Finally there is the matter of required curriculum. Out of a total of 40 units, the Wellesley girl has 18 stipulated for her as general requirements before she even considers the courses necessary for her major. These include a two-term course on selected portions of the Bible in the sophomore year and four one-term courses from a category which is composed of astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, mathematics, physics, and the history of science.
One social concern that has emerged out of Wellesley's inability to evolve smoothly is an unsatisfactory system of advisors, especially for freshmen. The advice is there, but not from the right sources. A sophomore recalls, "Last semester there was nobody here even close to my own age who could help explain things to me." An administrator, on the other hand, explains that there is a full list of advisors available to students: "At various times before reaching decisions she may need counsel or may wish to talk freely with an older person about her academic or personal life. At such times she can turn to her dean who keeps in touch with her academic progress and her personal welfare, to her instructors including the ordained ministers in the department of Biblical history, to the resident head of her house, or to the college physicians and psychiatrists."
How close can a class dean be to 840 students? How many students talk personal problems over with professors? The only real personal advisor the Wellesley student has is the House Mother. Each dorm has one House Mother, who is usually an older single or widowed woman living by herself. How much help can she be? A common obstacle to freshmen adjustment is that almost half of the girls entering Wellesley are involved in a relationship with a boy "from home." No matter how well-meaning the House Mother, age is crucial in this case.
The tension caused by the college's ambivalence toward progress is eased, apparently, by an incredible catalogue of traditions. The folklore has been a popular and easy way of bringing the past into the present. It helps produce class loyalty and make acclimation an easier process. There is a song before every evening meal, usually in three or four part harmony. There are six society houses--like the final clubs but non-exclusive--to give juniors and seniors a chance to get away from the dorm and to cook. Once a month every House has a birthday dinner to celebrate every member's birthday during that month. Freshmen wear beanies during the first days of classes. Tree Day officially establishes the Class and its song; it used to be insured by Lloyd's of London against rain. The classes march behind their banners and sing their songs on the chapel steps for Step Singing. Wellesley seniors roll large wooden hoops at graduation that have been passed down from class to class for fifty years or more. There is sophomore Fathers' Day, when the fathers attend classes and give skits in the dorm. Tuesday is faculty night. Wednesday night is tea. Three times around the Wellesley lake with a boy and he will marry his date. And then there are the Junior Shows.
As charming as old Wellesley traditions may be, they are obviously no longer enough to reconcile the need for reform and liberalization with the college's reactionary grip on the old ideas of women's education. Ye olde residential college with rolling green hills and dimpled girls singing merrily while they learn a special code of living is not practicable today. What's more, an increasing number of girls don't even want it that way. According to the Gray Book, the Wellesley girl "accepts responsibility to and for herself; she accepts responsibility to and for herself; she accepts responsibility to and for others; and finally she accepts a larger, public responsibility to and for the system."
Wellesley girls no longer stand solidly behind the Wellesley system. They see a clear difference between Wellesley girls and Radcliffe girls and between Harvard and other Ivy League schools. Harvard and Radcliffe have evolved toward more individual liberty and less group identification in the way that Wellesley has not.
Harvard evokes a mixed reaction from the Wellesley girls. The questionnaire drew such descriptions as "stuffy phonies, pompous, self-centered, neurotic, and holier-than-thou," although a good three-quarters of the girls prefer dating boys from Harvard than any other school. Despite these unkindnesses, Wellesley girls did have some more respectful things to say about Harvard: "More intelligent, less standard preppy, more urban, individualistic, sophisticated, more confidence."
One Wellesley girl said, "I've never met a Cliffie." The rest of the 140 set about to describe the differences between the two schools and came up with a neat schematization of the role of woman in society. Radcliffe: "More aware of the outside world, freer spirits, more intense intellectual curiosity, introverted, egotistical, less feminine, less wholesome, not as refined, more independent, more bohemian and liberal, more spontaneous, less social, longer hair, more unorthodox." Wellesley: "More sickeningly wholesome, more socially conscious, more conscious of being women, different life-goals, less intellectual, more normal, less independent."
The trend is toward Radcliffe and away from Wellesley. It is not a question of which direction, but only of how long it will take to get there. (Almost half of the girls who filled out the questionnaire said that if they had not attended Wellesley, they would have chosen Radcliffe.) Wellesley has a new president this year, Ruth M. Adams. She was a head resident at Radcliffe from 1943 to 1945, and a teaching fellow and tutor at Harvard from 1944 to 1946. Wellesley should be there soon.