21

I learned one valuable thing by attending an all-male college: female group bonding. At the sister college where I was enrolled, we didn’t live in suites; we lived in singles or doubles. Women were independent. They studied in lonely carrels. The message was loud and clear: if you want to achieve success, you are going to have to work hard and in solitude.

At the brother college where I lived, men lived in suites of four or six or off-campus group housing. Men were bands of brothers. Most of them played team sports. Many of them caroused together. Their group was the social planet and the girlfriends were orbiting moons.

When I was young, there weren’t a lot of opportunities for girls and women to bond as groups. I missed out on Girl Scouts because I did 4-H (solo projects). We didn’t have girls team sports in school. I suppose it was another one of those Victorian carry-overs of segregating girls and chaperoning them at all times. Whatever the reason, the women’s college had isolation in its architecture; the men’s college had group-forming in its design. For that and the social experiments of the early 1970’s, I am grateful.

When I arrived at college in the fall of 1970, I had barely ever heard of the brother college. My dean signed me up for all my classes at the brother school. Since I was there all day, it made sense to me to live on the men’s campus the second year (see 19).

My female suitemates became a wonder for me. I had never had friends like those friends. Not only did we bond with one another, we also became a rendezvous for other women on campus. We dined together, read the Sunday paper together, snacked on granola and watched TV together. This might not sound revolutionary to you, but in 1973 it was for us.

It was an unintended consequence of the two colleges opening their campuses to student exchanges. The early 1970’s were the years of single-sex colleges going co-ed. Mostly male colleges opening up to women, not so much the other way. Akin to women opting to wear men’s pants, complete with fly zipper, but not very many men in dresses, especially not dresses with zippers in the middle of the back. At the risk of completely losing my train of thought, please add that last detail to the list of uncelebrated feats of everyday women.

As I was saying, unintended consequences. Men moved into the women’s dorm and turned the entire dorm into a party house. Women moved into men’s dorms and became little female tribes. Men tended not to feel comfortable there. I loved it. I have sought after the same tribalism ever since without much success.

It is the joy we see on the women’s US soccer team. It is the chumminess that today’s young mothers share at coffee houses (We didn’t. No coffee houses then.). It is the force we see in the Black Lives Matter movement, started by three black women and now a major political voice in the country. It was a good thing to learn in college. Thank you, men.