One of the best indicators of a prospering and equal society is citizen’s access to education. Education provides the skills necessary to determine the role of duty for people in regards to intellect and enter into those networks to people with similar roles and education. Access to this education that determines roles, in particular elite and specific education that prepares people for highly skilled and prestigious positions, is the indicator of equality in that society. Within the last century, our country has seen equality by the existence of co-education of male and females in our universities.
We see equal access to education examples in Gina Barreca’s book Babes in Boyland; A Personal Narrative of Co-Education in the Ivy League. In her book Babes in Boyland, Barreca takes her reader through her personal experience as a student at Dartmouth college as the school newly became desegregated from and all-male school to a co-educational institute of higher learning. In her book, she often cites the woes of entering into a ‘boy world’. Girls are often looked over or treated like morons and are not given nearly the amount of respect as a male student, even if the wit and intellect of the female student soars over that of the male student. She is able to take her account of these negative aspects and make her book funny and entertaining as readers, particularly young readers who currently experience co-education in colleges today, gain insight to males and females first ‘learning’ how to ‘learn’ together in the 1960s and 70s.
Barreca explains how she felt like an outsider as a girl entering a world of boy’s education by even signs in bookstores, “The sign suggested that the campus lad not adjusted to the fact that women were now actual full-time, legitimate students at what had always been an all-male college.” (Barreca 53) Conversations and examinations of this prejudice even happened in bathrooms!
“First Girl: “Why do they like the girls from other schools better than they like us?
Second Girl: “Because they can drive them home. We’re always right here, all the time, and you need to drive us away, not jut drive us home, to get rid of us….They help them type. They’ll even do their laundry.” (Barreca 63)
The males at Dartmouth were not ready for the girls. The girls came on campus as a spectacle and were unfairly treated as lesser students by the males. They were not taken as seriously and tested just because they were female. This is an example of oppression, and a pathetic time between sex relations by creating false ideas that women were lesser. We see an issue almost exactly like this in more recent times. Over ten years ago, Virginia Military Institute was ordered to become co-educational. The school and alumni stopped their feet and refused by giving the state two alternative options to allowing females into their school: one, going private and two, setting up a military cadet core at an adjoining all-female school nearby, Mary Baldwin. VMI implemented the all female cadet core but eventually fell to the state and had to admit girls into their freshmen class. Once the girls arrived, many were tested beyond necessary by males in order to make them drop out and leave the school and even some violent actions were taken, such as sexual assault. Over the years, the acceptance of females have dramatically risen and today they are said to be seen as equals, yet the haunting memory still lasts.
How long must women endure this “you can’t do what I do” mentality from men? Whether it’s in education, the workforce, or any social scene in life, women often become a spectacle when trying to cross over into “boyland” or a “man’s world”. This is an exact example of oppression and women have to often deal with receiving criticism when they attempt to do something that isn’t engineered or predetermined for their gender. Hopefully this can phase out over time as the preconceived notions of women being ‘lesser’ phased away from schools such as Dartmouth and VMI.
-Laura Condyles
We see equal access to education examples in Gina Barreca’s book Babes in Boyland; A Personal Narrative of Co-Education in the Ivy League. In her book Babes in Boyland, Barreca takes her reader through her personal experience as a student at Dartmouth college as the school newly became desegregated from and all-male school to a co-educational institute of higher learning. In her book, she often cites the woes of entering into a ‘boy world’. Girls are often looked over or treated like morons and are not given nearly the amount of respect as a male student, even if the wit and intellect of the female student soars over that of the male student. She is able to take her account of these negative aspects and make her book funny and entertaining as readers, particularly young readers who currently experience co-education in colleges today, gain insight to males and females first ‘learning’ how to ‘learn’ together in the 1960s and 70s.
Barreca explains how she felt like an outsider as a girl entering a world of boy’s education by even signs in bookstores, “The sign suggested that the campus lad not adjusted to the fact that women were now actual full-time, legitimate students at what had always been an all-male college.” (Barreca 53) Conversations and examinations of this prejudice even happened in bathrooms!
“First Girl: “Why do they like the girls from other schools better than they like us?
Second Girl: “Because they can drive them home. We’re always right here, all the time, and you need to drive us away, not jut drive us home, to get rid of us….They help them type. They’ll even do their laundry.” (Barreca 63)
The males at Dartmouth were not ready for the girls. The girls came on campus as a spectacle and were unfairly treated as lesser students by the males. They were not taken as seriously and tested just because they were female. This is an example of oppression, and a pathetic time between sex relations by creating false ideas that women were lesser. We see an issue almost exactly like this in more recent times. Over ten years ago, Virginia Military Institute was ordered to become co-educational. The school and alumni stopped their feet and refused by giving the state two alternative options to allowing females into their school: one, going private and two, setting up a military cadet core at an adjoining all-female school nearby, Mary Baldwin. VMI implemented the all female cadet core but eventually fell to the state and had to admit girls into their freshmen class. Once the girls arrived, many were tested beyond necessary by males in order to make them drop out and leave the school and even some violent actions were taken, such as sexual assault. Over the years, the acceptance of females have dramatically risen and today they are said to be seen as equals, yet the haunting memory still lasts.
How long must women endure this “you can’t do what I do” mentality from men? Whether it’s in education, the workforce, or any social scene in life, women often become a spectacle when trying to cross over into “boyland” or a “man’s world”. This is an exact example of oppression and women have to often deal with receiving criticism when they attempt to do something that isn’t engineered or predetermined for their gender. Hopefully this can phase out over time as the preconceived notions of women being ‘lesser’ phased away from schools such as Dartmouth and VMI.
-Laura Condyles
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