Colgate 1972

There were some issues that went along with being Sweet 18 and never been kissed and one of them was selecting a previously all-boy college. I went to Colgate University in the fall of 1972 and was part of the third class that accepted girls. The male:female ratio was 8:1. And my parents would pay for it because it was also a good school! With that ratio, I couldn’t lose. I even had two dates in one night (only once! Too stressful!). Later on during freshman year, some girls (we were girls then, not women) were asking for signatures on a petition to encourage the administration to admit enough girls to bring the ratio to 50:50. NO WAY!! I refused to sign until I was a senior. Why ruin things while I was still there?!

I didn’t notice that there were missing amenities on campus or that girls weren’t really 100% accepted as students there yet. No girl’s locker rooms in the gym. Just a curtained off corner of the boy’s locker room. Oh sure, I’ll get naked in there. There were no lights on campus at night yet I never felt unsafe walking home alone at 2AM. The dorm bathrooms all had urinals. I never had a female professor in four years (even for gym). My math classes never had more than 3 girls in each. But, I learned how to deal with boys on many levels and much of what I learned helped me later on in the business world.

I took bowling for gym 8 times. I was pretty good by the end of my Colgate years. My high game was 226 in a tournament where the girls automatically got a 25 pin handicap (my 251 was unbeatable). We won the match and, as we were the only girl’s team in the tournament, were the “girl’s champions”! We had to fight for our t-shirts from the administration. All the boys got t-shirts for winning their divisions but we had to fight for ours. 33 years later, I still have mine….

In the early 1970’s at Colgate, the fraternities still bussed in cute little girls from local, mostly all-girl colleges for their parties. The girls would get off the busses in their cute little dresses with their cute little boots in their cute little fur coats, smiling their cute little smiles. We Colgate girls would be watching from the sidewalks in our not so cute, not so little, puffy down coats, flannel shirts, Wrangler jeans and definitely not so cute little hiking boots, watching this parade of imports. No. No more imports. Colgate now had its own girls. We went on strike. No more Colgate girls at Theta Chi parties until the bussing of imports stopped! Remember, we reminded them. Once it snows…no busses get in or out. You’ll be stuck with us and we won’t come to your parties. Victory!! The bussing stopped…….

At Colgate, I was treated like a girl….a smart girl….but merely a smart girl who would probably get her “Mrs” degree along with her Bachelor’s degree, stay home or perhaps, if I was lucky, get an executive assistant job. I could hold my own in most of my classes (not all, but most) and was not intimidated by the boys. Along the way, I learned that I liked living on my own; learned to drive in the ice and snow; that it was easy to get a date; found a boyfriend; learned to drink beer (at 25 cents a glass, I could take $1 down town and return home with change) and, finally, that I would rather work for money then for grades.

On to the business world where, I assumed, I’d be treated as an intellectual equal to the men…..