girls in the swimming poo at Agnes Scott College.'" During her European sojourn, MacDougall went as far as the Soviet Union. On another occasion, her sense of adventure took her to a rally where Hitler spoke. She com- mented that he sounded like "one of those queer radio evangelists." In 1936, MacDougall earned a Science Docteur at the Universite de Montpelier complete with a dissertation in French and became one of the few women of that era to hold two doctoral degrees. But Agnes Scott students remem- bered Miss Mac, as she was affectionately known, as much more than an accom- plished researcher. In the labs of Lowry Hall MacDougall's explorations in Europe in the early 1930s captured her imagination and influenced her science for years to come. THE SCIENCE OF LIFE MACDOUGALL MET DR. ROBERT HEGNER AT THE COLD SPRING HARBOR LABORATORY AND TAUGHT WITH HIM IN THE MEDICAL ZOOLOGY COURSE AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY. THIS ASSOCIATION LED TO THE CO-AUTHORSHIP OF THEIR TEXTBOOK, BIOLOGY: THE SCIENCE OF LIFE. Microscope accessories box with condenser lens, below, and box of microscope stage components, right. or on the sunny porch of her home at Ansley Cottage where she grew begonias, cyclamen and "everything from holly to hawthorn" MacDougall loved to tell sto- ries of the scientists she had known. "She made it sound like it might be fun to be a biologist," recalled Betty Fountain Edwards Gray '35. As if to rouse her students' curiosity, she put her own research table in the teaching laboratory; years later, students who went on to careers in science wrote of her inspir- ing example. Though she filled her weekdays with teaching and her weekends with research, MacDougall would regularly invite colleagues to listen to her fine col- lection of classical recordings in her book-lined rooms at Ansley Cottage. Her essays and speeches sparkled with quotations from poets and philosophers, some of which she read in the original French or German. She collected rare editions of fairy tales, and according to Margaret Bland Sewell '20, "while urging on pupils an increasing interest in amoebae . . . took time out to read my poems and to encourage me in continuing to write." Impatient with people who didn't value the life of the mind as she did and some- thing of an autocrat, MacDougall could be intimidating. A student who had strug- gled through an embryology course remem- bered Miss Mac saying, "You will never be a great scientist the only thing you can do for Agnes Scott is marry a wealthy man and leave the money to Agnes Scott for a new science building." In the letter describing this incident, the student apologized to her former teacher for falling short of her expec- tations once again by marrying "an average income dermatologist." At academic processions, the five-foot eight-inch tall MacDougall "cut quite a fig- ure" in her crimson and ermine European- style regalia. She had adversaries on cam- pus including the equally formidable English professor Emma May Laney. As one colleague reported, when Miss Mac wanted something to go her way, "she would simply write a letter to the president of the college and the thing would be done." A complex woman who set high stan- dards for herself and others. Miss Mac influ- enced generations of Agnes Scott students. Eleanor Newman Hutchens '40 recalled. 10 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FALL 1994 MACDOUGALL WORKED IN THE LABORATORY OF DR. MAX HARTMANN WHILE AT THE KAISER WILHELM INSTITUTE IN 1932. THERE SHE LEARNED VALUABLE PROTOZOAN CULTURE TECHNIQUES. THE SCIENTISTS AT THE INSTITUTE SCATTERED WHEN HILTLER CAME TO POWER. "She was a highly unusual personality: con- stantly annoyed by small things . . . chroni- cally indignant about larger ones, and yet sociable and on the whole good-natured." Alluding to the two sisters mentioned in the Bible, MacDougall said of herself, "My name is Mary but it should have been Martha, for I am careful and troubled about many things." MacDougall finally achieved the broad recognition that her contributions had so long deserved. In 1943, The Atlanta journal honored her with their Woman of the Year in Education award. Miss Mac created a lasting memento of this honor by rooting the sprigs entwined in her celebratory cor- sage. Descendants of those plants still thrive in the gardens of her friends and near the main entrance to Campbell Hall. The nominating letter for this award described her as "modest and unassuming, with a quiet determination ... a very quiet lady who never seeks publicity." Colleagues, students and friends who knew Miss Mac tell instead of a proud woman who relished recognition of her accomplishments and of her leadership within the faculty and profes- sional organizations such as the Association of Southeastern Biologists. A woman of such intellectual stature and reputation must have posed something of a puzzle to the male college presidents and educators who chose her for the honor. Spurred on by the increased need for trained medical personnel during the war, in 1943 MacDougall published her celebrated college-level textbook. Biology: The Science of Life, though her co-author Robert Hegner died while the hook was in final draft, leav- ing her to finish it. An immediate success, the book was adopted by more than 90 institutions. Balancing taxonomic survey with founding biological principles, the text also included chapter-opening quota- tions that reaffirm the link between the humanities and science. "She was a highly unusual personality: constantly annoyed by small things . . . chroni- cally indignant about larger ones, and yet sociable and on the whole good-natured." D uring the war, MacDougall returned to research on malaria as a government consultant. Because of her earlier experience, she was assigned the task of describing the life history of two prominent malarial forms. Her studies 11 THE SCIENCE OF LIFE One student of MacDougall wrote years later: "Your making us dig out the facts for our- selves in lab has been invaluable training for work in adult life." made valuable contributions to the epidemi- ology of the disease at a time when American forces were fighting in malaria- infested areas of the world. For years, MacDougall had planned the new science building that Agnes Scott intended to build when peace came. In the late 1940s when that project was finally under way, she would haunt the building site, notebook in hand. "Campbell Hall was her dream," recalled Professor Emerita Jo Bridgman '27: "She put a lot of pressure on the architects to get things the way she thought they should be." The dedication of the new building with the latest in labora- tory facilities finally took place in 1951, just one year before Miss Mac retired. Upon her retirement, former students and colleagues wrote of her influence and example. "I have long since forgotten the facts learned in courses taken at Scott," wrote Louise Capen Baker '27, "but 1 think your making us dig out the facts for our- selves in lab has been invaluable training for work in adult life." Letters from colleagues thanked MacDougall for friendships that had lasted many years. President McCain told her, "1 am very grateful for your friend- ship. . . . No one in my long years has THE LEAP INTO SCIENCE Science study/research remains an ASC priority By Mary L. Lee GARY MEEK PHOTO When Theresa Hoenes '94 enrolled at Agnes Scott College four years ago, one thing was certain: she would major in French. Yet today she wears a white lab coat and works at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. "This sort of job was the furthest thing from my mind," says Hoenes who graduated last May with a bachelor of arts in biology. Now she's engaged in AIDS research at the CDC, with the formidable task of doing DNA sequencing on HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS. She and other researchers are looking back at case studies on the transmission of the virus, trying to determine how it evolved and how it entered this country. Although she never intended to make the leap into science, Hoenes was influ- enced by the quality of courses offered at Agnes Scott and by faculty who encouraged her. She says she almost couldn't help her- self after the first biology course with Associate Professor of Biology Harry Wistrand, who has been with Agnes Scott for 20 years. "1 loved it, so I thought, I'll just take the next course to see how it is," she says. "I did really well, so that made me decide to stick with it." One of the youngest professional staff Alumnae like Theresa Hoenes, an AIDS researcher at the CDC in Atlanta, are spiritual descendants of Professor Mary MacDougall. 12 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FALL 1994 shown more real devotion to [the College's] high standards or worked more earnestly for them." In a revealing comment to her long- time adversary, Emma May Laney wrote, "1 am full of admiration at your achievement, and realize fully how much you will he missed at Agnes Scott. Giants like you . . . are not often found among the women of a faculty." A fall in 1949 had left MacDougall with a badly broken hip, and during her last years, though she was not as active as she had been, friends remember her as cheerful and alert. She continued to exchange letters with students scientists, missionaries. housewives, and poets scattered across the country and around the world. When Miss Mac died in 1972, she was buried in Laurin- burg in the crimson regalia remembered by so many generations of ASC students. In 1936 MacDougall wrote, "Science increases the richness and resources of the inner life, it offers ballast, making tor steadi- ness and poise and broad sympathy." Mary Stuart MacDougall had all ot these gifts and generously shared them during the course of a life of science. John Pilger is associate professor ami chair of biology and Christina Cozzens is associate professor of English. members at the CDC, Hoenes, 22, found she was well-prepared for the transition from the college lab to the high tech CDC environment. And those at the CDC have told her so. "She has very good basic training from her undergraduate courses," says Chi-Cheng Luo, a molecular environmentalist and one of Hoenes' supervisors. Her background, he says, is more solid than that of most young people with whom he has worked. Faculty members credit Hoenes for her success. Both Wistrand and Martha W. Rees, assistant professor of anthropology, describe her as dedicated and enterprising. Wistrand regarded her accomplishment so highly that he enlisted her as his research assistant in molecular biology, localizing genes on chromosomes of several different kinds of fruit flies. Hoenes attributes her good progress to the quality of faculty at Agnes Scott and to the opportunities for lab work, intriguing research and close contact with professors who were ready to listen and advise. "I would talk to professors about what they thought, how they got to where they were," she says. "Professors have so much more knowledge than what you see in the clcissroom. Going to them and talking is so much better than staring at a textbook." One person she would talk to was Rees. Although her main field is anthropology, Rees had emphasized the convergence of biology and anthropology in her classes and that interested Hoenes in conversations after hours. Hoenes also credits Rees with helping her focus on what she really wanted to do with her life. She was paying atten- tion when Rees delivered her favorite mes- sage in the human origins course: Young women don't have to go on feeling alienat- ed from science. Hoenes became interested in the study of plants because professor of biology Sandra Bowden was. And of course, Hoenes credits Wistrand with capturing her interest during that first biology class. He teaches students how to learn and encourages them to ask questions. By the time students take Wistrand's molec- ular genetics, the emphasis is on indepen- dent thinking and collegial and collabora- tive problem solving. Even the lab manual he uses in that course emphasizes the impor- tance of creative thought. It departs from the traditional "cookbook" approach, which tells students what to do at each step. Instead, it is a manual of lab techniques that can be put into practice, an approach that encourages students to think for themselves rather than merely follow cut-and-dried procedure. Already, Hoenes has turned that training in creative thinking to her advantage at the CDC as she has figured out how to run a sequencing and purification machine that nobody else had time or inclination to master. Now Hoenes is setting it up so it can be used in research. Characteristically modest about any achievements in school or out, Hoenes says, "Agnes Scott provided the opportunity. 1 just took advantage of it." Mary L. Lee is a freelance uniter living in Atlanta ASC's Theresa Hoenes didn't plan to become a scientist. Her interest was developed by Agnes Scott's quality faculty and courses. 13 THE SCIENCE OF LIFE STOPPING THE NIGHTMARE Sexual harassment has become altogether too common in the workplace, as ASC graduates are discovering. The College is taking steps to help. By Jane A. Zanca Illustrations by Mac Evans It's the middle ot August, you're 22, fresh out of Agnes Scott College, and you're winding up the first week on your first real job. Your boss is smiling. Here it comes, the "well done!" you've been earning all week. He leans over, cups your face in his hands, and kisses you right on the mouth. You wake up screaming. Just another pre-graduation nightmare? Maybe. The fact is that nearly a third of all sexual harassment is targeted at women 18 to 24 years ot age. And in a straw poll of 14 alumnae who were selected by specified career and location from the Agnes Scott College directory, it became clear that sexu- al harassment has happened to Agnes Scott women in many settings. Only four said they had never experienced or observed sexual harassment. For recent graduates, identification of harassment is vital, according to Amy Schmidt, director of the Office of Career Planning and Counseling. "During the first year or so, they might have difficulty decid- ing whether what they're experiencing is sexual harassment or not." To help clarify the problem and some strategies for putting a stop to it, Schmidt produces a senior-year "Last Five Weeks Program" at Agnes Scott that includes guest lectures on office politics and sexual harassment in graduate school and career settings. By definition, harassment involves unwelcome sexual advances, verbal or physi- cal (see box, page 15) and extends to con- duct that creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment. _14 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FAIL 1994 WHAT STME BIG DEAL, CAN'T YOU TAKE A JOKE? /*Sif'*^^'^'''?'*-*^*-v5PiP( ESfesS Since Anita Hill accused then-Supreme Court candidate Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, the issue has sharply focused. Wellesley College Center for Research on Women has a Sexual Harassment in Schools Project headed hy Nan Stein. She has received complaints of sexual harass- ment among adolescents in inner city-urhan and rich suburban schools. Public outrage was clearly expressed in a California jury's recent award of $7.1 mil- lion in punitive damages to a former law secretary who experienced repeated inci- dents of sexual harassment during her three- months employment in the world's largest law firm, Baker & McKenzie. From day to day, women ponder how they, their co-workers or their daughters should deal with harassment. Martha Langelan, author ot a land- mark book, Back Off! How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harass- ment and Harassers , proposes that sexual harassment must be dealt with swiftly by direct confrontation that should name the offensive behavior, without preface or apol- ogy. A demand for the offending behavior to cease should be reinforced by eye contact and an 1-mean-business stance. This need not be elaborate or shrill: She describes one woman on a crowded bus who, realizing that a man was taking advantage of the crush to So you'll know it when you encounter it The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission defines sexual harassment as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature. The harassment must carry the implication that submission is explicitly or implicitly a term or condi- tion of an individual's employment, and that one's submission or rejection of such conduct will become the basis for employment decisions. Sexual harass ment also occurs when such conduct has "the purpose or effect of unrea- sonably interfering with an indivi- ual's work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment." 15 STOPPING THE NIGHTMARE -I^t.. ......*..*.. ..J. paw her derriere, reached around, grabbed his arm, held it high, and said loudly, "What was this hand doing on my ass?" Harriet King '64, vice provost for academic affairs at Emory Law School in Atlanta, believes confrontation is ideal but not always possible. "It depends on your personality and the situation," she says. Kim Lamkin Drew '90, a public relations specialist who has used confrontation effectively, concurs. At trade shows, she says, "Most of the women are exhibitors the men call them 'booth bimbos' and their job is to draw men in and hand out trinkets. "These men talk to me as if I were a 12-year-old," she continues. "I usually say, calmly, 'Why'd you say that to me?' Then I move into my demonstration of the techni- cal equipment." This, she reports, usually leaves potential harassers tongue-tied. As with battering and rape, sexual harassment is not about sex. "It's about power," says King. "It's a reminder that you're in a world where you're really not wanted." King finds that women of all ages are harassed; however, younger women may be openly propositioned, while older women endure things like crude jokes. That harassment is related to issues of power (as is sexual discrimination) is especially evident in the double-barreled approach that some harassers aim at African American women. Civil Rights activist Fanny Lou Hamer told of a white man lifting her dress while she stood in a voter registration line. Author Langelan notes that companies harboring sexual harassment tend to tolerate racism, as well. Even so, it's a problem made trickier by some harassers' responses to the recent blitz of media attention. Some are dressing up their bad behavior in strange camouflages. King describes one: "Colleagues will say to me, 'This is a sexist joke and since I know you won't mind it, I'll tell it.' " A sure-fire sign that you have been harassed, according to Langelan, is a sense of danger. In recollections shared by polled alumnae, danger and embarrassment lin- gered, years after the events. Most who acknowledged being harassed were anxious that identities not be mentioned. Asked why, one recent graduate replied, "Because I feel so ineffective .... You think no one will believe you or might ask what you are doing to encourage it." That fear has a familiar ring to Cornelia Wallace '31, who never experienced harass- ment but observed plenty. "In bygone years, if a woman went to another employer and mentioned that [sexual harassment] was the reason she left [her previous job], they didn't want to hire her. She was viewed as a trou- blemaker," she says. A survey of 9,000 women by Working Woman magazine survey belies the survival of this type of double jeopardy: 25 percent of women who experi- enced sexual harassment were fired or forced to quit their jobs, whether they reported the harassment or not. No wonder women are angry. To whom might they report harass- ment? The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission the very agency that Clarence Thomas once directed? The Anita Hill saga in 1991 certainly amplified the dilemma. When Hill blew the whistle on Thomas, she became a target for searing scorn, much of it from women. A U.S. News and World Report survey at the time of the hearings showed that just 20 percent of respondents believed Hill and only eight percent thought the Senate Judiciary Committee's treatment of her was unfair. Sixty-nine percent of men believed Thomas and only 24 percent of women believed Hill. It's maddening but true: More than half of the women who report harassment find that nothing happens to the one who harasses. Indeed, Clarence Thomas got a Supreme appointment. But Hill has blown the lid off a kettle of pent-up rage. By 1992, the percentage of women who believed Hill doubled, and the percentage of men who believed Thomas dropped to 44 percent. "The Anita Hill hearings served a great pur- pose. They brought the whole topic of sexu- al harassment into polite circles of conversa- tion," explains Juliana Winters '72, a senior trial attorney with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) who serves as a legal adviser to the FAA Harassment Helpline. King agrees. "The climate has changed a lot," she says. Businesses have snapped to attention and are scrambling to set policies. New employees now may hear a statement of such policies at orientation. One of Drew's employers requires all employees to sign a statement that they understand the firm's strict policy and will abide by it, or risk immediate dismissal. A recent Agnes Scott graduate says that her employer "set up special counselors that employees go to 16 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FALL 1994 for counseling on how to deal with situa- tions, first by confronting the person. It it doesn't stop, you go to the counselor to plan the next action, which may lead to discipli- nary action." This young woman is currently working with such a counselor to confront a co-worker's unwanted sexual advances that had progressed to physical contact. Unfortunately, many companies are giv- ing impressive lip service while below the gumline, harassment flourishes. Drew sug- gests sniffing out harassment halitosis during job interviews by inquiring, in a non-threat- ening manner, about the company's policy. She says, "If the employer says, 'Oh, that would never happen here,' it should raise your suspicions." According to Langelan, there are three types of harassers. Predators harass as a sexual pastime. Dominators harass to boost their egos (for some, she says, this is a trial run for more aggressive behaviors, including rape). Strategists harass in a cold, calculated attempt to assert territory. Strategists don't just want to humiliate, they want to humiliate and undermine in a crowded elevator, or before an auditorium full of colleagues and their target is the woman on the rise. While some studies have shown that women with low self-esteem and pink-collar jobs are likely victims, the survey by Working Women magazine found that the higher a woman rises, the more likely she is to be harassed. In these hard-bitten times of corporate downsizing and restructuring, strategic harassment has been elevated to a high art. And it sometimes comes from the most amazing places, including from other women. One pushing-fifty alumna, whose achievements were threatening to her female boss, was floored when the boss insinuated that there was hanky-panky going on between the alumna and a 28-year-oId male co-worker. Whatever the type and source of harassment, experts advise keep- ing a written account of harass- ment, even if a law suit seems unlikely at the time. The date, place, the exact words used or description of the offending behav- ior, and names of witnesses should be noted. These notes will help an uncertain victim recognize, after three or four notations, that there is indeed harassment. The written record is especially important if harassment is a pattern of institutionalized behavior that is coming from several difterent directions. The log is essential it harassment escalates and a formal challenge becomes necessary. Author Langelan suggests that network- ing in school, on the job, in the neighbor- hood builds a powerful challenge to harassment. For one thing, victims who feel they have been singled out learn otherwise by hearing others' stories. For another, there is nothing that intimidates a harasser like the thought of having "15 angry women on his case." It's a strategy especially suited to Agnes Scott women. As former Return-to-CoUege student Lyn Smith Deardorft '84 observes, Agnes Scott alumnae do not go naked into the world: "We take our friendships, culture, nurturing and caring with us into the workplace." A number of poll respondents reinforced this. They mentioned mentoring their daughters and other women on dealing with sexual harassment, even when in despair about their own situations. Lynne Wilkins Fulmer '67 volunteers with a program that provides encouragement for harassment victims to take legal action and a coach to see them through the process. As studies and hearings plumb the depths of harassment, it's become clear that it begins much earlier than previously thought. Stein who heads the Wellesley sex- ual harassment project notes that children may not choose certain activities or classes because of harassment. In a New York Times column she said harassment poisons the environment and reinforces the idea that school is not a safe or just place. Discipline is a critical part of the solution, according to Stein. "Many high school boys we've interviewed said no one ever told them that they couldn't act like this. Their behavior had been accepted throughout grade school and middle school." In this decade of challenges to sexual harassment, at least one schoolgirl and her mother have been publicly ridiculed since calling attention to the harassment that girls endure in schools, from little boys who are simply modeling their behavior on what they see and what goes unchallenged. There's a message in this for Scottie home- makers who thank their lucky stars that they're not in the middle of this corporate mess. Guess what. Moms and Grandmoms. You're our best hope. Jane Zanca '83 is a writer for the American Cancer Society in Atlanta. w^^y don't w WORK PURIMG REGULAR HOURS AT THE OFFICE? STOPPING THE NIGHTMARE A CULTURAL IMMERSION Thirteen accomplished women artists join photographer Pinky Bass '58 on a pilgrimage to Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexico By Celeste Pennington Photography by Paul Ohregon 18 Thin, sharp palm fronds stick up, bright green against a brilliant sky. Worshipers mostly women and children walk across the dusty plain toward the 16th century Santiago Monasterio de Cuilapan for the blessing of the palms. "When we sing, it gives us joy even if we don't sing very well," a young woman explains in Speinish. She joins others along ancient stone walls. A priest sprinkles the crowd with holy AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FALL 1994 Over a pcrind oj six months, women artists dip into another culture as during the Blessing of the Palms at the ancient Monasterio de Cuilapan (left) then produce works culminating in an exhibit, "Bi'locacions" at a local gallery. Alumna Kitty Couch (below) suspends her sculpture of a dog made from pdpier mache; photographer Bass's mixed media reinterprets the sacred iiruxge. water. "The two Americans with palms. They are believers," an old man says and gestures toward two women in their midst. The women are fine art photographers from Alabama, on sabbatical in Mexico's southernmost state of Oaxaca [wah HAH kah]. Marion McCall "Pinky" Bass '58, a Bible major at Agnes Scott and former Presbyterian missionary to Mexico, is the organizer; with her is McLeod Turner of Mobile. "I'm looking for things not of this world," says Bass, equipped with a tape recorder and camera to collect the milagros of the moment. This Palm Sunday she and Turner have broken away from the group of primarily Southeastern artists painters, potters, sculp- tors to be a part of the pre-Easter obser- vance. "A month to direct myself in a place like this offers such an opportunity for growth," says Turner. "To be around so many artists has been wonderful." "To be around so many artists has been wonderful." 19 A CULTURAL IMMERSION "With pencil in hand, the image I produce is basically up to me. But I can't orchestrate photography. My manner of working is not to preconceive. So it always comes out a surprise. Always." For each of the dozen artists, the pil- grimage to Oaxaca whether for a few weeks or several months offers the opportunity to live simply, to immerse oneself in another culture and to take time to retreat, to reflect, to work. Among the six gathered through the Holy Week is Agnes Scott alumna Clara Rountree "Kitty" Couch '43, a North Carolina ceramic sculptor and Bass's frequent collaborator. On this trip. Couch connects with Enedina Enriquez-Lopez, a native potter. As the two women work in clay. Couch has learned con- versational Spanish. Constance J. Thalken (her photos will be on exhibit at the ASC Dana Gallery through December 9) has a BFA from Yale and teaches photography at Georgia State University. Equipped with a Spanish dictio- nary and an old Mamiya press camera each day she catches a taxi or bus and sets out to photograph a different site. Bass, who often photographs with home- made pinhole cameras (she built a two-story pinhole camera for the Atlanta Arts Festival one year), moves back and forth from shoot- ing and developing film to printing in the darkroom set up in her quarters at the Hotel Xandu. For her, the art of photography is full of unorthodox choices and surprise. From a roll of film, she may select the frame accidentally thrown out of focus. She has used a slide projector as an enlarger she has sewn together her photographic images. On one print she may pour Clorox. She may select the frame with multiple exposures for another. "I get bored" she explains, "if 1 don't try new things." A self-described mystic, Bass is constantly pushing her boundaries. "With pencil in hand, the image 1 produce is basically up to me," she explains, "but 1 can't orchestrate this." Working with black-and-white film and 32x40-inch paper, her images are emo- tionally charged, haunting often unexpect- ed, even to Bass. "My manner of working is not to preconceive. So it always comes out a surprise. Always. "When my work is very personal and when it transcends me this is my goal." Each artist finds different expression. Alumna Couch and Oaxaca area artist Enedina Enriquez-Lopez (above) talk arid joke in Spanish as they shift pottery shards and prepare to fire pottery in an earthen kiln at Enriquez home in Santa Maria de Atzompa; at right, ahamta Bass sifts through a stack of oversized prints . 20 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FALL 1994 21_ A CULTURAL IMMERSION "I came here to find to rediscover my voice. I live in both worlds." With dust trailing, the Chevy Blazer bumps along roads that connect the barrios. Bass, with a van-load of artists in tow, may cut a swath through a dry river bed that divides one tiny community from another or, like today, nose the vehicle up a narrow, winding road toward prehistoric ruins. First, she has stopped to pay respects to native friends and to pick up twice mayor of nearby Santiago Suchilquitongo, Vidal Cruz Vasquez. When the uphill trail fades into a foot path, Bass parks, and the silver-haired Vasquez leads to the excavation site of steep, white pyramid-like structures. Aztec Indians may have founded Oaxaca, but Zapotec and Mixtec Indians were here when European Christians arrived, Vasquez explains. On the site of worship and burial of an earlier civilization, Vasquez's own generation has planted a cross. Mexico, with its striking layer-on-layer of culture, folkways and religion, affords the Vidal Cruz Vasquez (above) , recounts how he helped a German archeologist remove wheel' harrow after wheelbarrow of rocks to excavate a portion of the pyramid-like ruins outside Oaxaca. As Bass and Vdsquz chat in Spanish (right), Couch examines pieces of pottery she finds near the site. Couch travels extensively, having served as an artist-in-residence in Italy and studied pottery -making in India and Nepal. "Why not experience those other worlds?" 22 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FALL 1994 artists an interesting context both tor examining matters of taith and for making inward journeys. After the loss of several loved ones, Couch is learning how people in different cultures view death and is expressing that in her art. Earlier, Couch spent three months at the University of Cuenca in Ecuador, teaching ceramics and studying native cus- toms related to aging and death. Bass, whose work is introspective and self-revealing, keeps detailed journals and encourages the other artists to do the same. Mornings, they gather to talk about their dreams, each other's work, grants, books, a cure for turista or ingredients tor toco sopa. Evenings are also loosely structured for time to share meals and interact. Bi-locacions, the artists have named the culminating exhibit of their work here. "I came here to find to rediscover my voice," says Bass who lived in Mexico from 1962-66 and returns frequently to Oaxaca. "I live in both worlds," 23 A CULTURAL IMMERSION "My whole object is to pursue my photography" she says. "I've got all these negatives. What I want to do now is go home and print. . . ." A tew small jars of paint still stand in a box outside the kitchen door inside, negatives dangle from a clothespin in the kitchen-studio- living room at the Hotel Xandu two garlic cloves hang above the sink where Bass pours a coffee pot of boiling water to rinse the breakfast dishes and then makes an iodine-water solution for soaking small, ripe tomatoes. Behind the hotel, in a space populated with bedsprings and a pomegranate tree, Couch builds a fire in the bottom of a rusted oil drum-tumed-kiln, spreads the ashes around, then sets pottery inside. "Hear that draft going?" she asks as the sound of the fire crackles and grows to a soft roar. She gathers more wood to build a second fire on top of the plates. "1 can do this because these pieces have already been fired." Otherwise, she says, grinning, "they would blow up." As Couch stirs the flame, she talks about how smoke from the fire will penetrate the clay, giving it a softer, dark patina. 24 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FALL 1994 This is among the last of their projects in just a few days, Couch, Bass and the final group of artists will pack up their belongings and head back to the United States. On Maundy Thursday, the group drives into the provincial capital, the City of Oaxaca, for a meal. Then with the pre- Easter throng, they move slowly from cen- turies-old cathedral to cathedral and on into Zocalo, the stylish central plaza. For six months, Bass has had the hectic pleasure of providing a place for a dozen other artists to share ideas and work and the opportunity to resume life in her other world. Now she is eager to finish the work only begun here. "My whole object is to pursue my photography" she says. "I've got all these negatives. NX'Tiat I want to do now is go home and print. . . . "The camera transforms," explains Bass. "When I took photography, it was, 'Oh, this is what I had been looking for all my life.' " The art of living simply and the joy of native hospitality draw Bass and Couch back to Oaxaca. "If you wake up and you hear music, if you can't go to sleep, follow the music," advises Bass . "Wherever you find music, you will find a party. And even though you are a stranger, the people will invite you in , and treat you as a special guest. " 25 A CULTURAL IMMERSION HIRE EDUCATION By Mary Alma Durrett When Mary Jordan graduated from ASC in May, she was one of 1.2 million college students looking for a job. How she found one is the result of self- motivation and assistance from the college's Office of Career Planning and Counseling. This September, with video camera in tow, Mary Jordan '94 found herself jetting toward one of the biggest national stories of the year: the shift in power in Haiti and America sending troops there. Just a tew months earlier she had been knee-deep (literally) in one of the most dramatic regional stories of 1994 the muddy overflow of the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers in south Georgia and Alabama. Both times, she was right where she wanted to be, riding the crest of a break- ing news wave. One of 1.2 million students graduating with bachelor's degrees in 1993-94, this Tallahassee native began working for a CBS affiliate station in Dothan, Ala., before the ink on her diploma was two days old. Parlaying her English literature degree and good looks into a news reporting slot for WTVY-TV, Jordan saw an aggressive job hunt and years of preparation pay off. By all accounts, Jordan seemed to know instinctively how to shape a career plan and pursue a job. Carolyn Wynens, manager of community relations and special events, who oversaw Jordan at work one summer, says that very early in her first year, Jordan "just wowed us with desire and spunk. She brought by a sort of marketing plan of what she could do for us. We were amused and delighted by it and eventually she went to work for us. She was just as young and just as wide eyed as the typical student but the difference was in her focus." With a predetermined interest in public relations and past work experience in the field, "she seemed to have incredible clarity of purpose." While her purpose shifted slightly when she was exposed to news reporting, her drive suffered none tor the shift. After an intern- ship at CNN in Atlanta, she pursued an exchange semester in journalism at American University in Washington, D.C., (covering the White House), then a news reporting internship at Channel 5 in Atlanta. In addition to garnering work experience in her field of interest, she sought help from people in the profession, both alumnae and non-alumnae, and worked after hours to gain extra skills and to edit her own promotional video. The result: a job secured before graduation. Jordan was indeed a natural. She used the Office of Career Planning and Counseling occasionally for resource materials and served on its student Career Advisory Board, but for the most part, was self-motivated. Most students need a hit more assis- tance in getting their career motors running. Many are unsure of selecting a major, let alone a career, so they go through the "soul searching" process with tests and interest assessments before they can identify and narrow the field of options. For these students, career planning offers the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Strong Campbell Interest Inventory and SIGI-Plus computer program, all tools for determining interest or identifying specific jobs that match interest. For seniors, the options are many. At the beginning of each year, CP&C sends each senior a Job Choices magazine, produced by the College Placement Council, which relays up-to-date information about the job market. They also receive a calendar of workshops and recruitment visits available through CP&C, a sample resume, and a "Senior Time Line" of what should be done by what time. Before graduation, CP&C offers seniors these opportunities: September and October: Initial dis- cussions with the career counselors and numerous resume writing and interviewing skills workshops. November: Mock interviews on video taped and evaluated by the CP&.C staff. December: Begin to organize for job 26 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FALL 1994 GARY MEEK PHOTO search and start networking with friends, family and professionals. January: Time for extemships, to research companies and to begin writing cover letters for the Resume Recruitment Program. FEBRUARY: Sign-ups for on-campus interviews with potential employers. March: CP&C encourages students to apply for numerous job positions. April: "The Last Five Weeks" series of evening workshops prepares the soon-to-be graduates for apartment- or house-hunting, establishing credit, office or graduate school politics, confronting sexual harassment, cre- ating a professional image through dress, and saying good-bye to friends. Holly Demuth '95 from Kingsport, Tenn., has followed career planning's advice since her earliest college days. She remembers entering Agnes Scott with intentions of pur- suing math but becoming disillusioned. Once the math moved away from numbers toward the more theoretical aspects, she says, "I kind of lost interest. But I enjoyed the practical applications of math within chemistry. Advisers helped me select chemistry as my major. I began going to career planning after taking a Myers-Briggs test. Staff there helped me find out who I am and what I wanted in general. They helped me put in concrete terms what was important to me." Amy Schmidt, director of CPSiC since 1986, says "Not ever>' student is ready to deal with certain issues at the same time." Many first-year students are wcirking through homesickness others bring more difficult problems from home (insecurity, abuse, eating disorders, etc.) that need to be confronted before tackling career- related questions. The desire to address the students' needs more holistically and to increase use of the services (286 students used the career coun- seling office in 1993-94, 101 students required the services of the personal coun- selor) lead to the consolidation of personal and career counseling areas this past year. With the consolidation came a formal name change from career planning and placement to career planning and counseling. "What's fairly neat about our arrangement is that although we are unified, geographically we remain separate," says Schmidt who directs both areas. With services from the two offices, ASC students should be able to attain "the general wellness model of personal development and growth" for which Schmidt and her staff encourage students to strive. As a result of consolidation, career and personal counsel- ing areas will be working collaboratively. One of the first such projects: an eight-week series of self-esteem sessions conducted by Margaret Shirley '81, the personal counselor, and CP&C Assistant Director Kathy King. "There's a lot that we would like to do that would take multiple sessions," King points out, "but it's difficult to get a commitment to that." Getting students in significant numbers to come to workshops remains a challenge. Low attendance can be "discouraging," admits King, but she and Schmidt and the Student Career Advisory Board are constantly trying out new ways to bring students in, through innovative programming and scheduling. "1 want to try to [target] programs more directly to student organizations." "I'm really not sure why students don't use [the center] more," says Demuth. "1 think for many people coming face-to-face with the future can be very frightening." Some students think they need a detailed plan for the future, before engaging the help of career planning. Yet CP&C has resources for students at various stages of inquiry. Finding a ioh takes p[anning and determinatioii. English liicrature major Mary ]ordan '94 (left, on assignment in Conyers, Ga.,) parlayed aggressive job huntir\g arid years of prepa- ration to shape a career in television news reporting. She now works for WTVY- TV, an Alabama station. 27 HIRE EDUCATION MARY AIMA DURREn PHOTO Career Advisory Board Members 1994-95 Carrie Mastromarino '96, chair Annette Dumford '95 Keri Randolph '97 Jackie Reynolds '96 Leigh Feagin '97 Margie Weir '98 Rohin Penr '96 Akeley David '97 Becky Wilson '97 Amanda Daws '98 Sasha Mandic '97 Tomekia Strickland '97 MAT student Aunee Turner, right, xvith Kathy King, assistant director of Career Planning aivd Counseling, who directs a resume-writing workshop in the career library. including a career library with 800 books, periodicals and tapes. Many students, she acknowledges, are at the "I don't have any idea what I want to do stage." Often, Schmidt will recommend that these students should sample fields of inter- est through internships, extemships or shadow experiential programs. This past year, 43 students participated in 46 internships in the Atlanta metropolitan area lasting from a few weeks to a full semes- ter. Twenty-three students participated in week-long extemships (75 percent of which were sponsored by alumnae of the College). Twelve students took advantage of 14 one- day experiences "shadowing" professionals. Schmidt recommends these programs as ways of trying different careers. Recalls Demuth: "I followed two pharmacists in my hometown of Kingsport. One pharmacist was in a hospital and one was in a [free- standing] pharmacy. By the end ot the expe- rience, she says, "1 realized I didn't want to 'lick, stick and count.' That profession had seemed very appealing to me, hut I found that it required a gross amount of education for the work performed from day to day." Often short-term work experiences afford students' learning as much about what they do not want to do as what they want to do. At Agnes Scott, experiential programs are enhanced by alumnae involvement. CP&C has a database of 1 ,800 alumnae who serve as resource people for students shop- ping the job market. Now in the planning stages is a Sophomore Mentoring Program to connect each sophomore with an alum- nae mentor in a matching field of interest. Convincing students that career planning is important and fun remains a constant challenge to Schmidt. In one effort to accomplish that, during orientation CP&C served as host site for a focus group session using the SIGI-Plus computer software program. Yet statistical findings in career planning should be enough to sway the doubtful. The 1995 job Choices magazine reported a recent sur- vey of liberal arts graduates showing that students who used a college career center received more job offers, received their offers earlier, and received higher starting salary offers than those who did not use the center. Demuth does not view the role of career planning as a "job placement agency." Agrees Jordan, "It's up to the student to go beyond what they learn in CP&C and fight for the position they want." She took the advice of ABC television correspondent Sam Donaldson, who said, "When everyone else was at home sleeping, I was in the news room working." When she returned from her Washington semester she was admittedly "obsessed with getting a job." She landed an internship with WAGA-TV in Atlanta and often worked as late as 3 or 4 a.m. to get experience. Jordan and others agree with Schmidt's most basic admonition: "You can't expect somebody else to lay out a path for you." 28 AONF.S SmTTCni I Fr.p FAM IQQ4 THE CP&C STAFF ASC's Office of Career Planning and Counseling offers Scotties guidance and support in the quest for jobs after graduation. The counseling services of Agnes Scott College, overseen by the Office of the Dean of Students, were recent- ly reorganized. Career counseling, personal advising and multicultural counseling are now unified under Career Planning & Counseling but are housed in two locations. "We wanted career plan- ning to be right in the middle of everything; we wanted people to trip over us," comments Amy Schmidt, director of career planning and counseling. So the decision was made to keep that office on the first floor of Agnes Scott Hall. "There was also a need for the personal counseling offices to be off the beaten path." In addition, personal counseling needed more space for group sessions, discrete access to the counselors, an office for the newly- named advisor for multicultural affairs, Karen Green '86, and an office for volunteer activities with the College Chaplain, the Rev. Paige M. McRight '68, who is also affiliated with CP&C. So the Center for Counseling and Multicultural Affairs (per- sonal counseling), was created this fall and is on the first floor of Winship Residence Hall. Margaret Shirley '81, the personal counselor, notes, "We wanted to legitimize counseling here and this was a move to do that." Members of the CP&C staff include: Amy Schmidt: Director, career planning and counseling, since 1986. Received master's degree in college student personnel adminis- tration and counseling and guidance from Indiana University in 1978. Her undergrad- uate degree in English and psychology was from Centre College in Danville, Ky. Before coming to Agnes Scott, she served six years as one of two career counselors for Memphis State University and for two years as assis- tant director of career planning for Indiana University. Her office is in Main. Kathy King: Assistant director since March. Having come from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., King served as student services specialist and career coun- selor in career services before moving to the Atlanta area. She received her master's degree in community/agency counseling in 1992 from Old Dominion and her B.S. in education in 1976 from West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her office is in Main. Margaret Shirley '81: Personal counselor since 1987. Received her master's degree in counseling from Georgia State University and her undergraduate degree in psy- chology from Agnes Scott. Her office is in Winship. Paige M. McRight '68: The Julia Thompson Smith Chaplain of the College since August. McRight is affiliated with CP&C and splits her time between the Center for Counseling and Multicultural Affairs in Winship. An ordained Presbyterian minister, McRight was most recently associate pastor of First Presbyterian Church in St. Petersburg, Fla. She received her M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1971. Her bachelor's degree is in Bible. Her office, across from the chapel, is on the upper level of Alston Center. Karen Green '86: Advisor for multicul- tural affairs at ASC since August. Green is employed part-time and is working on a master's of divinity degree at the Candler School of Theology at Emory. She returned to Agnes Scott after serving as director of multi-cultural affairs at Hamilton College in Hamilton, N.Y., for four years. Previously, Green served as director of student activities and housing at Agnes Scott after receiving her bachelor's degree from ASC. Her office is in Winship. Misty DumaS: Secretary since July 1 993 . Dumas came to Decatur from Eureka, Calif She received an associate degree in police science from the College of the Redwoods in 1985. Dumas has an office in Main. A Summary of Career Planning Services t/ Individual Career Counseling i/ Myers-Briggs Type Indicator t/ SIGI-PIus computer program t/ Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory v^ Career Advisory Board (all student members) ^ Career Workshops ^ Convocations featuring career-related speakers ^ Alumnae database for networking and men- tors (1,800 names) ^ New student orientation Prospective students assist admission office t/ Extern, intern, shadow experiential programs Career library (800 resources) "The Last Five Weeks" Series 29 HIRE EDUCATION J^% FIFTY YEARS AGO- i A REMEMBRANCE To reach Agnes Scott, some of us traveled by train from far away Mother and I hoarded in west Texas and the trains were crowded with young men in uniform . It was a dressy occa- sion; we wore high heels arid hats . As students registered for fall term, we did not guess that many historians would designate 1944 as the must pivotal year of the century . A half century later, the more things change, the more they remain the same. By Marybeth Little Weston Lobdell w e arrived on campus the tall of 1944 wearing high heels and shiny rayon stockings silk and nylon had gone to war. We wore hats. Ladies dressed up when trav- eling, and we were ladies, or tried to he. To reach campus, we traveled by trolley from downtown Atlanta or by family car using saved-up gas coupons and threadbare tires. Some of us traveled by train from tar away Mother and 1 boarded in west Texas, and the trains were crowded with young men in uniform. As we began fall classes. Allied troops entered Germany and the Nazis were bomb- ing London with V-2 rockets. In October, the biggest naval engagement in history, the Battle for Leyte Gulf in the Pacific theater, proved a great victory over the Japanese. Russia moved into Hungary and Yugoslavia. And in November, President Franklin Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term, with Harry Truman as his vice president. World War II was being fought on all sides of the world. Brothers and high school beaus were at boot camp or in submarines, ships, planes ... or on bloody battlefields. Unlike the women who shared some of their hardships or worked in factories, we were privileged teenagers headed for a beautiful shelter in the midst of the storm. Our col- lege, Agnes Scott, took women students seriously and exclusively and we liked that. It also had some limitations and rules that seemed, even then, quaint and a tad eccentric. College women today would find most of the social customs tyrannical. Registering for the 1944-45 first year, we did not guess that many historians would designate this as the most pivotal year of the century. The Allies would overthrow Nazi 30 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FALL 1994 Germany and imperial Japan; lines would he drawn between the Soviets and the West that would remain frozen almost 50 years, and the discovery of the horrors of the Holocaust and the aftermath of Hiroshima would haunt the world's dreams and faith in humanity for generations. But for most of us at college that year, the first-year memories and snapshots seem unbelievably innocent and cocooned. In 1944, most first-year students were 16 or 17 years old; high schools in the South then had only three years. Many of my classmates had been the vale- dictorian or salutatorian of their high school classes. Many had been elected best citizen or best Latin class student or best something. Each of us arri\'ed with big hea\'y trunks packed with cardigan sweaters, short skirts, saddle-shoes and at least one glamorous evening gown even if we didn't know any- one in town (I didn't). We would dine for- mally one night a month on campus, and we hoped to be asked to a big-band dance at then all-male Georgia Tech or Emory University. If we got a nod only from the Cotillion Club on campus, we could still put on a long dress, tromp over to a Victorian parlor in Main, and wistfully practice our dancing skills with each other. Even if male partners were scarce, 1944 music was too good to be missed. Cole Porter gave us "Don't Fence Me In." Harry James played Duke Ellington's "I'm Beginning to See the Light." Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer (from Savannah) wrote "Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive." Judy Garland sang "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," and because my name was Mary Little, friends penned that on my Christmas cards. To go dancing, or out on any date any- where, we had to sign forms in the Dean's office. The questions included the boy's who-what-when-where-why, and how we could he reached the kind of query I would later inflict on my own children for their good and my peace of mind. Agnes Scott expected us home and safe in our beds early. The dorm was a citadel no male could enter except the first and last day of school, to carry luggage. Dean Carrie Scandrett would chat in her office with the young men and tell them to take good care of us, and then she'd wink. She had a win- some smile and a permanent blink, and our befuddled dates swore they didn't know whether she was flirting or telling them to have a real good time with us, wink, wink. In the dormitory, we had one phone for a floor of 24 girls with ears perked for every call. (We called ourseK-es girls then, and I'm o)i the left, with my roommate, Nancy Greer Alexander, and Navy man Allen Reagen and his buddy . To go dancing, or on any date anywhere, we had to sigri forms that asked the boy's who'what'when- where , and how we could be reached. Agnes Scott expected us safe in our beds early . The dorm was a citadel no male could enter. 31 A RaiEMBRANCE Pleated skirt, cardigan, pearls if not typical dress, not unusual either. And the times seemed so peaceful. We were isolated from war. Yet it touched us, too. Much was rationed. But love was not. And in some ways the intensity and poignancy of our letter writing and dating were magnified by the urgency of sometimes still do.) An urgent call came the first week to a student who had a friend at Emory. "Can you line up some girls to come over to the fraternity house to help with Rush?" Oh, we rushed to get there, the biggest snag being that to go anywhere we had to have a senior chaperone. That meant scaring up a wet-behind-the-ears date for an old maid senior, assuming we could scare up a will- ing senior. Many of them, like some of the tirst-year students, were worrying about or grieving over boyfriends or husbands in the war. The quaint rule about senior chaperones had a nice side effect. It quickly acquainted us with upperclass students who showed us the ropes. In no time, we had learned what some women didn't see until the '70s femi- nist revolution: women have a talent for helping friends, and men friends come and go but female friendships are steadfast. Our lights-out curfew on week nights was 10:45 p.m. Most of us spent five or six hours a day studying at the library, and in our brief evenings we combined homework and beauty routines as best we could. Some girls would sit in almost yoga position in our wide dormitory hall, book in lap, fin- gers clenched in front of the bosom, pulling, never wasting a moment trying to change an A cup to a B while changing a B grade to an A. Others would stand while reading, gently bumping the wall, hoping to expand the mind while reducing the derriere. The dorm's stately architecture held together while we tried to re-do our own. We talked after turning off the lights, often of love, often of race and religion, sometimes of war. Because we were an all- girls school, we learned what we could about "the real world" by reading and by imagination and discussion. I remember intense conversations in the dating parlors, only a few steps from the Dean's office, all doors open. We learned to sympathize with the plight of literary lovers separated by custom and decree Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, even Bottom's ludicrous Pyramus and Thisbe. We were an all-white school, as well, not by rule but because no one of another race had yet applied, and no one had been recruited. Many of us had known "colored people" we respected as children, but grownup interracial friendships were rare. Our era preceded even Driving Miss Daisy , but we were sensitive to injustice and scorn- ful of some parents' attitudes. 1 think of other mental snapshots: The day-students who were such good orga- nizers of their own time and of class poli- tics some were scholarship students with jobs, and some were to be Atlanta debu- tantes. Bright autumn days when the tennis and field hockey players made us all long to be athletes. Dormitory ironing boards, always in use, for pressing blouses and dress- es and even veils for the hats we wore on Sundays. We did not need a chaperone to go to church and see some of Atlanta and have a long lunch. Southern food was not called soul food then, but that's what we liked at Mammy's Shanty and Aunt Fanny's Cabin. The greatest preacher we heard was the handsome Scotsman Peter Marshall, who was made even more famous by his Agnes Scott wife, Catherine Marshall, in her book, A Man Called Peter. We went to operas and concerts. The first live symphony I ever heard was in the old auditorium with wooden floors where the Atlanta Symphony played. I did not realize then that the orchestra was also in its first year. I remember my blush when a Tech boy lightly put his hand on mine at the end of the first movement, for I had clapped, alone, not knowing I should wait until all that glory was at an end. He was gallant and told me later it had given him a good excuse. The year 1944 produced no little excite- 32 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FAIL 1994 ment in literature: T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets; W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge a popular book and later a movie; Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie and Georgian Lillian Smith's Strange Fruit images of southern lite new to the rest of the country, and even to most ot us. Faculty members sometimes talked with us about what they were reading and what we might enjoy come summer. Their con- cern for us during the pressures of exam week had brought about a dated but endear- ing tradition: tea at the Candler building, complete with pretty teacups and polite conversation with faculty members. In the midst of the squalor of exam week, it was encouraging to know they still considered us part of their community of scholars. Of course, there were rumors that all was not pure innocence in this Adamless Eden. It was whispered that some students had enjoyed forbidden puffs of cigarettes at the nearby Decatur depot. The only place Agnes Scott students could smoke was in a private home, but cig- arettes were in short supply and were, in fact, considered thoughtful hostess gifts. Meat, cheese, canned goods, gasoline, even shoes were rationed. Wages, salaries and prices were frozen in 1943 to forestall infla- tion. We were fnigal in everything except, as I recall, splashing on perfumes: Prince Matchabelli and Wind Song. Somehow they just didn't linger like our mothers' pre-war French perfume. Love is not rationed in wartime, and in some ways the intensity and poignancy of our letter writing and dating were magnified by the urgency of war. No one knew when this war would end. No one knew who would live beyond 18 or 19. One girl con- fided at a late night talkfest (we never called them anything so indelicate as a bull-ses- sion) that yes, she had gone to "first base, and second base" with a boy gasp but "of course not to third." Most of us thought in our heart of hearts that we were the only ones who liked to be kissed; friends and writers did not confess much then. The college offered a non-credit Marriage Class, but it was limited to those the college thought would need it seniors, and underclasswomen if they were engaged. Our senior lecturer was a married doctor of medicine, pregnant, clearly a good example. (I never heard the word lesbian in college though if asked, we knew Sappho was a poet who lived on an island called Lesbos. A 12- year-old grandchild today probably knows more than we did.) We haunted the mailroom tor letters, but as our first year wore on, we began to see that some of our old hometown throbs did- n't spell too well, or more important, could- n't understand what was so splendid about such things as our cherished honor system. It seemed so clear to us that we would cheat ourselves and friends of a true education if we cheated on a test or paper or helped a buddy cheat. Learning was for the rest of our lives. 1 was even disappointed in a Texas beau who tailed to fathom my excite- ment in "heaven in a wildtlower, eternity in an hour." But by then, we were dazzled by the new company we kept Sophocles, Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Bach, Moliere, Darwin, Dickinson, Freud and our frequent campus visitor, poet Robert Frost. Even for first-year students, the emphasis was on the eternal. In that amazing year, it was not the pro- fessors who were isolated; it was we who wore blinders because of our youth and our backgrounds. Yet I am truly thankful now for that place of quietness, despite our insular self-absorption. 1 am glad the profes- sors did not drop everything to teach cur- rent events. In hindsight 1 think our alum- nae were made strong by an old-fashioned liberal arts education, serious theological searchings, examination of conscience about politics and race, and long discussions not just about men but about humankind. We each had a seemingly impractical but, in fact, powerfijl preparation for a life ahead full of surprises and hard questions, some- times unanswerable. We were lucky in the company we kept schoolmates who cared and played fair, professors who respected our academic honor and work, and the great men and women whose words and music we read and heard, whose paintings and experiments and decisions we pondered. College students still need, 1 believe, the chance to prepare for their own turbulent times by losing themselves in the timeless. Despite our difference in dress and deco- rum, and certainly in dance music, students today have made the same fortunate choice in Agnes Scott that we did. Marybeth Little Weston Lobdell '49 lives in New York City . Our alumnae were made strong by an old-fashioned liberal arts educa- tion, serious theo- logical searchings, examination of conscience about politics and race, and long discus- sions about humankind. We had an impractical but, in fact, pow- erful preparation for a life ahead full of surprises and hard questions. 33 A REMEMBRANCE ON CAMPUS Computers now link ASC with the world . . . and with new possihilities . MARY AIMA DURREH PHOTO From a computer ter- minal in Australia, he types via Internet to his girlfriend at Agnes Scott: I don't want to be apart like this Willa. I want to be with you to stay! She responds: I want to be with you. . . . If this sounds like mod- em romance, it is. Two years ago, Willa Hendrick- son '94, now a Scott-Free Year 5 student, and EXincan Mclntyre, a psychology major at the Australian National University in Canberra, met through a computer game with an international mix of players on Internet, the world's largest com- puter network. Internet enables computers of all kinds including thou- sands from universities, corporations and govern- ment offices around the globe to communicate with one another). Hendrickson kept "run- ning into" Mclntyre as they played on Internet. Over a period of months, the two developed a rela- tionship separated by thou- sands of miles but connect- ed by technology. By this past fall, when Agnes Scott's Information Technology Enhancement Program (ITEP) got on line with Internet, Hendrickson could pick up her long-dis- tance computer communi- cation at Agnes Scott. As it turned out, the prelude to Mclntyre's telephone pro- posal of marriage was via the computer. Students like these are finding that with ITEP, the campus bulletins can be read by E-mail (set up for private messages), and on- line database searches to remote locations can be conducted (a grant from the National Science Foundation pays the fee for ASC's unlimited use of Internet). According to Tom Maier, director of informa- tion technology services, virtually all staff and fac- ulty and about 40 percent of the students are using the computer network. Students not yet linked to the net- work in their residence hall rooms are in a "period of discovery," says Maier. "Students wanted to see the value of E-mail, the electronic access to library systems and other Internet resources. Now that they've seen the benefits they want to get connected." Kim Wright '95, the stu- dent representative on the Students, suijj andjaculty are using the campus' new Information Technology Enhancement Program (ITEP), but few have used it more successfully than Willa Hendrickson and Duncan Mclntyre of Australia. The pair met and fell in love communicating over Internet, the international computer linkup. telecommunications com- mittee for ITEP, agrees. "Students wanted cable television and liked the idea of voice mail. But a lot of students didn't under- stand the Internet and its capability." Students are using Internet for study and fun. Hendrickson's long- distance romance began one evening when she and Mclntyre both logged on to a M.U.D. (Multi-User Domain) game. They con- tinued to correspond, first by computer, then by letter. Since then, Hendrick- son and Mclntyre have vis- ited during summer and holiday breaks. Faculty members also are corresponding around the globe. Larry Riddle, chair of the mathematics department, recently put out a network search for the author of an unpub- lished article. Within one day he had a reply. On campus, students have used the network to pass ques- tions to Riddle about homework. "The network is most useful to promote more interaction between students and teacher. We can have a discussion group for a class and students don't necessarily have to call me, but instead can use the computer," Riddle says. Plans for ITEP involve the electronic transfer of information such as tran- scripts. However, this will not occur until security issues have been resolved. Hardware and software 34 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE FALL 1994 CLASSIC security methods now pro- tect the flow of informa- tion to and from campus. Access to individual ac- counts requires a password. Other plans for 1995 include an upgrade to a higher Internet connection speed. Maier says the upgrade is needed because the network is changing from text-based informa- tion to graphics, video and sound. "Video can be used in teleconferencing and distance education. Students would be able to attend lectures at other campuses to see the pro- fessor and ask questions. But the quality of image and sound on computer is not on par with TV yet." Also on the drawing board is the ASC Faculty Development Center that will house four computers equipped to develop multi- media applications for instruction. ASC-TV, the campus television system, began operation in late fall. In addition to cable stations, 10 channels are set aside for satellite campus pro- gramming. The campus channels air taped videos and a bulletin board for community events. In the meantime, Agnes Scott's Willa Hendrickson and Duncan Mclntyre plan a December wedding in Atlanta. After she com- pletes her degree, she will join him in Australia. And Internet? Hendrickson says it will continue to link them with friends in the States and with her father at his com- puter in Atlanta. Audrey Arthur PLUG IN TO AGNES SCOTT Not only can Agnes Scott receive information by network, it can also provide information. Alumnae interested in finding out the latest ASC news or who have questions regarding the College can access Agnes Scott E-mail at the following Internet address: ASCNews@ASC.scottlan.edu. On the same E-mail address, alumnae may receive the ASC Fact Sheet, updated four times a year, by send- ing their E-mail address to Sara Pilger, director of com- munications. "This is in response to alumnae's request to increase the amount and frequency of news from the College," says Pilger. "Alumnae want to use the College's updated technology and this a good match." Farewell to an old campus beauty. On a campus known for trees, the Presser Dogwood stands out. For more than a century* the elegant old dogwood has graced its comer of Agnes Scott. Each spring, its mul- tiple trunks and graceful limbs loft a canopy of white blossoms above the walkway at the west end of Presser Quadrangle. Many know the tree and know its name. But no one seems to know whether it was a planting or the coincidence of a wooded countryside. Whether benign or pur- poseful, it grew undis- turbed and at some point became a backyard tree for a house that once faced McDonough Street. In 1940, houses along the street were razed to make way tor the construc- tion of Presser Hall and the old dogwood was to be cut down. In battles of beauty versus utility, often beauty is sacrificed espe- cially when money is involved. It would cost $10,000, a significant sum even today, to change the plans, relocate the building and save the tree. Yet that happened. "It was a remarkable decision," says Victoria Lambert, manager of cam- pus ser\'ices, "remarkable that it happened. That kind of decision needs to he made today more than ever, and it's even less likely." To make that same decision today would cost $106,000. No records note who made the decision in 1940, of the thinking and argu- ments that went into it. But whoe\'er did left a legacy that has lasted 50 years, and unknowingly created an icon that for many symbolizes the heart of the ASC campus. "It's one of those things that becomes a cultural symbol without the insti- tution even knowing it," says Terry McGehee, pro- fessor of art. "The shape of the tree, with its location, has a presence that's significant beyond the tree itself." Next spring, a self- guided tour ot trees on the Agnes Scott cam- pus will be published. The Presser Dogwood will not be among them. "Each year its leaves are a little bit smaller, a little less dense," laments Lambert. "There is a lichen growing 35 ON CAMPUS AND CLASSIC CLASSIC on it that indicates decay. This year, the leaves are turning and falling much sooner than they should. It's slowly dying." Since Lambert first noticed the tree was trou- bled in 1989, she and her staff have worked to keep the dogwood alive. A pro- fessional tree service has injected it with insecti- cides and fungicides, pruned deadwood, applied soil conditioner and fertil- izer. During times of drought, student gardeners have aerated the soil around its base and watered it copiously. Lambert estimates over the past five years, the College has spent $1,500 trying to keep it alive. It is a tremendously large tree for its species. And old. The severe weather of the past several years too much water this year, too little last has taken its toll. It no longer has the reserves to regain its former vigor. "What's happening to the Presser Dogwood happens to trees all around us," she says. "It has reached the end of it's life." Next year, in February, on the third Friday, Arbor Day will be celebrated on the Agnes Scott campus. Lambert hopes to make it 36 The ci^in^ Presser Diigunutd, ip'ciemg the amipii.s jor >0 years, jaees the jiUe iif itll /ii'iiii^' things. an occasion to celebrate the Presser Dogwood. "It will be a chance for the campus community to say good-bye," she says. A new tree will be planted nearby. Lambert is undecided whether it will he another dogwood. "We've planted hundreds of trees in the past few years," she says. "It will be interesting to see it any of them develop the interest the Presser Dogwood has, though I doubt any will." Sometime after that, the old tree will be cut down. Wliat will happen to the wood from the Presser Dogwood is anyone's guess. Lambert hopes someone will have a grand idea and create something of lasting remembrance. Terry McGehee is work- ing toward that end. The base of the tree and other large portions could be stored tor a year and slowly air dried. Then she would determine how much of the wood is good, how much is rotten, where it splits. Some could be used by students for sculpting and woodcarving. And McGehee could turn the rest of it into something of a remembrance. For McGehee, memo- ries of working with wood date back to childhood. Last summer while inspect- ing a tree downed in Colorado, she found in the middle of it an old saw dat- ing from the mid- 1800s. While she doubts anything will be found in the Presser Dogwood, she says no one knows. Certainly trees, living alongside us on a scale so different from our own, embody whole histories. And occasionally only occasionally one like the Presser Dogwood grows around us, becomes part of our history, and we a part ot it. Bill Bangham is a writer in the Atlanta area EDITOR'S NOTE: J/ 70M have remembrances thoughts, feelings, anecdotes, maybe photographs of the Presser Dogwood that could be incorporated into the celebration on Arbor Day please send them to: Victcrria Lambert Campus Services Agnes Scott College Decatur, GA 30030. AnwRt; cr^oTT noT i cric cat i loo^ ET CETERA Enrollment steady, cops on hikes, historic preservation, faculty giidng, magazines praise ASC, a death in the family and other campus news FAMILY TIES: THE '98 STUDENTS Hopping in the family plane to head to a deserted island for a week- end of camping and fishing is a normal part of life for Jamie Bloomfield, Class of '98. Of course, Bloomfield spent the first 1 7 years of her life in Anchorage, Alaska, and says all of her friends' families used air- planes to travel around the state. "Planes and boats were the only way to get to many areas," she explains. Since the family plane was a float plane, able to land on water, Bloomfield says her favorite place to visit was an island in the middle of a river. "It was far away from anything and was sunounded by beautiful mountains." Bloomfield, who came to Agnes Scott from Growing up in Alasl lengthy monologue or for moving Agnus from her grandparents' house to her gig at the Un Club. With a steady hand, Valerie Case '98 follows Trudy with a spotlight; she crisscrosses the stage, climbs stairs, trans- verses the balcony. Props are sparse and cos- tumes are off-the-rack sixties, seventies, eighties styles, so lighting and sound are the key effects. With 124 light and sound cues, Stanley jokes, "It's looking like a musical." Awe, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found thee. Trudy belts out a big one, crooner style, as part of the final farewell to her space chums and reflects on the many revela- tions about life that she has found during the transcontinental travelogue most notably, the final goose-bump experience that the orig- inal audience was afforded at the Shubert Theatre: Trudy ascends the ramp one last time, hauling her shopping bags and admiring the stars that swirl around her. Maybe we should stop trying to figure out the yneaning of life, sit hack arid enjoy the mystery of life . . . .ak Ft^r the most part, there is a sense of optimism throu^'h- out, that there's something; just around the corner. The Behind'the-Scenes Legend of ASC Stage The primary stage for Blackfriars' produc- tions is the Winter Theatre, housed in the Dana Fine Arts Building designed by John Portman. The theatre was named for Roberta Powers Winter '27 upon her retirement in 1974- Winter was a major force in Agnes Scott's drama department for 35 years, serving as assistant professor, then associate professor, 1939-67, and ultimately as the Annie Louise Harrison Waterman Professor of Speech and Drama from 1967 until 1974. A demanding and prolific director, Winter staged 49 productions dur- ing her tenure. Two of her own plays were published, Bishop Whipple's Memorial in 1927 and Bridal Chorus: A Comedy in Three Acts in 1935. Winter received a degree in mathematics from ASC, was a member ofHOSAC (predecessor to Mortar Board), Phi Beta Kappa and performed many male parts as a student in Blackfriars productions. She completed her M.A. and Ed.D. degrees in edu- cation from New York University in 1939 and 1953, respectively, and studied play writing at Yale University under George Pierce Baker. She died in 1991 at the age of 85, in Berryville, Va. Winter teaching at ASC . 15 IS IT SOUP OR IS IT ART.' MOTHER'S MINK By Christine S. Cozzens Illustration by Ralph Gilbert What do you do with a fur coat you could never wear, yet is and always will be a priceless memory? In the Cdol shadows of the vault at I. Magnin's in Northbrook Court, my mother's mink coat hangs on a rack, its thick tokls stilk its silken Uning silent. A smell of cedar tills the airless chamber, where rows of coats and jackets and stoles encased in their plastic wrappers await the flurry of movement that disturbs the vault each fall when wraps are ushered out to eager own- ers, and again in late spring, when the garments are bundled back into their numbered cells. Some eccentrics slip in and out at odd times, their owners just back from a trip abroad or stirred at last to collect their coats by the opening of the opera season or a holiday invi- tation. Then, still- ness and silence set in once again in the cold dark heart of the swarming shopping mall. From time to time, when he's in a reflec- tive and especially cranky mood, my father calls me up to rehearse a litany of family business do I know where the stock certifi- cates are, have we increased our life insur- ance, have I talked to my brothers and always ends by asking in exasperation, "And what am I going to do about that coat.'" as if it were some nagging relative, forever mak- ing demands. We are agreed that we can't sell the coat. "She would have rather had me give it to a new girlfriend," Dad says, only half joking. "You're right," I say, cringing, because had I been able to do what she wanted me to do for once we wouldn't be having this conversation. For I am the oldest, the only daughter, and mother's mink coat was to have been mine. "I'm doing this for you, you know," my m<"ither said defiantly when she first took me to the fur salon to witness a fitting. In my T-shirt, Indian print skirt, and sandals, I was hardly a candi- date for black wil- low mink lined with mono- grammed satin, and we both burst out laughing at the thought. Two years later to the week, when Mom was lying in a hospital bed sur- rounded by machinery her arms so thin and bruised from IVs that they had to give her the mor- phine in her thigh the mink coat helped her acknowl- edge that she was dying. Gulping oxygen with every word, she pleaded with me in the private language that families share, "Don't let your father take the pads off the dining room table" they had been arguing for years about how to preserve its inlaid sur- face, my father claiming that a "natural pati- na" was the only solution. A little later, having approached the abyss, she continued, her voice weak and muffled by the mask, "I want you to have my mink coat." In one of our what-shall-we-do-about- 16 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE SUMMER 1995 the-coat conversations, I proposed to Dad that we ofter it for a charity auction at the hospital where my mother had worked after the youngest ot us had left home. It was, after all, the money she earned trom that joh and the sense of entitlement it gave her that enabled her finally to achieve her dream of owning a full-length mink coat. Would an auction bring in zinything like the coat's real value, Dad and I asked each other, privately wondering if people would pay money for a chance to own a dead woman's coat. ( 1 have since discovered that "preowned" is the trade euphemism for this circumstance.) I remember how shocked I was that steamy summer day when Mom whispered the price to me in the salon. "Ten thousand dollars!" I gasped. "Shhhhhhh!" she hissed, looking around uneasily, embarrassed for me as she had often been. That was August 1984, ten months after the mastectomy. Now that unspeakable sum seems a small price to have paid for the confidence in the future that purchasing the coat must have given her. Or was it a kind of bargain with fate I can't die as long as I've got so much invested in life? For a while. Dad and 1 tried to give the coat to my sister-in-law, wife of my brother the brain surgeon. Dad had been to a couple of hospital parties where all the doctors' wives were swathed in mink and thought maybe she secretly aspired to the image. But she turned us down. Though it would fit her and she has the delicate looks for it, the mink coat is too heavy a burden, even for a daughter-in-law. "Are you sure you don't want it?" Dad asks me every now and then, but he doesn't wait for an answer. Even if there were enough give in the seams to make the coat several sizes larger, I'm afraid I would look like some hairy behemoth in all that black fur. say ro iiispc lisncl "Where would 1 wear it?" 1 this image. Atlanta winters can be cold enough tor fur, but people dress down tor the parties 1 attend, bringing their children and carrying sloppy casseroles up the driveway from cars bearing the latest environmental slogans. No one in the family has ex'er seriously imagined me wearing mother's mink. 1 am viewed as a sort of an unglamorous sixties Jane Fonda harsh, strident, a defender of trendy radical causes. "You're always mad at someone," Mom would say, her voice rising to a pitch ot frustration, "be nice for a change!" I try to imagine even one situation in which 1 could unselfconsciously wear a full- length black willow mink coat. Like a coat packed away in storage awaiting its owner, this story about my mother's mink lay in my drawer for almost tour years awaiting an ending. Last month my sister-in-law told mc, that my dad's housekeeper told her, that he had given the coat to his girlfriend, a nice widow who gardens and paints and thinks every- thing is man,-elous. In mistaken allegiance to me, my relatives grumble behind Dad's back about this arrangement, but as 1 sus- pect Dad knows, I'm glad that the coat will be worn and enjoyed by someone who understands it as a coat and not a burden. I would like to have been able to wear my mother's mink coat, to have done that one small thing for her. Instead, 1 read the books she kept by her bedside and wrote her name in P.G. Wodehouse, Jane Austen, E.F. Benson, Barbara Pym remember the crossword puzzles she taught me with words like ogee and adit, and write the story she would have read with care, about the impor- tance of a mother's mink coat, asc Cozzuns, associate professor of English, teaches writing and directs the Women's Studies Program at Agnes Scott College. I would like to have been able to wear my mother's mink coat, to have done that one small thing for her. Instead, I read the books she kept at her bedside and write a story she would have read with care. 17 MOTHERS MINK MARK SANDUN PHOTO A PRAYER FOR CHILDREN By Ina Jones Hughs '63 We pray for children who put chocolate fingers everywhere, who hke to be tickled, who stomp in puddles and ruin their new pants, who sneak Popsicles before supper, who erase holes in math workbooks, who can never find their shoes. And we pray for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wires, who've never squeaked across the floor in new sneakers, who never "counted potatoes," who are born in places we wouldn't be caught dead, who never go to the circus, who live in an X-rated world. We pray for children who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions, who sleep with the dog and bury goldfish, who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money, who cover themselves with Band-Aids and sing off-key, who squeeze toothpaste all over the sink, who slurp their soup. And we pray for those who never get dessert, who watch their parents watch them die, who have no safe blanket to drag behind, who can't find any bread to steal, who don't have any rooms to clean up, whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser, whose monsters are real. 18 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE SUMMER 1995 LAURA SIKES PMOIO /yi^ ^ ^m^ 1 J Ia^m m 1 B^^Hp^ 'v^^^^VH Hh f . il I 1 "^ 1 ^^ r ^rl 1 L *^ >J t r V , Pw ^A \^S r *^ p 1 K. -' ^' ^ We pra^i for children who spend all their allowances before Tuesday, who throw tantrums in the grocery store and who pick at their food, who like ghost stories, who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out the tub, who get visits from the tooth fairy, who don't like to be kissed in front of the car pool, who squirm in church and scream in the phone, whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry. And we pray for those whose nightmares come in the daytime, who will eat anything, who have never seen a dentist, who aren't spoiled by anybody, who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep, who live and move, but have no being. We pray for children who want to be carried and for those who must. For those we never give up on, and for those who don't get a chance. For those we smother, and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer. 19 A PRAYER FOR CHILDREN LAURA 5IKE5 PHOTO At a time when violence threatens to rob youngsters of their innocence, Agnes Scott alumnae and students are working to bring hope into the chaos. By Celeste Pennington Two Waterton, Connecticut, day-care employees stopped to check at the apartment ot a two-year-old girl who had been absent for two days and could not be reached by telephone. At the sound of her teacher's voice, the toddler greeted them at the front door. The little girl was covered with blood. The body of her slain father was on the kitchen floor. According to one of the workers, the child had "thrown a blanket on her father's body" and had kept vigil through the night, sitting in a pool of blood. From this tragic scene for one child emerges a disquieting paradox for us all: The child, as English poet William Wordsworth wrote, is the father of the man. We may derive hope in the care and love this two-year-old child lavished on her parent, notes Agnes Scott College Psychology Professor Emeritas Miriam K. Drucker. Yet in a world with too many blood- stained children, the poetic contradiction may also serve as a warning. Childhood and so our adult world seems to be losing its protective veil. At-risk children are on the hearts and minds of a number of Agnes Scott students and alumnae including Eileen Altman '85 who serves as a youth initiatives coordinator for the Illinois Council for Prevention of Violence. Describing how violence has turned the child's world upside down, she says, "In Chicago, we hear about parents who put their kids to bed in the bathtub to protect them from gunfire. Lying in bed can be dangerous." Even more unfathomable to Altman and to Milling Kinard '62 who is doing post-doctoral research on child abuse at the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, are children at risk in the hands of those who should be their first line of defense: acquaintances and family members. An astonishing number of youngsters are beaten, maimed, molested and murdered by parents, relatives or babysitters, writes Ronald Henkoff 20 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE SUMMER 1995 in Fortune magazine. For huni.lreds ot thousands ot children, not even the woinh provides a sate haven according to Nelba Chave:, administrator ot Substance Abuse and Mental 1 lealth Services Administration, who reports that more than ^00,000 children have been exposed to drugs, in utero. These at-risk children are no longer the anomaly of one or two inner-city neighborhoixls. At-risk is the way veteran primary school teacher Ginger Westkind '66 describes roughly one- third to one-halt of the children in each ot the multi-grade classrooms at Pointe South Elementary, Clayton County, Georgia, where she serves as a special instructional assistant. "In the past 20 years we have seen so much change. The family structure has changed. We have 19-year-old parents bringing to school their tive-year-old children; we ha\e more sin- gle-parent families and fewer extended families. We see children who have been abused. We see the effects ot parental drug and alcohol use. We see children with de\'elopniental delays. Since birth, some children have not had a lot of healthy stimulation the television is a baby sitter. Then there is the influence ot the media. Kids today have seen .so much more violence." For years, professionals like Westlund have warned adults to stem the steady stream of entertainment violence flowing into the home from TV to pop music to video games. The effects are evident in the increasing number of incidents ot adolescent violence, observes Drucker "All you have to do is listen to the news." Backed by longitudinal research, the American Psychological Association's Commission on Youth and Violence warns, "The images that populate mass media actually have the longest-lasting impact of all contributors to violence." Meanwhile, more and more youth and children bring violence into their play- grounds and school rooms. Each day 6,250 teachers are threatened with injury and 260 are assaulted. Julie Weisberg, assistant professor of education at Agnes Scott, points out the number of threats and assaults should be placed in the perspective ot the number ot schools, nationwide. "Of course," she relents, "those numbers should he zero." In their increasingly violence-charged world, children and youth are becoming perpetra- tors of heinous crimes. "Children have always fought," admits Mark Rosenberg, director of the National Center of Injury Prevention for The Centers for Disease Control, who notes that today children as young as five have been found carrying guns to school, "but now fights are more likely to be fatal." Laments an editorial writer for Der Spiegel, a German news- magazine, "When children, the symbol of innocence, commit the severest of crimes, then something must be going wrong with society." At the Tenth Annual Rosalynn Carter Symposium on Mental Health Policy, Chavez said, "By kindergarten, this generation of children has had enough." Chavez and Airman, Westlund and Kinard are among a growing number of profession- als who know that children suffer because, as Chavez says, adults have not taken action "to keep the social fabric from unraveling. Some people believe we do not have a prayer." ^^-^Hl "When children, the symbol of innocence, commit the severest of crimes, then something must be going wrong with society." 21 A PRAYER FOR CHILDREN The children of West End "want us to be a constant in their lives. All children need love and when these youngsters do not receive it at home, they need it even more from us. Love is what we try to provide." By Ashley Wright '96 Leon, 5, seemed to he doing so well, even though we had ohserved his need for special attention. Then all of a sudden, it seemed, he was uncontrollable. Over the next few Saturdays, his behavior grew wild and his attitude progressively worse until M finally we had to send him home. It was not until later that we learned his moth- ^ cr had started taking drugs again. We felt naive, never suspecting that young Leon's problems ran deeper than unruly behavior. Drugs, shootings, rapes and murder are a part of life in Atlanta's West End government housing. In the midst of that turmoil stands West End Baptist C'hapel. Every Saturday, children of the community flock there to enjoy lessons and activities. On those mornings, four of my friends from Agnes Scott and I come together with students from Georgia Tech and Emory to lead a program called JAM (Jesus And Me). I have been working with the children for almost a year, but for two or three years other students have spent Saturdays at West End, offering songs, Bible stories, crafts and games to about 20 rambunctious children. The children recognize our cars now and some mornings run out to meet us. Little boys' faces light up with excitement as Tech guys throw them over their shoulders. Little girls rim over to us and begin playing beauty parlor with our hair. Little hands reach out to be held and arms reach up for a hug. The children remember our absence from the week before, and they want to know why. They want us to be a constant in their lives, it nothing else is. All children need love and when these youngsters do not receive it at home, they need it even more from us. Love is what we try to provide with JAM. We are not so unrealistic to think that a group of college students could t hange the world, so we think smaller. If we could change even one child's life and give some hope for a better future, then we feel we have done our job. Each Saturday is a challenge. It is easy for us to feel discouraged sometimes, as in the case of Leon. But when a seven-year-old girl hugs my neck and tells me she loves me, discouragement just melts away and a good feeling that 1 am doing something positive for children fills its place. Ina Jones Hughs '63 A couple of times a week, Ina Jones Hughs '63 gets requests from a wide range of people for permission to use her "A Prayer for Children" (pages 18-19). Last Christmas, Charles Gibson read it on "Good Morning, America." Marian Wright Edle- man, president of the Children's Defense Fund, often quotes it. The prayer was read during UNlCEF's World Summit for Child- ren in 1990. And during a presidential cam- paign sweep through Tennessee, Hillary Clinton concluded her speech with it. The idea for the prayer which Hughs wrote for a newspaper column in The Charlotte Observer came to her as she was preparing Thanksgiving dinner and noted a public television commercial with a disadvantaged child. "It made me think the world is divided basically between two kinds of children, the ones who are cared for and the ones brushed aside." The prayer is included in A Sense of Human, a collection of her columns pub- lished by the Knoxville News-Sentinel, and lends its title to her latest book, A Prayer for Chiklren, which she signed at ASC in May. While Hughs, a 22-year veteran award- winning newspaper columnist, believes that "A Prayer for Children" is not her best work, she feels pleased with the thousands of permission requests that have poured in. "The thing that encourages me is that we have a wide-sweeping concern for children. "Of course," she acknowledges, "words are the easy part." 22 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE SUMMER 1995 LAURA SIKES PHOTO Ellen Granum '62 As educator Ellen Granum '62 and parishioners of St. Columha's Episcopal Church (near American University) consid- ered ways to make a diftetence in Washing- ton, D.C., through a project that would involve helping families, they looked closely at helping inner-city youth. One parishioner had served on an "I Have a Dream" project that began in the late 1980s with a challenge to a class of sev- enth graders that they finish high school in exchange for fully paid college tuition. "If you offered to pay their tuition, the thinking went, city kids would study hard," the Washingtonian magazine summed up expec- tations. But sponsors quickly discovered that youngsters needed more: a safe place, full stomachs, help with homework, encourage- ment, discipline, hope, "someone getting involved in their lives." The parishioners considered mentoring inner-city youth hut as they fleshed out details, Granum says they made an adjust- ment. "We decided to start with children who had not experienced a lot of failure, who still had positive feelings about them- selves and the adults in their lives. We wanted to work with children before they had developed a lot of anger. That's why we decided to start with kindergarten." After careful study and a year to establish a partnership with urban Truesdell Elementary School, St. Columha's initiated a mentoring program with 60 children in the school's three kindergarten classes. Granum, whose expertise is early child- hood education (see Fall '94 ASC Alumnae Mag.AZINE, page 2), volunteers as one of two mentors assigned each day to each of the three classrooms. Another component of the program is developing relationships, family to family. Every other Saturday, a St. Columha's bus gathers up Truesdell kmdergartners, their siblings and parents who connect with vol- unteer adults and their children at church for breakfast and lunch, games, music and three theme-related projects (science, art and cooking). One Saturday featured fish- children found out how fish swim, they made colorful prints with fish and baked trout-shaped cookies. The program offers an enriching environment "an alternative to television," says Granum and it encourages the parents who want to provide healthy experiences for their children. To highlight Saturday programs and to provide an update on classwork, St. Columha's also publishes a weekly newslet- ter for parents, Truesdell Elementary School Kindergarten News. "When children have violence in their lives, they don't learn to tmst," notes Granum who along with others at St. Columha's is listening, learning and forming friendships. "We are treading lightly." St. Columha's bold commitment is to mentor these same children for the next 1 2 years through their high school gradua- tion. The church has also begun a college trust fund for the children. Says Granum, "Our purpose is to fill a vacuum with hope." "We wanted to work with children before they had developed a lot of anger. That's why we decided to start with kindergarten." 23 A PRAYER FOR CHILDREN "When people read this story, they seem to have a moment of feeling very safe." Mami Amall Broach McGee '65 Kids are tough. I am shy. So when I talk to children, 1 get someone to go with me someone whose Up does not tremble," explains soft-spoken Marni Arnall Broach McGee '65 of Santa Barbara, California. That someone is her alter ego, puppet Earl. Years before the puppet and his friend, McGee, accepted speaking invitations, she was absorbed in the solitary task of writing for children. Between the time McGee sent /71 her third hi)ok, Forest Child, ASC ahimna Marni McGee hm crafted a story that, hkc all books, "has a life of its oun and, somehow, [it seems] more than most." Reprinted by permissit 1 ol Green Tiger Press her first manti- script to Athenaeum ani.1 received her very first acceptance letter 15 years later from Athenaeum, she admits having developed an appreciation for the nuances of rejection. A form postcard from publishers is the worst, then a form letter (unless it includes a hand-scrawled note at the bot- tom, like "keep on trying" or "send us more"). "When you get a personal letter of rejection," says McGee, "you are tempted to celebrate." She jokes that her first book. The Quiet Farmer, published by Athenaeum, took 45 years to write. It is based on experience: McGee padding behind her grandfather on his farm in LaGrange, Georgia. "He was a very gentle man who seemed to give a lov- ing blessing to the world around him. 1 learned through my grandfather how a per- son can speak without words." Her next book, Diego Columbus: Adventures in the High Seas, published by Revell, was picked up by the Weekly Reader Home Book Club and has sold 55,000 copies. This carefully researched historical fiction for 7- to 13-year olds explores the relationship between Christopher Columbus and son Diego. "My premise: if 1 were a 12- year-old child of Columbus, what would I want.' To be with my father. But a good father would have to say, absolutely no. Diego's mother died in 1485. 1 have a scene early in the book in which Diego says, '1 will be with you when you go.' That is historical. Columbus answers, 'I loved your mother and I lost her. How could I risk losing you?' " McGee wrote the first draft of what she calls her miracle book, Forest Child, in just a matter of hours. Her writing was an intense response to learning about children in crisis. "The words," says McGee, "seemed to flow from my fingers as tears had flowed from my eyes." Three weeks after receiving the manuscript, her agent sold Forest Child to Green Tiger Press, a divi- sion of Simon & Schuster. Six weeks Copyrighl',' Ivy4 .^^j.^^. ^.J^^ f^^^^ printing, the book sold out. "When people read this story," says McGee, "they seem to have a moment of feeling very sate." Forest Child is a mystical story of animals that help a boy who ventures into the woods. Late last year, the book provided the basis for a prcigram for 550 children in Winston-Salem who listened to the story, then made themselves masks patterned after the characters. More recently, a woman composer set the words to music to be per- formed in a ballet for children in Houston this spring. "Books do have a life of their own," says McGee, "and this one, somehow, more than most." 24 AGNES SCOTT COLLEGE SUMMER 1995 E. Milling Kinard '62 That abuse and family violence takes its toll on the child is no question for E. Milling Kinard, Ph.D., a post-doctoral research fellow at the Family Research Laboratory (FRL) at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, a pioneer in research on the effects of family violence. Earlier Kinard conducted a large-scale study ot behavior and school performance of abused children at the New England Research Institute in Watertown, Mass. Kinard's research includes mother- teacher assessments of behavior problems in abused children, assessment ot social support for abused children and their mothers and the academic performance in abused children. "Both mothers and teachers rated abused children as having more behavioral problems than non-abused children," she says. From a sample ot 165 abused children and their mothers and a matched compari- son group ot 1 69 nonabused children and their mothers (interviewed twice, with the inter\'iews coming a year apart), Kinard tound that abuse significantly predicted lower achievement test scores. Abused children were also more likely than non-abused children to have lower grades in academic subjects, placement in special education programs, retention in grade, more days ot absence and generally more problems in school. Kinard points out that resources to serve abused children are otten limited. She deplores insufficient or abusive foster care and the reluctance of the court to sever abusive parent/child ties in favor of adoption. "I have often thought that the system should not let children languish tor years in foster care waiting for something good to happen to their families. It parents are not changing or not meeting the goals, it is time tor the child to be adopted. The child needs a family." Kinard, who has conducted research on children and abused children for 20 years, also sees the toll that child abuse research takes on her large team of research assistants and interviewers. "They think about these child abuse cases when they get home," she reports. "They dream about them. "I have learned that the research team needs support. It helps them to talk over what they are finding." Eileen Altman '85 Counseling adolescent survivors of gun- shot injury was among the duties Eileen Altman '85 had during a year-long intern- ship at Chicago's Cook County Hospital. One of those sessions changed Altman. In the midst of counseling, a young man said, point blank: "You know 1 am going to die. 1 know 1 am going to die. Lady, why are you bothering with me anyway?" This is evil, Altman remembers thinking. What have we done as a society so that this young man has no hope ? In 1994, after completing her doctorate, Altman joined the Illinois Council tor the Prevention of Violence, where she serves as youth initiatives coordinator and manages "Peacing It Together," a violence preven- tion project for Illinois schools. Altman taps school programs statewide and helps recommend resources for violence prevention. She addresses faculty and parent groups and organizes regional forums for Youth Violence Prevention. She also helps draft state legislation that promotes inter-agency cooperation and gives "every agency a piece of the pie." To care tor children at risk, Altman advises each community to define "what we can do, together" to curb violence. The roots of violence are in the home, so Altman suggests that parents model conflict resolution and screen media violence and "stop violence before it starts." Her programs that teach violence prevention are "really fun for kids," says Altman, and good tot adults. "They learn to exercise a different kind of power." Eiken Altman fieip.s draji legislation for violence prevention. She speaLs regularly to parent gr7iHt7i '81 : Agitcs Scott prepared her both jor her job and for being a mother and wife. LAURA BYNUM '81 Home: Atlanta, Ga. Age: 36 Occupation: Vice President, NationsBanc Capital Markets Group Husband: James Jordan Bynum III, architect, Nix, Mann and Associates Hobbies: Strolling with daughter Hays, age 1 One of the youngest charter memhers ot the Frances Winship Walters Society, Laura Bynum is an Annual Fund contribu- tor at the Tower Circle level, a former Annual Fund chair, a past Alum- nae Board member, and a "perpetual" class chair. Ever since graduating from Agnes Scott with a degree in psychology, Laura has given to the College. "Working as a class chair, 1 learned how important it is to give," says Laura. "At first I gave just $5 or $10 or $15 I thought at least that will help the College pay for postage or electricity or something." As Laura has matured and advanced through the ranks at NationsBanc Capital Markets Group (a sub- sidiary of NationsBank), she has increased her giving. "When you have a baby, and as your life changes, you think more about how you want to take care of things. I'm sure that has affected my decision to give to the College." Giving to Agnes Scott continues a relationship that began when she was a seventh grader trom Memphis visiting the Agnes Scott campus. "My mother and aunt went to college here and 1 saw the relationships they had made through the College. 1 liked the fact that Agnes Scott had that to offer as well as an education. Once 1 saw Agnes Scott, 1 tell in love with it." Laura appreciates the "friends for a lifetime" she made while at ASC and the personalized academic attention that helped build her self-esteem. "Agnes Scott prepared me for what I do in my job and tor being a mother and wife. My education has made me successful and 1 feel an obligation to give something back." Ase Agnes Scott College 141 E. College Ave. Decatur, GA 30030 Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Decatur, GA 30030 Permit No. 469 BALL GAMES ON THE HOCKEY FIELD ARE A SURE SIGN OF SPRING. SPRING HAS SPRUNG Baseball, the national pastime and sure harbinger of spring may have let us down on a national level this year, but at Agnes Scott, pick-up Softball games on the hockey field are still in evidence. There are other signs of spring and the upcoming summer, too: enrollment and admission concerns are "On Campus" and we continue to remember (if not revive) the Presser Dogwood "Classic." Your "Lifestyles" speak of new life: alumnae who've changed careers and practice renewal. We include a report on child violence and ways alumnae and students are offering hope to its startlingly large number of victims. And that may be a "spring" message, too. ^^ Printed on recycled paper 1 i ( i 4