by erin miller

Editor in chief

About a year and a half ago, Dean of Academic Administration Shirley Roels was flipping through a book on Calvin's history when one little fact caught her eye.

``I tripped over the fact that the 01-02 school year was the first year women were admitted,'' she said. ``I thought we ought to acknowledge that. That's a milestone.''

That milestone was celebrated as one part of Women's History Month on Thursday with a talk by Calvin's archivist Richard Harms and by two early women graduates, Trena Haan and Anne Bratt.

During that school year, Calvin College underwent a few major changes, one of which played a key role in the admittance of women. First, Calvin received its accreditation from University of Michigan. Second, the college opened a college prep school, a school that later became Grand Rapids Christian High School. Third, Calvin opened its teacher training school and it was that program in which women first enrolled.

Of the first five women to enroll at Calvin in 1901, only one, Anna Groendyke, graduated. Groendyke completed the teaching prep course in 1905. The classes she took resemble a cross between high school graduation requirements and the core requirements in place today. Those classes included four English courses, four Bible study courses, two classes each in Latin, Dutch, algebra, botany, general history and natural science, and one class each in antiquities, physiology, German, American history, geometry, civics, pedagogy, arithmetic, geography and elocution.

By 1906, 11 of the 13 students applying to enter the teacher training program are women. That same year, 11 women graduate from Calvin, 10 from the teaching program and one, Dina Driesens, in a Latin scientific course. Driesens was the first woman to graduate from a program other than the teaching program.

In that same year, John Calvin Junior College opened, offering two year degrees. While not a school specifically for men, the first woman would not enroll for another six years.

``Women just didn't go into [other fields],'' Harms said.

Most of the women attending Calvin near the turn of the century were from Grand Rapids, as there was no housing provided by the college for women until 1940. Within a few years, a system was developed in which women from other parts of the country who wished to attend Calvin but had no family in the area could exchange room and board for about 25 hours of housework with a local family.

In 1916, Lillian Peet became the first woman to graduate from the three year college course. Most graduates of the three year course would then attend another university to complete their degree. Many Calvin students chose to take their final year at the University of Michigan, but Harms could not say if Peet did finish her degree or not.

Little information is available for many of the women who graduated in those early years. Until 1925, Calvin administrators kept close records of alumni; that year the Alumni Association was formed and somewhere in the switch, the records for some of the women were lost. It is likely, Harms said, that some like Anna Groendyke may have married and the Alumni Association never received notice.

Harms does know, however, that even graduates who did not go through the teaching program often became teachers.

Other women achieving firsts were Nelly Bosma, the first woman to graduate from Calvin and continue her education to receive a PhD, Johanna Timmer, the first woman faculty member, hired in 1926 and also a Calvin graduate, and Gertrude Slingerland, hired in 1946 and the first full-time female professor.

While students may think that Calvin's acceptance of women is run-of-the-mill, Roels pointed out that it was actually somewhat rare, particularly so close to the founding of the college.

``At many colleges, women weren't admitted until later,'' she said. ``There was a tradition of separate women's colleges in the East. Calvin never went down that route.''

From the beginning, female students made a point of contributing as much as possible to the school. In 1906, the women's literary society was founded; in 1908, they were the first student organization to present a gift to the school, a grand piano.

Starting in 1931, college rules began to reflect the morals and values of the church with which it was connected. The first student life guide was published; one of the rules stated that all parties at which women were in attendance must be chaperoned. Other rules later implemented a curfew for women students only, as well as limitations on when a student could leave for a weekend. However, not long after Michigan lowered the age of majority from 21 to 18 in 1972, those curfews and rules were discarded, and the open house system began.

The reasoning for the rules, Harms said, was that to prevent trouble, the school didn't need to restrict the behavior of all of the students, but only half of them.

``Women were seen as the upholders of virtue,'' he said. ``Most students followed the rules. Most parents thought they were good rules. They were modified over the course of time. Part of the problem was, once people reach 21, there wasn't much the college could do.''

After nearly just over 30 years of requiring women attending Calvin to live in homes and work for room and board, the college decided its expectations were too high, particularly for first-year students adjusting to the rigors of college and living away from home. In 1940, Grace Pels, dean of women, organized the cooperative houses (coops) as an alternative for living with local families. About 15 women would live in each coop, each contributing to the cooking, cleaning and general upkeep of the house. From 1944-53, the Calvin dorms switched from housing men to housing women when the number of female students grew larger than the number of male students. After World War II, when more men began attending Calvin again, the dorms were returned to men and women returned to the coops.

By the middle of the century, most women - 66 percent in 1941 - were still graduating with degrees in education. While this was likely no different from the rest of the country, Roels pointed out that, for the Christian Reformed Church, having graduates trained as teachers has been and continues to be very important.

The college originally opened to women, she said, ``because a number of churches had begun Christian schools. You have to have a means to educate teachers.''

That need did not dwindle throughout the century, but, in 1943, Calvin opened another program aimed towards women, nursing. Students in that five-year program would attend Calvin for three years, then join a two-year program at a local hospital to finish their training. Harms said that program lasted only about 15 years, and Calvin did not offer nursing again until the Calvin-Hope program was formed in the early 1980s.

In the years after World War II, the college's enrollment steadily increased and, in 1980, the number of women enrolled surpassed the number of men enrolled, and every year since there have been more women than men at Calvin.

Plenty of information remains unknown about the early female students of Calvin. Harms is slowly sifting through the archives, calling alumni associations at schools like the University of Michigan where Calvin students often finished their degrees and investigating just where Calvin graduates went. The process is arduous, he said, but he is discovering more each day.

``We're plowing new ground here,'' he said. ``I'm forming questions and seeing if I can find data to tell the story.''

As that data becomes available, a new perspective on the history of Calvin College is being discovered, something that has the potential to benefit all students.