views of deans of women: “Many of their significant accomplishments have been lost or ignored in compilations of the modern history of higher education. What remains is an unfortunate caricature of deans of women as ‘snooping battle axes’—prudish spinsters who bedeviled the harmless fun seeking of their students.”
Schwartz also gave his opinion as to why the achievements of deans of women have been disregarded: “This inaccurate view results from the male voice’s domination of written and oral histories of American colleges and universities … the accomplishments of deans of women have rarely received honest evaluation, validation, or appreciation. Rather, they have been discounted, discredited, or ignored.”
Schwartz then imparted women deans their due: “In reality, the deans of women were consummate professionals who anchored much of their work to the academic principles of rigorous research and scholarly dissemination of their findings. Many of the significant and well-established practices of student affairs work and higher education administrations that exist today were first put in place through the work of the deans of women.”
Additionally, the deans of men gathered as a group but with a very different mind-set and direction. The first recorded meeting of deans of men took place casually in 1919 “for a discussion of our problems.” The men came together because of a concern about student discipline. (Since the male students had few rules, unlike the females who had many, it is understandable that discipline would be a concern.)
Two years later, the gathering formerly organized under the name of the National Association of Deans of Men (NADM). The meetings were social and club-like, sounding almost like a men’s society where they could imbibe and smoke cigars, in contrast to the professionalism of the national conferences of the deans of women. According to Schwartz: “The deans of men enjoyed the opportunity to converse, to enjoy local hospitalities and activities, and to regale each other with tales from their campuses. Over time, issues of professionalism, graduate study, and the role of the dean of men were topics of discussion, but they were addressed in a more affable, informal manner with less emphasis on scholarship and research than the deans of women demonstrated in their sessions.”
Purdue’s own Dean of Men Stanley Coulter revealed his sense of humor when he described his position. Coulter said:
What is Dean of Men? I have tried to define him. When the Board of Trustees elected me Dean of Men, I wrote to them very respectfully and asked them to give me the duties of the Dean of Men. They wrote back that they did not know what they were but when I found out to let them know. I worked all the rest of the year trying to find out. I discovered that every unpleasant task that the president or the faculty did not want to do was my task. I was convinced that the Dean of Men’s office was intended as the dumping ground of all unpleasant things.
CAROLYN’S LOVE OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE blossomed in her speeches. The creation of a Community Center for Women began through her articulated words.
During World War I, when women sewed bandages and knitted socks, gloves, and hats to be sent overseas to the men in battle, fifteen sewing machines belonging to war relief organizations were hauled around the city of Lafayette because they had no permanent resting spot where women could congregate and work for civic causes. Carolyn not only thought of the welfare and needs of her Purdue women, but she wanted to help women of her community.
Lucy Eunice Coulter (wife of Purdue’s Stanley Coulter) was superintendent of the Industrial School and Free Kindergarten in Lafayette. Members of the Purdue faculty volunteered their services there.
On Valentine’s Day that year, Carolyn was asked to speak to the women on the board of this organization. The title of her speech was “Civic Needs.” She talked about the necessity of a central meeting place and shelter for girls and women. Carolyn was concerned about women who visited the city from rural farms who spent time on the streets or in a lonely boarding house. There was no common meeting place open to them. Her speech was inspiring and roused the board to purchase a building to serve the community.
The group found a home to purchase at 617 Ferry Street. Carolyn paid $800 into a fund to create the Community House. The Community House Association was formed, and with her large donation, Carolyn was made a life member of its board of directors.
Eventually, the Industrial School and Free Kindergarten became a part of the public school system, and the Community House was used solely for women’s society meetings and rented sleeping rooms for women. The YWCA held its first meetings there. In subsequent years, Carolyn’s dean of women successors would also heed the call to help women and families of the Lafayette community and foster strong connections to the YWCA.
AS EARLY AS 1913, Purdue’s female students were longing for a new residence hall and classroom building to replace the decaying Ladies Hall. Yet it would be years before they would see a new women’s residence hall built on Purdue’s campus. In the 1919 Debris yearbook, a poem called “The Coed’s Plea” was printed. In lighthearted rhyme, the women students lamented their need for a new building and how other new structures on campus, such as a new horse barn, received precedence over providing an adequate facility for women.
Inside Ladies Hall, the walls were cracking and chunks of plaster fell into the bread dough the women mixed; the coeds were forced to work in dim light because many of the gaslights were inoperable; and dishpans were scattered around the building to catch leaks from the water pipes. The poem ended with these lines: “And now, Purdue, you wonder why / We’re sour and cross today. / It’s all because we coeds few / Are treated in this way.”
Accompanying the poem printed in the 1919 Debris, Carolyn wrote an essay titled “Woman’s Building.” She said, “The number of girls enrolled in the University has been more than doubled in the past few years.” There were 247 women registered, and she attributed the increase to the fact that the women were offered courses that appealed to them, and “we have taken care of our girls.” Carolyn continued, “This, in fine, is the Purdue spirit. Progressive? Yes. And we have accomplished it all with no place that is peculiarly our own. But with a Woman’s Building with headquarters for our various activities,—well, just watch us and see!”
In 1920, the women were still waiting for their new building, so Carolyn wrote another essay in the Debris, ending with words of empowerment: “With the advent of a Woman’s Building there will be a new order of things. And with a Dormitory we could beat the world.”
Carolyn had established a rapport with the women students she affectionately called “my girls,” as is evident in a tribute they wrote to her: “She is sympathetic to the popular activities of the University and is ready to march across the levee at the head of the coeds whenever a college demonstration is to be made—and never is too weary to chaperone a campus dance, even into the ‘wee sma’ hours.’”
In 1920, women gained the right to vote and Prohibition was instituted. The next year, the Indiana General Assembly passed a bill requiring the governor to select at least one woman among the six appointments to the Purdue University Board of Trustees. The women’s suffrage movement had put pressure on all public institutions to appoint qualified women when board positions became available. Indiana Governor Warren T. McCray selected Virginia Claypool Meredith, age seventy-two, as the first female member of the Purdue University Board of Trustees.
Virginia had been a “lady farmer,” managing a 115-acre farm in Cambridge City, Indiana, after her husband passed away. She was a nationally known agricultural writer and speaker. At the age of forty, Virginia became a single mother when she adopted the children of her late best friend. Her adopted daughter was Mary L. Matthews, who would become Purdue’s first dean of home economics. Mary and her graduate students taught at the Industrial School and Free Kindergarten where Carolyn was a lifetime board member.
During the Roaring Twenties, Virginia was the grand dame of Purdue. With so few women on campus and a rather small University population of approximately 3,200