Barnard College - Mortarboard Yearbook (New York, NY)

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The Making of the College Most colleges start with something tangible; a gift of buildings, an endowment, or at least a tract of land. Barnard College started with nothing except the most irresistible and indestructible thing - an idea. Many colleges bear the names of their early benefactors, who were in most cases men of wealth and vision but not necessarily men of great intellectual achievement. Our college carries the name of a man whose insights and judgements have left a permanent impression on the history of American education - Frederick A. P. Barnard. The administration of Columbia College was very hesitant in approving a college for women, much less on the same academic level as their own. The struggle was long and hard; getting financial backing was not easy. The future Barnard needed to raise $7500 to pay for the rent, furnishings, professors ' fees and principal ' s salary. With even this hurdle, another problem was finding a building in the vicinity of Columbia, since courses would be taught by Columbia faculty. The outcome was Barnard College ' s opening on Monday, October 7, 1889 at 343 Madison Avenue and 49th Street. Th e required entrance examinations were identical so there would be no question as to a Barnard student ' s qualification. The school started in a brownstone with fourteen liberal arts students and twenty-one special students. 1892 marked the start of the Undergraduate Association at Barnard, and thus the growth of student activities for Barnard women. Mortarboard got its start from the Annual, published in 1894. The Madison Avenue campus was quickly overcrowded, but land was purchased by Barnard, across the street from Colubmia ' s new Morningside Heights campus-to-be. By 1898 the Milbank and Brinckerhoff Halls were built and ready for occupancy (Brinckerhoff being part of Milbank where Minor Latham now stands). Fiske Hall, which now houses the Dean of Studies and the Registrar, was the first dormitory built and housed 100 students. Soon the campus was again overcrowded and more buildings were needed. With the academic depart- ments growing, labs being set up on various floors in Milbank and Barnard ' s reputation increasing in status, students from all over the country were requesting admittance. Due to generous contributions of interested parties, Brooks Dormitory and Barnard Hall (originally Students Hall) were built. In the area between these two sections of the Barnard Campus there was a jungle of trees and walkways. Later, tennis courts were added. With later additions of Hewitt Dormitory, Lehman and Altschul Halls, the Mcintosh Student Center and Reid Hall, Plimpton Hall and portions of apartment houses at 600, 616, and 620 West 116th Street, the Barnard campus was considerably enlarged. With that expansion were tremendous increases in the stu- dent population and tuition. Four Years on the Heights Reminiscences on the four years from the Fall of 1974, when the class of 1978 first entered Barnard, to the Spring of 1978. Prior to the Fall of 1974 were such events as the controversial issue of keeping 7 Brooks as a black women ' s floor, the question of allowing men to co-inhabit a female student ' s room, and Presi- dent Martha Peterson ' s impending trip to China. That Fall, questions of the food service ' s poor excuse for meals was being questioned, and irate students threatened a boycott. The issue resolved, the minority floor was maintained, pass-fail options were tightened up, and new professors were added to the faculty. The first Emily Gregory award was given to a member of the faculty. It was at this time that provisional rulings were passed for student access to their own records. The curriculum was being revised to increase the number of courses required to graduate, and it was decided that the tuition would be increased. It was also the first time Barnard students could be assigned rooms in John Jay residence Hall. Spring 1975 marked the reorganization of Mcintosh act ivities and platforms for future officers of the Undergraduate Associa- tion. Four sets of candidates were running against each other, and it can be remembered by one student ' s offering lollipops to induce students to vote for one of the candidates. That candidate did not win. Students protested against Iran, the honor code was violated and put under revision, more additions to the faculty were made, and accusations of Columbia sexism all took place around this time. Fall 1975 showed signs of change in progress. The search was on for a new president of Barnard College, following the resigna- tion of Martha Peterson. Multiple majors were being questioned and the Experimental College and Barnard Sports were on the rise. Merger was more purposefully pushed for by Columbia and more assertiveness on issues like the Equal Rights Amendment occurred. The Barnard students were getting more openly in- volved in feminist issues and pushed for more courses geared towards women. Spring 1976 marked the abolition of squiggle courses (which juniors and seniors might remember), investigations into better methods of birth control, and swimmer Diana Nyad ' s excursion in the Hudson. The appointment of Doris Coster to the newly created post of Dean of students, the institution of Freshman Seminars, and heightened feelings on Soviet Jewry surfaced. The issue of merger was still with us. The tennis and crew teams were improving with age, more interest in Dance Uptown and Opera Uptown was stirred, and greater coverage on world happenings as well as campus life was seen in the Bulletin. Fall 1976 to Spring 1978 If one were to choose one word to characterize the period from 1976 to the Spring 1978 semester, it would have to be change. It all started on November 12, 1975, when, the long search over, the Board of Trustees voted unanimously to appoint Jac- quelyn Anderson Mattfeld the fourth president of the college. Mattfeld was selected from a group of 300 applicants, primarily for qualities of first rate scholarship, extensive administrative ability, and warmth as a human being. Leroy Breunig had for a year acted as interim president of the college, but in the Summer of 1976 he ceded his responsibilities to Mattfeld, who was inaugurated in the Fall in grand style at the Riverside Church. 6 INTRODUCTION

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TO THE CLASS OF 1978: You know better than I what your college experience has meant to you and what you will take from it, what has touched you most closely. The discovery of an area of interest, the development of intellectual and emotional strengths, the experience of friendship based on both admiration and equal- ity — it is for you to discover what has mattered to you. But at the same time that each of us has her own experiences we also share in them. In talking with students at Barnard, I sensed that for many of you this has been a time of great intensity. I have an image of light not diffused gently but focused sharply, making some things extraordinarily vivid and at the same time surrounded by dark shadows. Perhaps I have that particular image because of the energy crisis. I do believe there are some developments in the world around us that pervade our lives and are felt as moods even when we do not think about them consciously. The world-wide energy crisis has made us suddenly aware of the vulnerability of a way of life that was taken for granted, both in its everyday aspects and in the more removed yet important sense we have of the relations of different nations and peoples to each other. We have all begun to feel a need to pull in, to conserve, to value what we can have. At the same time, the financial crisis of New York City and nation-wide economic difficulties have added to the feeling that, despite us (and that in itself is a special and difficult realization) options are fewer and choices harder won. As a result, you have worried about finding jobs as well as choosing careers and that has given the work you have done at Barnard a dark and serious side. You have also begun to be familiar, if not always comfortable, with studies and reports demonstrating that as a woman you face problems in the job market as well as elsewhere that may affect you no matter how carefully you plan and how hard you work. College has been, then, a time of preparing to face hard challenges as well as of learning and discovering strengths and interests and friendships. In this time of intensity, you have been magnificent. You have worked hard and found joy in your accomplishments that mitigates — and sometimes even replaces — anxiety. You have perhaps found fewer friends than those who went to college in expansive times, but the friendships you have are stronger, and more strengthening, for their intensity. In addition, some of you have found that there is a possibility of heightened individuality within supportive groups and that the other side of the illumi- nation of problems is the invitation to join together in dealing with them even when they cannot be solved. Your college years may have been difficult and intense, but I do not believe they have often been dull or arid. We will miss you at Barnard, but I do not worry about you. I think you are strong and I hope that we have had some part in helping you discover that strength. Time and again graduates of Barnard answer my question about what Barnard meant to them by telling me it is a place where it is simply expected that they will excel. There is nothing easy about living with such expectations, but then you did not choose to make things easy for yourself when you chose Barnard. That is why Barnard graduates are such remarkable women. My compliments and warmest best wishes, Jaquelyn Anderson Mattfeld President INTRODUCTION 5

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By September of 1976, Mattfeld was firmly established in office, and one of her first acts was to publish a message to the students and faculty in which she described her efforts to form a group, under the auspices of the Ford Foundation, to examine the alternatives to Barnard ' s structure at the time. The objec- tive of this was to determine the position the College would be in over the next 10 years. In October of 1976, the study completed, the Ford Founda- tion report was released. The report recommended the simplifi- cation of the college ' s administration through the creation of a centralized system of Vice-Presidents who would be in charge of the major areas of the college ' s operations. The report also proposed the formulation of a college council to be made up of representatives from all the college ' s constituencies. The council would examine college-wide concerns referred to it by the president. The Ford report also outlined three possibilities for Barnard ' s future: expansion in the college ' s strongest areas; a continua- tion of the status quo; and a merger with Columbia. From about the time of the completion of the Ford report, a series of administrative appointments, transfers, and depar- tures made it clear that a significant change was occurring in the college ' s structure. Then in September of 1977 it was an- nounced that the administrative restructuring of the school was complete. The college ' s final structure almost precisely matched that proposed by the Ford Foundation report. Four vice- presidencies had been created and filled: Charles Olton was the V.P. for academic affairs; Harry Albers, the V.P. for Adminis- tration and Finance; Doris Critz, the V.P. for Public Affairs, and Barbara Schmitter, the V.P. for Student Affairs. The president also created the President ' s Advisory Com- mittee which followed the structure of the College Council suggested by the Ford report. The Barnard-Columbia Intercorporate Agreement It was in the Fall of 1976 when it was announced that talks on a new Barnard-Columbia Intercorporate agreement were underway. The most recent intercorporate agreement between the two schools was slated to expire in June of 1977, with either side having the option of extending the agreement for one year after that date. In May of 1976, the trustees of Barnard released a resolution which outlined their desire to maintain Barnard ' s autonomy and integrity while furthering the Barnard-Columbia relation- ship through interinstitutional planning and cooperation. Another, briefer, resolution made by the Columbia trustees spoke of a review of the existing arrangements and of hopes for a mutally satisfactory rearrangement in 1977. The intercorporate agreement deals with such things as fac- ulty tenure, cross-registration of courses, and other areas of Barnard-Columbia cooperation. Other Developments Arthur Altschul was, in December of 1976, appointed the Chairman of the Board of Trustees. He replaced Eleanor Elliot who for 17 years had chaired the Board. Altschul, on his ap- pointment, affirmed the need to maintain Barnard ' s indepen- dent yet cooperative role in the Columbia University framework. He also expressed a support of Mattfeld ' s policies on Barnard ' s administration and his commitment to non- change. Later that fall it was revealed that Barnard had accumulated a one-million dollar deficit over the preceding six years, and that a three year plan had been formed to balance the budget. Academic Developments In February of 1977 there was an uproar over the one-year laboratory science requirement, with students demanding its reduction or outright repeal. Little action was taken on these requests. Incompletes also came under investigation, and as fear of student abuse of this option mounted, the administration tight- ened up the requirements for taking incompletes. Pass-fail options were also put under examination, with fac- ulty members voicing concern that this option induces students to put in less work than they would, were the option not avail- able. The pass-fail option for English A was abolished entirely. During the 1976-1978 academic year Barnard saw an astound- ing array of non-curricular lectures. Bernadette Devlin, the Irish militant, spoke to a crowd of 400 students in the Barnard Gym in December of 1976. Mirra Komarovsky was awarded the Emily Gregory Award. An $85,000 collection of manuscripts by Nobel Prize winning poet Gabriela Mistral was donated to the college, and the Bar- nard Bulletin reported a rising trend in preprofessionalism among the students. In March of 1977, a motion to increase the number of stu- dents in the Undergrad Executive Board from four to five members was passed by the student body. The Fall of 1977 brought in the largest class of freshwomen in the college ' s history. 508 students were introduced to the col- lege by the newsmaking, beanie-capped orientation ' 77. The unusually large number of freshwomen excacerbated an already-acute housing problem, and many students previously offered rooms were told that there were none to be had. Servomation, the problem-plagued food service at Barnard was replaced by the T.J. McDermott Company. Dean of Stu- dents Doris Coster, who ousted Servomation, herself resigned when the appointment of Barbara Schmitter as Vice-President of Student Affairs eliminated Coster ' s authority to report di- rectly to the president. The question of security at the college became an issue when a series of thefts began to generate concern. Buildings and Grounds tightened up the college ' s security as a result. Mortarboard went to the presses in the Spring of 1978 so most of the events occuring that semester could be covered in this article. C.T. (1974-1976) A.K. (1976-1978) Barnard in the P.M. (pre-McIntosh) INTRODUCTION 7