Vassar in the 1940s

by Anne MacKay, Class of 1948-1949

Vassar 1945-1949. All women. What a wonderful four years! We were in love with the beautiful campus, and the professors were excellent and exciting – particularly Art and Anthropology for me. I remember great speakers and performers: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Maya Deren, Joseph Campbell, George Gamow, Wanda Landowska. I was interested in writing but had the bad luck to have a teacher who didn’t seem to like women very much, and said openly there were no great women poets.

I was part of a very special joined class, ’48-’49. We entered together [for the 1945-46 school year], then ’48 went out in three years – the last class to accelerate. We sang all the time, after dinner, in the halls and at events, and still create wonderful reunion shows. Our 50th Reunion show, “The Hallelujah Chorus Line,” was set at the Pearly Gates for our 100th reunion. It was a very funny, full musical, performed in the Chapel for all reunion classes that day. A DVD is in the Library’s Special Collections. We were great friends and we’re still learning from each other at age 82.

We wore sweaters, cut-off jeans and men’s shirts – but skirts were obligatory for dinner.

I lived in Raymond, which was a lovely, diverse house. We laughed at the Gold Bobby Pin set (socialites) who lived in Josselyn. We had to deal with many rules about curfew, boys and alcohol (no one even knew about drugs.) It was the end of World War II, so we all worked, swept corridors, cleaned bathrooms, waited on tables and sat on [at the] message center – no phones in those days! It was important to do and also a way to meet people. We had no TV, no computers (just typewriters), no soda machines, no refrigerators or stoves – but we survived happily. We bicycled to the “Cider Mill” and hiked up to the apple orchard – where you could see the whole campus laid out below.

We loved to go up to the Pub for food and beer, and listen to the Weavers , Pete Seeger’s group that had just made the national charts. The serious drinkers went to the Dutch a few streets away. We ate in our dorms but Vassar food in wartime was quite poor, except on Sundays. I had a good laugh when I learned later about the Great Food Rebellion – just before they took Student’s Building away from us to create ACDC – when Cushing put all the evening’s “mystery meat,” in envelopes and mailed them off to the Director of Halls.

There was an unspoken expectation from the Vassar faculty that Vassar women would make a difference in our world, and we learned wonderful stories of Vassar women who had made important contributions in many areas. As we got older we also learned about our own classmates who had gone forth and helped transform their communities, or the world.

At home, it was clearly understood that young women were to marry as soon as possible, have children, and keep their husbands happy. If you worked it would be just a temporary job until you found the right man. So a lot of time was spent visiting men’s colleges, looking for this ideal man to please you and your parents. By the 1950s, more than a few of our class were miserable, isolated in the suburbs with children – and husbands who, paying for everything, felt they ‘owned’ them. This would set the stage for the Women’s Movement and the ‘60s revolutions: Sexual, Black and Gay. The only escape in the 1940s was graduate school, or being a ‘career woman’ (starting, of course, as a secretary).

Since transportation was limited, we tended to stay on campus on weekends. Student’s Building was ours and had a great stage so we did many plays. I learned more there and had much more fun than in the Drama Department, my major. These years became the era of the Great Musicals – full shows with terrific original scripts and songs – now archived in the Music Department and Special Collections of the Vassar College Library. I directed our Soph Party, a musical that was a feminist’s dream: the heroine loved the men presented to her, then said, ‘Thanks, but I want to wait and be a scientist first!’

The student government (I was president ’48-‘49) was a farce. Students had no power at all, but I think in those days we really didn’t care. The college was run by the President (Sarah Gibson Blanding), the Warden (now called Dean of Students), and the Financial Officer. There were many extracurricular activities, including religion, and politics (we had conservatives and some wonderful ‘Lefties’ on campus (pre-McCarthy)). We had two newspapers, the Miscellany News and the Chronicle – but the Misc was the smartest and most liberal. We had some excellent athletes who, sadly, were not valued either by us or by the college – later I learned they even had to pay their own way to events.

If you realized you loved women you lived in deep silence. ‘Gay’ hadn’t been invented then, I knew no one else like me, and there was no one to talk to. See my book, Wolf Girls at Vassar: Lesbian and Gay Experiences 1930-1990.

We had octet singing groups. The Night Owls were the best and always in demand to sing at men’s colleges. I remember one evening, as a freshman, I opened the door of the theater in Student’s Building. It was a cavernous room, and dark. There was one light on stage and the Night Owls were rehearsing. A magical moment with such beautiful women’s voices and harmonies!

I remember the night after graduation, sitting out under the great English Plane tree between the Library and Main, sad that it was all over. I’ve had a great life since and done most of the things I wanted to do, but Vassar will always be a special place and time.

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