Vassar's Fiftieth

A FEW years ago, revisiting Vassar, I saw the Maypole dance of the seniors. The whole class was there — between two and three hundred. In the clear sunset light they swept over the greensward of the campus, singing their bestloved songs, until they reached the broad green space before the library. Here they flowed out in a great white ring of intertwining dancers. In its midst was an inner ring of dancers, in pale colors, — blue and pink and lavender and green and yellow, — circling about the Maypole, winding and unwinding its rainbow ribbons, while outside these, but still within the white ring, were smaller circlets of dancers, eddying and swirling to the music of the songs. It was a lovely vision, — Chaucer might have dreamed it, — but what impressed me, more even than its beauty, was its wholeness: here was something in which many had united to make up a multitudinous One.

I thought of this again when I happened to see the sophomore tree ceremonies. This time it was evening; the campus lights had been put out, and in the warm darkness of the spring night we waited for what might happen. At last, out of the blackness, flared an altar fire, illuminating the chosen tree. Slow music sounded, and two bands were dimly seen, white-robed youths and maidens of Greece. They marched in slow and rhythmic waves of motion; slowly they approached the tree, their columns parted, they surrounded it, and suddenly broke out into a chorus of invocation. There was a pause, and once more out of the blackness came scurrying bands of green and pink creatures weaving their way in swift and mysterious dances about the tree, floating nearer into the light, vanishing again into the darkness. At length the white-robed throng about the tree took up their song again, formed once more into two bands, and slowly, as they had come, passed into the night. The altar flame flickered lower, sank to a soft glow, and went out.

And again, what I pondered on was the astonishing capacity of these young women to work together for big results, — this, and one other thing: the fact that the college, in its half century of life, had been gaining a more and more real unity, and a richer and richer background of tradition.

But if one of the early critics of Vassar Female College could have witnessed these things with me, his reactions would not have been like mine. He would first of all have said, ‘Ah! This is indeed cheering! I now see that the female sex can still be lovely, even though so mistakenly bent on scaling the heights of knowledge — an ascent for which her delicate nature never intended her.’

For this question, whether the scaling of the heights was incompatible with ‘female loveliness,’ was much in men’s minds in ’65 and for many years after. It was debated in every wideawake newspaper and periodical, and the answer was usually that such loveliness was, if not destroyed, at least endangered.

If one of these critics could witness a Vassar Field Day, he would undoubtedly indorse the opinion of a former visitor who, in the early seventies, ended her comment on the college, in a climax of restrained astonishment, with the statement, ‘And we must admit that they have superior health — it is most extraordinary!’

Vassar has come a long way since ’65 — a long way from the early Vassar, which was occupied, first in proving that the ‘female mind’ was susceptible of education, next in proving that the female body would not go to pieces under the strain, and — most difficult of all — in proving that if the female mind and the female body came through the strange ordeal, female loveliness and charm would not have altogether vanished during the process.

These were serious issues in the sixties, when Vassar started, and in the seventies, when she was beginning to send out into ‘the great world’ her educated ‘females,’ to prove or disprove all the theories of all the theorists. Since that time things have changed. The fifty years of life which the college celebrates this October have seen a complete revolution in the higher education — and derivatively in the lower education — of women. So complete is it, indeed, that it is only by some such deliberate effort of the imagination as this of the old-time visitor, that we can get a really fresh sense of it. So much that he doubted or denied we now take for granted; so many problems that we are now concerned with had not even appeared on his horizon.

For the newer questions which confront Vassar, and all the other women’s colleges which have joined her, are no longer those of the early days. Neither female intellect, female health, nor female loveliness is giving educators today any deep concern. The intellect has proved equal to all demands made upon it, the health has amazingly improved, and female loveliness appears to be able, in this age as in every other, to take care of itself.

It has often happened that the byproducts of a process have proved ultimately to be as important as the main product. This may be the case with women’s colleges. Founded with three things in mind, — scholarship, health, and ‘ loveliness,’ — they have indeed gained these, but certain other things are also being attained not specifically contemplated by the founders. Not the least among these is the development of a quite unexpected capacity for organized effort, a capacity for teamwork in the largest sense, as great as any shown by bodies of young men. Class demonstrations like those we have touched upon are as deeply significant of student life as any classroom achievement. They imply a power of practical effectiveness, through the proper use and the proper subordination of individual talent, which has hardly yet been generally recognized, of which even the students themselves are not fully conscious, and for which full scope has not yet been found in the academic scheme of things.

Women’s colleges have thus definitely passed beyond the period when, standing by themselves in a small and much criticized group, they worked out the difficult and dangerous problems of ‘ female education ’ as such. They have swung into line with the men’s colleges, and are known to be concerned, as these are concerned, with all the large problems of education. New things are being demanded of them, as of boys’ colleges, — chiefly along the line of a more complete adjustment of the academic life to the life of the ‘great world.’ Where earlier emphasis was on the scholastic atmosphere, present emphasis is increasingly on the solidarity of college and community. The academic years are more and more regarded, by the students themselves as well as by educators generally, as being, not primarily years of retirement, but years of active apprenticeship.

Obviously, this change brings with it an entirely new set of problems, so new that they have hardly yet been clearly stated. The stating of them and the solving of them will be the business of the students and educators of the next fifty years. As we look forward, it is interesting also to look back, as this fiftieth anniversary of Vassar invites us to do, to the time when, it is not too sweeping to say, nothing in women’s higher education was taken for granted.