HOT OFF THE PRESS
Krispy Kreme opens in Harrisonburg
NEWS | 3
OPINION 5
SWEEPING THE STAGE Meryl Streep took advantage of spotlight at Golden Globes
Vol. XCV
ARTS 7
SPORTS
AVANTE GARDE STORYTELLING Alumnus authors fantasy novel that rejects genre stereotypes
ROWE THE BOAT After sluggish start, men’s basketball has won four of five
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No. 16
James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia, Thursday, January 12, 2017
50 years of Madison men ATTENTION!
DATING RULES FOR WOMEN •
All campus organizations wishing to hold an event had to register it and satisfy requirements of an approved chaperone.
•
All students without dates had to return to their dorms no later than 11:15 p.m.
•
When students attended late movies, they were required to return to their dorms within 20
COURTESY OF THE BLUESTONE
The university’s admissions department reached out to the men attending the then-recently shut down Frederick College, in Portsmouth, Virginia, to increase male enrollment. This photo represents just how many more females there were to males. Many sections of The Bluestone had pronounced gender differences such as this.
By MIKE DOLZER AND MARISSA WALKER The Breeze
Walking down the steps into the lecture hall for art appreciation, freshman Steve Smith was anxious to start his first day of classes at Madison College. He maneuvered to the middle of the classroom because he wanted to be in the center of the action. Once he sat down, he realized he was one of just three men in the class of 50. “It just felt weird,” Smith (’71), who lives in Harrisonburg and is now 67, said. “I was out of my element.” It was the fall of 1967, and men — some 300 of them — were living on campus along with 3,000 female students. Men had attended Madison College since 1910 as day students, meaning they lived off campus or commuted. In 1966, Virginia’s General Assembly decided that men could attend any of Virginia’s teachers colleges, including Madison College, as full-time residential students. The 1966-67 school year was the residential men’s inaugural
year. Smith was in the second group of on-campus men when he came to Madison in the fall of 1967. The men had access to a fast lifestyle. With so many more female students, the boys could party and date different women as often as they liked, according to Smith. “You’d see a guy you knew who was just a jerk and you’d see him with this woman who was gorgeous,” Smith said. The guys who dated around and partied a lot often didn’t last long, Smith said. While many of the men enjoyed being surrounded by women, the women didn’t always feel the same. A letter to the editor published in a spring 1966 edition of The Breeze started a firestorm between some students with opposing views of the Madison men. Mary Buckwalter, an upperclassman, wrote that the incoming class of men were unsavory looking and hurt the college’s image. “With a few exceptions, the male students that we must associate with are either untidy or unshaven,” Buckwalter wrote.
Several men responded with their own letters, one of which said that the men should be left alone because women were seen in the dining halls wearing curlers, which the writer declared was “not a sight to conjure up pleasant thoughts.” Not all female students were against the men’s arrival. Some women, such as Jane Barrett and Betty Heerlein, welcomed the change. In a rebuttal to the letter written by Buckwalter, the two juniors stated they were looking forward to the day when women and men were equal in number. “They are a part of our campus, and could contribute a great deal, if only given the opportunity,” the pair wrote. Not everyone was convinced. S m i t h re m e m b e re d t h a t his bowling instructor — a woman — ignored the men in the class and made them feel uncomfortable. “The way she treated us made us feel like second-class citizens,” Smith said. Only Smith’s senior seminar had a gender ratio close to 50/50. In addition to the ratio being so different, men and women had separate rules.
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minutes after the end of the movie, and their late cards had to specifiy what late movie they were going to see.
Wo m e n , f o r i n s t a n c e , couldn’t wear slacks or jeans on campus, unless they concealed them by donning a knee-length raincoat. This rule didn’t apply to the men. With the introduction of men, the dress code began to loosen, which was exciting for students like Betty Bennett, now 67, who’s currently a student teacher instructor at JMU and lives in Staunton. “Not only were we wearing slacks, we were wearing jeans and bellbottoms,” Bennett (’71) said. “It seemed like the pendulum swung all the way across in those couple of years.” Campus fashion had transformed. Smith recalls that in an interview he had in his senior year of high school during his admissions process, the dean of male students said, “We don’t want any long-haired or postercarrying guys coming to this campus,” a far cry from the wardrobe at the end of Smith’s college career. “By the time I got be a junior or a senior it was more tie-dye shirts and cut-off jeans,” Smith said. see MEN, page 3
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