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She Roars Virginia Farrar Balser (Upper School English, Princeton ’74)
Kendall Crolius (GFA ’71, P ’06, ’09, Princeton ’76)
Last spring, Princeton University hosted a conference for female graduates called She Roars. Two years earlier, President Shirley Tilghman had convened a committee to look into a perceived disparity between men and women in leadership roles in campus organizations. The centerpiece of She Roars was their report. Initial findings showed a curious drop in the number of women in these roles and found fewer women in these positions now than in the 1980s – when the student body wasn’t even 50% female. Was this a trend only at Princeton, or did it extend to peer institutions? And the big, underlying question still remained: What can be done? Three Princeton grads from the GFA community were intrigued by the invitation and joined 1,300 other women at the event. These women, who were from the Princeton classes of ’74, ’76 and ’82, found the weekend both moving and disturbing at the same time. Here are some of their thoughts.
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Virginia Farrar Balser (Upper School English, Princeton ’74): Though there were eloquent speeches from famous graduates, what was most wonderful was connecting with women from the early years of co-education who shared the intense experience of making it through a male institution and then going out into the world to use what they had learned. I was struck by the openness and honesty of all the participants. I heard stories of illustrious medical, teaching and research careers, successes in the art world, wrenching family tragedies, and many questions and decisions about values to live by. The question of values came up again and again in the presentations as well. Given that all of us had to work very hard to get into Princeton and to stay