As suggested in my last two posts, I was recently assigned an archival research project on old documents regarding Santa Clara University. Despite my hatred for research (which I describe fully in Research is my Nemesis), I was actually pretty excited to look at archives from my very own university. I knew I was interested in tying in a feminist viewpoint, to build on my research from last quarter, but was not at all expecting to find as much as I did.
Upon walking into the archival section of the library I was met with a table of documents solely on the adaptation of women to the SCU campus. My original shock, of course, was finding out that women weren’t accepted until the 1960’s. Furthermore, I was surprised to see that their acceptance was highly disputed, even by male students.
“TRADITIONS SHATTERED,” covers half the front page of the University’s paper, The Santa Clara, alerting both students and faculty alike that, as of the following quarter, SCU would become the first coeducational Catholic institution in California.
While it’s understandable that female facilities and a larger student body would create expenses for the school, it seemed to me like female addition to the campus would, if anything, excite young men. To understand why this might not be so, I decided to take a closer look at the time period. After reading Katherine E. Tirabassi’s article, Journeying into the Archives, in class, I knew a huge part of archival research was background information. As far as Catholic schools are concerned, Santa Clara was among the first to accept females onto their campus. As the oldest institution of higher education in California and a strict Catholic campus it is no surprise that the school had, and has, placed an immense value on campus traditions. Traditions, that as of 1961, did not include women.
“It will detract from the spirit of the school, from the Santa Clara image. Tradition is important here and I think that the reason that most of the fellows came here was the tradition of the Santa Clara spirit. That tradition will be destroyed now.” -Santa Clara Student Leaders, The Santa Clara, 1961
Women coming to Santa Clara would create a huge shift in the atmosphere of the school, which had remained primarily unchanged since the it’s opening in 1851. After reading the paper and looking at other archives to cross-reference, I concluded that the primary cause of dispute was the University’s fear of change. However, the discrimination of female students on and off the campus goes far beyond this.
While the archives introducing female presence on campus were extraordinarily interesting, it was the documents I found next that really caught my attention. The Santa Clara Women’s Center, which was created immediately after female acceptance into the school, was an organization formed to provide a variety of on campus classes and activities for women. In addition to fun events, the organization held an abundance of safety and confidence seminars, such as “Rape Education” and “Assertiveness Training”. While I rarely feel physically threatened here on campus, I think that the social atmosphere at colleges in general is one which encourages females to submit to men. Although classes themselves are not biased, there are many social pressures on college girls to do what their male counterparts ask of them. In some cases this may be listening to them on a project or trying to look a certain way, but in many, it’s being peer pressured to “hook-up” with a guy because we’re too scared to say no.
“Is it hard to state how you feel? Are you too embarrassed to say what you really like about someone? Is it hard to say ‘NO’ because you don’t want to hurt their feelings?”
These rhetorical questions line the top of 1981 “Assertiveness Training” flyer, which at one point in time was hanging on Benson’s very walls. The flyer immediately caught me off guard. Unlike the other documents I’d studied, which were clearly outdated, this flyer could have easily been directed at me. The irony of reading my inner most personal problems off an archive in the library, seemed almost absurd. I knew going into this assignment there would be certain parts of my research that would resonate with my own college experience, but I never expected to feel a personal connection. How could it be that girls going to college a full 35 years before me were faced with the exact same internal conflicts? The answer goes far beyond Santa Clara or it’s originally male-dominated atmosphere, but to the idea that it’s our duty, as women, to please men. If something goes “wrong”, whether it’s the shifting of a University’s traditions or a guy not getting laid, it’s always women who take the fall. Through looking at archives over the past few days, I was able to clearly see that female discrimination cannot be limited to a certain time or place, but is a societal norm so ingrained in our nature that we don’t even notice until it’s spelled out in front of us.
When looking into the history of Santa Clara it was easy to see that the University has made tremendous leaps over the past 55 years regarding gender equality. That being said, I was shocked to realize that many of the problems I researched remain evident not only on campus, but in our society as a whole. Through studying Santa Clara’s archives I was able to personally identify with many gender issues here at school in a way that was much more engaging than simply reading an article. In addition to helping me better understand my university, this “sparked interest” encouraged me to expand on my previous knowledge of sexism, where it’s rooted, and how we commonly see it today. As a 2016 female Bronco I can say that our struggle on campus is far from over, but I do believe that, as a society, we can continue to outgrow our patriarchal tendencies. While it may be a stretch to assume we can reshape a social atmosphere that exists at Universities worldwide, I think, that if the archives showed me anything, it’s that change is always possible.