(Ed. Note: The following is the first in a series of several articles on women's colleges within the Seven-College Conference.

The articles will attempt to explore the academic, social, extra-curricular, and the unique and peculiar aspects of life at each institution.)

Friday is a day of transition at all women's colleges, and Mount Holyoke is no exception. For on this particular day of the week, the great change takes place: the motley assortment of blue jeans, Bermuda shorts, and sloppy shirts gives way to the plaid skirts, high heels, and camel's hair coats.

Week-End Transition

Some of the girls depart for such far-away places as Hanover, New Haven, Princeton, and some even come to Cambridge; others remain on the campus to entertain visitors. The switchboard in every dormitory is tied up for the entire afternoon, and the living room is full to over-flowing. A mad flurry of excitement pervades the scene, and the slow week-day pace quickens in preparation for the holiday.

The atmosphere is very congenial. As one Harvard undergraduate remarked, "When you walk into a Smith dorm, you feel as though the walls are made of icebergs; when you walk into a Holyoke dorm, everyone is warm and friendly." The girls at Mount Holyoke admit very freely that, by the end of a male-less week of study, they are indeed happy to lay eyes on the great American college man.

But the girls are, hopefully, interested in more than socializing, despite an apparent pre-occupation with pinning, engagement, and marriage. The description offered by one of them, that they are "both interested and interesting," is, in the majority of instances, very apt.

"That our daughters may be as cornerstones, polished after the similitude of a palace."--Psalms 144:12.

On February 11, 1836, the Massachusetts legislature granted a charter for the founding of Mount Holyoke Seminary, thus making the present-day college in South Hadley the oldest institution in the United States for the higher education of women. The leader in the fight to found such an institution was Mary Lyon, who chose the above quotation from the Bible as the motto for the school.

Militant Feminism

But as Mount Holyoke's president, Richard Glenn Gettell, noted, higher education for women has come a long way from "the earlier day of militant feminism. College has no gender today: both sexes can be awfully good students."

At his inauguration last November, President Gettell delivered an address entitled "A Plea for the Uncommon Woman," saying, "If we fail to distinguish the uncommon from the common, fail to provide superior teachers for the superior students, fail to reserve the best education for the best qualified and most promising young men and young women, our failures will spell the descent of college education to the level of mediocrity."

Later in this speech, Gettell brought up the sociological problems of educating women in the modern age. He first observed that "man's life is divided into two phases: first, early years of training and schooling, then an adult lifetime in gainful occupation."

"In an earlier day," he continued, "woman's life was also considered two-phased: first, a growing up period requiring some training, ... then an adult lifetime of home-making, devoted and subservient to the husband and the family. This concept of the role of women is vastly outdated--particularly so for the uncommon woman."

Today's females, especially those in college, lead far more complicated lives than their great-great grandmothers. As Gettell pointed out, "Some of our graduates start a career before marriage, and stop before the first child; others continue throughout their married life. Some merely interrupt a career, and resume it as the children grow up; others marry so early that they never get started. Some occupy themselves with part-time or unpaid work. Some become frustrated, searching for something useful to do. Some support their husbands in the early years; others support them all their lives. Some go domestic, and want nothing else; in the eyes of some men this is an excellent arrangement, but one wonders if, with all its satisfactions, it is completely satisfactory to the intelligent woman."