Oral history interview with Peggy Whalen-Levitt, 1991 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Peggy Whalen-Levitt
INTERVIEWER: Missy Foy
DATE: May 21, 1991
[Begin Side A]
MF: This is Missy Foy. It is the 21st of May 1991 and I am in the home of Mrs. Peggy Whalen-Levitt. And if you could start with some general information first like where you're from and when you went to UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]—that kind of general stuff first.
PWL: Well, I'm originally from Huntington, New York. And I came to UNCG in 1964 directly from New York, not knowing a soul [laughs] at the university. So I was here from '64 to '68.
MF: Okay. What was your major?
PWL: English.
MF: All right. During the time you were here, it had, well, it was—it had just become UNCG and had just become co-educational. And what was—what did student life seem to be like? What was sort of the atmosphere at that time?
PWL: Well, let me think. It certainly felt like a women's college. It definitely still felt like a women's college.
MF: Yes.
PWL: There was a dress code. We were not allowed to wear pants on campus in 1964. We still had lights out at ten o'clock or something like that in the freshman dorm.
MF: Right.
PWL: So it was still quite an atmosphere of rules and really decorum, I would say. I mean, I don't know when they abandoned having to wear gloves when you went downtown but I don't think it was very—it was several years before that.
MF: Yes.
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PWL: It was certainly—it was still an atmosphere of an all-women’s college where women were taken very seriously, you know.
MF: How did the men seem to fit in on campus at that time?
PWL: To tell you the truth, I never had a man in any of my classes that I can remember. So that I might have seen some at the distance, they may have been seen, like they must have been town students or something.
MF: Yes.
PWL: But I just don't even remember ever having any in class.
MF: Obviously, you probably lived in the dorms.
PWL: Yes.
MF: [laughs] Yes, you were too far to commute. What dorm did you live in?
PWL: [laughs] My freshman year I was in Shaw [Residence Hall]. Do they still have freshmen dorms?
MF: Yes.
PWL: Separate dorms.
MF: I don't know which ones are freshmen now. I guess they change from time to time.
PWL: Well, they were all in the quadrangle area.
MF: Yes. I know that Jamison [Residence Hall] used to be a freshman dorm. I don't know if it still is.
PWL: I can't remember. No, I guess some of them are over near the cafeteria too. There were some freshmen dorms. I can't remember the name of that dorm.
MF: North Spencer [Residence Hall] used to be freshmen but I don't think it is anymore—
PWL: Yes, yes.
MF: —so, I'm not sure how they do that now. If I lived in the dorm or something, I guess I would be more with it. [laughs] So when you were a freshman you were in Shaw but—
PWL: Right.
MF: Then you moved to another dorm? 3
PWL: Yes. Then I moved to Moore and Strong [Residence Halls]. My sophomore year I was in Moore and then I was in Strong my last two years.
MF: The end of campus, yes. [laughs]
PWL: [laughs] Yes, right. That was the end of campus at the time. They were just building those high rise dorms, I think.
MF: Yes, was Phillips-Hawkins [Residence Hall] there yet?
PWL: Was that the one across the street?
MF: Yes.
PWL: That was just being built.
MF: Yes, okay, I couldn't remember when it was built, yes. And then I guess Cone [Residence Hall] and all those high rise dorms sort of down in that gulley. They were built shortly after.
PWL: Yes, I did—I know people who lived in them so I can't remember whether they were there or—I mean, I know they were there when I was there. I don't know if they had just been built or not.
MF: Yes. I don't really know.
PWL: There was some construction going on down there. I can't remember which ones.
MF: How did living in the dorm seem to be—like with some of the rules like visitation and stuff like that?
PWL: Well, I do remember we were, I think we were allowed three weekends away from campus and being an out of state student, I really had no place to go. [chuckles] I remember that rather well. But people would definitely leave for those three weekends. They'd take their three weekends and go home.
MF: Yes.
PWL: And it was just too far for me to go so I remember pretty much being—staying there. I'm trying to remember, it seems to me we had to have a special pass I guess, if we wanted to spend the weekend away.
MF: Yes.
PWL: But I remember spending all my time there and the feeling was that most of the students, you know, were pretty near home and they had a network of friends already before they 4
came.
MF: Yes.
PWL: And so they did have a place to go for those three weekends. I remember that. Seems that we had to be back in the dorm at night by ten o'clock, something like that or maybe we needed to have a pass even to go to the library. Seems to me we had to have a pass even to go out at night to go to the library and then come back.
MF: Yes, I think I remember somebody saying that. There were quite a few girls from New York and New Jersey coming to school at UNCG. I guess that's—
PWL: At that time?
MF: Well, it's sort of been, yes, at just about any North Carolina state school, there's always a good size population from New York and New Jersey. I guess it’s much cheaper.
PWL: Of the out of state?
MF: Yes.
PWL: Yes.
MF: Was that—what motivated you to come to UNCG?
PWL: My mother had a friend who'd gone to Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina, now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] and had loved it. And at the time I thought I was interested in interior design as a major and it had a really strong program in that. And also there was something in me that wanted to see another part of the country.
MF: Yes, I guess somewhere else.
PWL: There was a bunch of things kind of mixed in to get me here but that brought me.
MF: And it was—oh, it was always much cheaper though, to go as an out of state student in North Carolina.
PWL: Oh yes, that was, that was a real factor too.
MF: Yes, it's incredibly expensive to go to school up there.
PWL: But that wasn't the main factor for me. I think that it was the combination of having as personal contact with the school, you know, someone that—
MF: Yes. 5
PWL: I come from a family of—really an uneducated family. No one had ever gone to college before in my family and so it was really—it was important to feel like I had some connection to it.
MF: Yes.
PWL: And that was through this person who graduated—I—she must have graduated in maybe the '30s, somewhere in the '30s.
MF: What about the academic side of this school? Classes and faculty—how were classes and faculty?
PWL: Well, again for me, it was just wonderful. It was really eye opening coming from the background that I came from, you now, not to have any exposure to really people who had gone to college at all.
MF: Yes.
PWL: It was just wonderful. I fell in love with the people I had in the English department. That was a very special experience. Randall Jarrell [poet, English professor] was there when I came.
MF: Oh, yes.
PWL: I think Alan Tate [poet] was visiting one year. You know, it was just a stream of visiting poets giving readings and Fred Chappell [poet, English professor] was there and Ann Watson was there and Robert Watson [writer, English professor]. So it was a very impressive English department. So although I started out in home economics, I moved over to English ultimately. I would say that one of the things that struck me was that, coming from a Northeastern high school, you know, and taking New York state regents' exams and learning really study skills so to speak—
MF: Yes.
PWL: —that I was in a very good position to do well at this school. There were quite a few people surrounding me from rural Southern high school experience who really had to struggle through their freshmen year, so I remember being very aware of that, of a different, you know, training and experiences that we brought to that experience our freshman year. And there were people who just really didn't make it, you know.
MF: Yes.
PWL: Who flunked out by the end of the freshman year. And so that was—that was interesting. I was really privileged to be asked to be in the Honors Program. I don't know whether it was new then. I have a feeling it was fairly new. That Warren Ashby [philosophy professor], I believe, started the Honors Program and there were maybe about twenty of 6
us our sophomore year who were asked to participate in the Honors Program. And that was really my salvation. It was very special attention, it was very open ended. We did a session with Warren and then the next year, I'm trying to think, the junior year we also worked with Warren on the nature of man and it was very philosophical and very—enabled each of us to sort of develop some of our own projects and thoughts and it was very special attention. It's what kept me at the school.
MF: Yes.
PWL: On some level, I thought maybe I would transfer to the University [of North Carolina] at Chapel Hill.
MF: Oh yes.
PWL: But the Honors Program was really so important to me that it's what pretty much kept me at the school.
MF: Was the Residential College already going at that time?
PWL: I don't think it had started yet. It was—I think it was in the offing.
MF: Yes.
PWL: Just was Mary Foust Dorm then.
MF: Yes.
PWL: Yes. No, that hadn't begun.
MF: Yes, I was trying to remember. I guess that was probably '69 or '70 that it—maybe '69 that it started.
PWL: Warren started that too.
MF: Yes, he did. I know. That's what made me think of it when you said that. And I was wondering if maybe that had—that idea had sprung off from the Honors Program.
PWL: It may have. It may have, that kind of face to face opportunity for dialogue and open conversation.
MF: Yes.
PWL: Yes. It may have.
MF: I wonder if anybody's interviewed him.
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PWL: You know, one of the things he did that you might want to look into was, seems to me it was like my junior year, so that would have put it in say '67, Warren arranged a weekend where former students from different, many different years would come back and meet with this group of junior honor students and talk about—they talked with us about what their lives had been like after they left the university, as women in this century. And that was an incredible experience to just sit there and have the benefit of these different years of experience of women who had graduated from Woman's College. You know, what it was like to be—he was very, very enlightened. I mean, this was really before the women's movement and he had a whole sense of asking this question. You know what is it a woman can bring to the world and so he did it in a very personal way.
MF: Do you think that the heritage of having been an all-girls school and the atmosphere that was still there when you were attending school there, do you think that that encouraged women to do better?
PWL: Yes. Definitely. Oh, definitely. It—yes, I think, you know, for me it certainly did.
MF: Yes.
PWL: I felt that I was taken very seriously as a student. The Student Government [Association] was run by women, the newspaper, everything. And it was a kind of oasis, you know [laughs] of time for me and, I think for most of the other women in the honors group. One of the things Warren did at the beginning of that sophomore year was he asked us to imagine what was it we planned to do after we graduated. And I think a lot of us hadn't given it much thought, you know. Like here you have this group of, you know, reasonably bright students and he really, he really encouraged us to think about what it was we were going to do with ourselves other than get married because that was a kind of general atmosphere that most people were mostly looking forward to, their china pattern and their engagement ring and getting married.
MF: Yes.
PWL: I would say that most of the women of the school seemed fairly concerned with that. [laughs]
MF: Yes.
PWL: But for those of us who had some different concerns it was a very supportive atmosphere. I don't think I would have developed in the same way at all at a co-ed school.
MF: Yes. I've heard that and I've also heard from some people that—I've heard like one extreme or the other. Either they said that it gave them a chance to develop a competitive spirit that they wouldn't have had—been able to develop otherwise and some people have said that they felt like it was not a realistic situation in that—
PWL: Well, that's what made me think about leaving it, I guess, you know, that it was—for me 8
it was somewhat solitary. And again, I think it had to do with coming from the North that I didn't have this network of friends at Chapel Hill and Duke [University] and other places and because I tended to be studious anyway, I found myself pretty cut off from the social life. I mean, I did have friends from my high school experience that I went off to see at Annapolis, University of Michigan and other places, but I found it real hard to create a social life out of this particular situation. You know, I felt for myself, if I had been in a co-ed situation than I would probably be meeting some, some male students who were also serious students. I had a hard time—The network that seemed to be created was very, very social, extremely social and I wasn't real interested in it. So I can't remember what your question was that got me into that. [laughs]
MF: I can't—I don't think there was a particular question, you know.
PWL: Oh, that it was unreal. So in that case, you know, it certainly isn't representative of life at large but I just felt like as a kind of stepping stone into the rest of your life, as a place where you could really think about ultimate questions and what you wanted to develop in yourself, it was wonderful.
MF: What about—there was a pretty large town student population at UNCG and there has been, I guess, during the whole life of the school. How did those students seem to fit in? Did they seem sort of distant and disconnected from campus?
PWL: You know, I don't think I knew very many town students and that tells you something right there. The only—I can only remember one town, one person that I would identify as a town student was in the Honors Program and I would say that all the other friendships I had were developed through living situations and the cafeteria, working together on projects and so forth and that I cannot recall much of a town student representation in any of those.
MF: Yes.
PWL: So, my impression is they were two kind of separate groups.
MF: Yes.
PWL: I'm not sure that's the case. That was my experience. I did not meet many town students.
MF: I think it was that way for a lot of the time. Maybe there were a few who crossed the sort of, well, I hate to say, line but—Were you very involved in Student Government or other activities?
PWL: Well, I was involved in several things. I did some writing for the student newspaper and I was involved with the Lutheran Student Association and I organized an exchange with Smith College where we sent—no, we didn't send actually. They sent three students to UNCG to experience what it was like to be in a Southern school and so I organized that exchange program. I'm trying to think of what else. I did help with the yearbook as well, 9
the final one, in 1968.
MF: What was sort of the philosophy of the newspaper at that time?
PWL: You know, I didn't do a whole lot of writing for them. The one main experience I had was one of censorship so I really can't tell you about anything other than my own experience but I did an interview. I was very involved in the Civil Rights Movement and not very many people on campus were at the time that I was there. I think probably that changed after '68. But from '66 to '68 there were really only a handful of us involved. We tend to be from the North. I was concerned about a policy that seemed discriminatory to me that black and white students were never placed as roommates in freshmen dorms at the university at that time. So there was—I don't know whether there was a written or unwritten policy but it never happened that a black and white student would be, would be roommates in a freshmen dorm. And at that time, I don't know if it's still the case, there were junior—students who were juniors who ran, it was an elected position, for counselor of the freshmen dorm. They were sort of freshmen dorm counselors or I don't remember the term. It was some other term maybe that would identify them but every freshmen dorm had a junior in residence who kind of helped them make their adjustment into the school. They had a dorm mother and they had a junior. And that was an elected position and so I did an interview of all the juniors that year. I can't remember whether it was '66 or '67, one of those years. Everyone who was running for that position and I asked them where they stood on the question of integration in freshmen dorms and placing black and white students together in the rooms. And all but one, who was from Alabama, I think, said that they were opposed to integration in freshmen dorms. So I—really it was quite an objective, descriptive article, wrote that I felt that people voting should be aware of where people stood on that issue and I submitted the article to the newspaper. And I think Terry Sprinkle [Class of 1968] was the editor then. She, as far as I can tell, she loved it but somehow, somebody got wind of it and I was called into the dean's office the next week. And I can't remember who was the dean then—Rosemary something. [Editor's note: Dr. Rosemary McGee was dean of women.]
MF: I can't remember.
PWL: She was a lovely woman, just very, very lovely. But she talked to me about the difficulty of publishing this article, the possibility of losing federal funds if it were to be published, and so forth and so on. And so I was asked to retract it, which I did. And I don't—I really didn't write much else for that. I was asked to do a few things but I really wasn't real close to the inner workings of it. But that was an interesting experience.
MF: Yes.
PWL: I'm trying to think if I did anything else for the newspaper. Oh, I did an interview with Amy Charles [English professor] and I think I did an article on the student health program, you know, and that was about it.
MF: Yes. You said that you were active in civil rights while you were there. UNCG was not a 10
hotbed of activity—
PWL: No, no. [laughs]
MF: —so, what kinds of things were you involved in?
PWL: Well, I can remember through the Lutheran Student Association, I went to an interfaith, a student interfaith conference in Detroit and I got some training there in what they called "death education groups" on racism and the purpose of these groups was to bring black and white students together to air some of the problems and differences and concerns that they had and I can remember coming back from that, I got permission to start one of these with students from A&T [North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University] and our school and we may be met several times. I can't remember how many. I think it was in the lobby of one of the dormitories. It was probably the lobby of Strong. And it was just an effort to create a bridge, you know, between A&T and our school and to address some of the concerns. Some of my friends were more active than I was. Betty Cheek [Class of 1968]—you might want to interview her. She lives in Durham [North Carolina] and she was extremely active in the Black Power Movement. In fact, she created a conference, I think, that was at UNCG. [Editor's note: the Black Power Forum was held on the UNCG campus from November 1-3, 1967.] I can remember going to one of the meetings. It was almost entirely attended by black students from Greensboro, very few whites were there, where the whole philosophy of the Black Power Movement was addressed and there was a speaker, national speaker, maybe from the National Student Association there. So I don't know if anyone is interviewing her but she's very articulate. She'd be real good person—I have her address somewhere, if you want it.
MF: Right.
PWL: I'm trying to think what else we did. Oh, I organized a panel on open housing. We invited speakers from the Greensboro community to come in representing various points of view on open housing and segregated housing in Greensboro. The—it seems to me that the panel was moderated by a minister named Ilic—I can't really remember now. But it was very well attended and there might have been about three hundred people there.
MF: Oh. How were—what was the nature of race relations on campus at that time?
PWL: Strained. [laughs]
MF: Yes.
PWL: I would say.
MF: How so?
PWL: I will mostly be talking about it through Betty's eyes because she was my closest black friend but you know, it was a time when black consciousness was so newly being raised 11
that there was a lot of anger, I think—
MF: Oh, sure.
PWL: —on the part of black students. I don't believe—yes, I think maybe very much near the end of my stay that it became to be kind of organizing the black students together, but that had never taken place before. My impression was that that it was an issue—a kind of an untouchable issue. It was something nobody talked about in any kind of public forum. The black students probably talked among themselves but it was never brought into a public forum until very much near the end of my time here.
MF: Yes, the—I'm trying to think when the Neo-Black Society formed. I think that was in the '70s. [Editor's note: the Neo-Black Society was formed in 1967.]
PWL: Yes, there was not anything like that.
MF: What about attitudes of white students towards the black students that were on campus?
PWL: Well, I can tell you a little bit about responses to my efforts. You know, I think that many, many people I spoke to and tried to encourage to come to some of these felt that I was really over-stepping the line in even bringing these things up and why didn't I leave well enough alone. I would say that that was the general response. That I was stirring things up to even try to have these death education groups, that kind of thing. That one could easily be labeled a trouble maker, that kind of thing.
MF: Oh, yes.
PWL: And clearly the censorship of the article gave me the same message on another level. You know, that this was really something to keep the lid on, was the general—my general feeling.
MF: It almost sounds like there was some kind of fear about—Do you have any, like, insight as to where that came from?
PWL: No, it was just so prevalent. I mean, I think it was prevalent throughout the entire South. It was a very fearful time. A time when people were very emotional. There was a lot of, I think on the part of many Northern students, a maybe lack of understanding and too much blaming.
MF: Yes.
PWL: A lack of understanding of the culture. And there was a lot of defensiveness on the part of a lot of white Southern students—certainly not all.
MF: Yes.
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PWL: You know, but one of the—some of the main leaders of the Civil Rights Movement on campus were white Southern women, you know, so it wasn't any—I think as I said the one person who stood out for integration of freshmen dorms in that interview, I think, was from Alabama, so I'm not trying to stereotype there but I think that there was some real misunderstanding back and forth that way. [pause] People really preferred not to discuss it. Most of the women around here preferred not to discuss it.
MF: Yes. And I guess most of the black students, which there weren't very many at that time anyway—
PWL: No.
MF: —usually, I think really kept to themselves.
PWL: Well, not Betty Cheek. That's why you really need to—she was very, very brilliant, articulate black woman, and she brought it forward to the whole campus.
MF: Yes. What kinds of things did she do?
PWL: Well, she organized this black power event.
MF: Right.
PWL: She was very involved on the national level. I think through the National Student Association and that was a sort of hot bed of political activity. I was involved in the anti-war movement. I can remember setting up tables across from the military and so forth. [laughs] So I got myself involved in that too. Tended to be the same people. But Betty was pretty much focused on black power.
MF: Yes, that was another thing I was going to ask you about, was with Vietnam. [Editor's note: war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from November 1, 1955 to the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.] Again, that's an area where UNCG was not really a hot bed of activity.
PWL: Not at all. There were just a few of us who were kind of raising that issue. One way we did it was to set up—whenever the Marines or military came to recruit on campus, we would just set up a table across from them in Elliott [University] Center and have some alternative information that people could look at and consider.
MF: Yes.
PWL: As I think back on it, a lot of this was just freelance, you know, activism. It wasn't particularly organized.
MF: Do you remember what sort of general attitude towards Vietnam was on campus?
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PWL: I think that my impression was that people didn't think very much about it.
MF: Yes.
PWL: Most of the women, like I said, were pretty concerned about their china patterns. [laughs] I mean, there really was something of that.
MF: Do you think that part of the reason that there was so little activism on the campus was because that the large female student group?
PWL: I think that definitely has something to do with it. We did bring in some people from the National Student Association. I wasn't as involved in that as Betty Thomas was. Now she also still lives in North Carolina somewhere. I think her name is Betty Daily now. She never graduated from UNCG. She dropped out and became an activist and stayed one the whole rest of her life. She now represents farmers, small farms, but she's the one—she was a year behind me. She's the one who brought people from the National Student Association down to the campus from time to time and we would have meetings to discuss these political issues and how students could become involved in them. I think she was also a member of SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee].
MF: That's odd, because I'm sure there weren't very many students at UNCG who were in SNCC. I wouldn't imagine that would go over very well.
PWL: No, there was a kind of like I said, a small group of activists.
MF: Yes.
PWL: I was a kind of—I don't know, I guess I perceived myself as something of a bridge builder, you know. I was involved in a lot of traditional activities and then I was also involved in these forms of activism and was able to sort of be in both worlds. Not many people did that. [laughs]
MF: Yes.
PWL: Because I wasn't quite as extreme as most of the students who were, who were politically active and it was a kind of very small, rather extreme fringe group of students.
MF: Do you remember—something I just thought of that I wanted to ask you—I think it was in—may have been '69 but I think it was '68, when several students successfully petitioned the administration to be allowed to have alcohol in their rooms if they were old enough?
PWL: No, I don't think that happened when I was there. Maybe it did and passed me by because I really was pretty involved in social questions by my last year and that one maybe wouldn't seem important to me but the one question I do remember attending a forum about was whether there should be hours, closing hours that you had to be in by. And that 14
I remember very well and can tell you about.
MF: All right.
PWL: Whether there should be hours that you had to be in by on weekends, I guess it was.
MF: Like a curfew.
PWL: Curfew, yes. And I really remember the most vocal voices at this forum, discussing this issue, were women who felt that they could not take responsibility for themselves, that they needed the curfew to protect them and to give them the excuse to come back in. They were afraid what would happen if they didn't have it. That they would find it difficult to monitor their own lives and it was a real—that, that the overall feeling was that this needed to stay in place to protect students who were unable to sort of take hold of their own life and ability to get themselves back where they needed to be. [laughs] And I'm fairly certain we lost the battle. To have no curfew at that time. That it was still in place when I left.
MF: Yes, it didn't go out until 1972.
PWL: And came probably with men on campus. Obviously then it seemed like a moot point or something but women were very reluctantly to let go of that for themselves. It was a real conservative impulse that I remember now.
MF: That's—yes—
PWL: Maybe somebody else—you know, people remember events very differently but I can remember being very aggravated at the end of that, feeling like they still really needed this custodial kind of protective system.
MF: Yes, that's odd because I guess it was in '72 a lot of things went out the window. A lot of the parietal rules stopped. A lot of the traditions, the class jackets stopped.
PWL: The Daisy Chain. [laughs] [Editor's note: the Daisy Chain was a tradition held at graduation ceremonies during which the sophomore class gathered and formed daisies and greenery into chains for their sister class, the seniors.]
MF: The Daisy Chain, class officers, Class Day, May Day. All these things—a lot of these things stopped in 1972. They were voted out by the students.
PWL: Well, there was still a lot of reluctance whenever this was discussed in '67, it may have been '66.
MF: Yes. There were a couple of other things I want to ask you about and so I'm going to have to jump around a little bit here.
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PWL: Sure.
MF: I've heard from some people that Tate Street was really becoming sort of a focal point of student life in the late '60s and early '70s. Early '70s more so than the late '60s but that for instance, there was the grassy hill in front of the Music Building that around '72 or '73 ended up with thorny bushes planted on it to keep various people from sitting on the hill and I wondered if any of that started—
PWL: I have the feeling I'm not aware of that.
MF: Yes, okay.
PWL: There were a couple of bars. There's one that was downstairs, I can't remember the name though, that some students seemed to frequent. I never did and didn't really know anything about that life there. I mean I only remember going down to The Corner for supplies and occasionally an ice cream soda.
MF: Yes, yes.
PWL: I didn't really relate to it. It wasn't in my cognitive map as being a very important situation.
MF: Yes. Another thing I wanted to ask you about is, it was a period of real change for this school during the time that you were there or maybe, rather sort of some pre-change atmosphere, and what are some of the biggest changes you remember occurring during the time you were there?
PWL: Dress is my biggest one because many of us went from having to wear dresses to really wearing blue jeans every single day.
MF: Yes.
PWL: So that was a kind of major change. And of course, a lot of people didn't depart at all from it, from the manner of dress that they had come into this school with but some people were real eager to make that change. [laughs] So it may have sorted people out in a way that hadn't happened before, I don't know. Change, you know, I was so aware and taken up with this change in the broader society that that is what made the most impression on me. I would say that's the change that I experienced of the first two years I was there, I was very focused on my school work and on being there. And the last two years, the whole being there seemed subordinate to major issues that were societal issues so that I—the things that I became involved in were much broader than being there. They were, you know, many students who seemed very much focused on being there.
MF: Yes.
PWL: That they were—particularly the female students who became involved in Student 16
Government and these are the people who seemed then to have carried us into the future with the Alumni Association and all these people were very close together and they ran the government and fairly conservative impulses and they kind of carried, I think, the Alumni Association. Whatever they've done together they're the people who can attend the reunions and all. I've only attended a part of one [laughs] so I can't tell you anything about that but—so for me the change, you know, for me personally, I'm probably not a good person to ask because I kind of put myself in another realm for the last two years.
MF: Yes. Did most of the students on campus seem real aware of some of the things going on in society as a whole or did they seem sort of isolated and sort of in a university world?
PWL: Yes, I would say it seemed pretty isolated. It wasn't a very worldly group of people—of women.
MF: Also, you had mentioned about the Alumni Association and that, you know, you hadn't stayed very involved but were you aware of some of the controversy that had been going on—
PWL: The last few years?
MF: Yes.
PWL: Yes, from reading about it.
MF: Oh, yes.
PWL: Just from reading about it. It has seemed to me, as I've read the whole thing, tried to follow it, reading it, and like I said, I would never have even gone to this reunion. I think it was about three years ago but a friend who had come up from California, no, from Florida called and said, "You really ought to—I mean, you live here. You ought to come over to this thing." And I said, "I'm not sure I'll try it at all." She says, "Well you really—at least come for the last day. Have lunch with me and come for the last day."
And so I did and I you know, got a little bit of an impression of maybe what was going on with this but it seems to me that the impulse was to really hang on to the past. That there are people who are very attached to the past and find it difficult to move forward with it. The only part of it I can identify with is that I had a very great fondness for the school as a women's college, not on the level of Daisy Chains and traditions and festivals but on the level of it being—on the level of say I'd gone to Smith or some other women's college experience—of it being that experience. The opportunity to define yourself outside of, outside of male definition of a female role, the opportunity to do that. I think that a lot of these women didn't quite relate to it that way. They related to it as a—I don't know how to put it. It wasn't a sorority atmosphere at all.
MF: More like a sort of a big slumber party?
PWL: Well, it was definitely a community-building experience for those people who 17
participated fully in it. And a real bonding—
MF: Yes.
PWL: —and the traditions that went with it and it was pretty conservative. There was a real atmosphere of conservatism about it. So my sense of what's happened in the last few years has been that that group has been very disenchanted.
MF: Yes.
PWL: My husband, you know, the reason I'm here now is that he was hired by the university theater department to teach there so we came back here eleven years ago and I was just dismayed at the changes then so that was—when did we come? '79.
MF: Yes, like which changes?
PWL: I hadn't been here for ten years. I had visited maybe in '69 so it had been ten years and it just seemed like an entirely different atmosphere, an entirely different place. And I assumed it's because it was co-ed, you know.
MF: Yes.
PWL: But it seemed to—I don't know. It had such integrity as a small liberal arts school, to me, before. And that seems to have been dissipated somewhere. It seems to have lost that. I mean, its strengths were really to me in art and English and then a few of the areas that were traditionally female areas like education and home economics were very strong. But this sense of it being a small liberal arts school somehow seems lost.
MF: Yes.
PWL: So I still love, I still love going to the Jackson Library. I love that building. I just spent a lot of time there, I do some of my own writing and I love it. There's just something about it—I just enter that building and I recover myself. There's something about having spent that much time there at that period of my life that kind of just renews me every time I walk into the building. But the overall atmosphere is real different and foreign and I don't know—it seems to have lost its character and not have found. It does not seem to have discovered a new image that's as strong as the one I experienced when it was a women's college.
MF: Yes. There are a lot of changes going on right now, particularly physical building.
PWL: Right.
MF: And what do you see for the future of this school?
PWL: Well, it seems to be putting itself on the map. It's a full scale research university to the 18
extent, I guess, to the extent to which it manages to do that with this new venture with A&T and science project—isn't that in the launch—being launched in the offing and I think that probably the reputation as a liberal arts school will be superseded by—it seems that it's moving in the direction of a, you know, just full university, research, graduate—
MF: Research oriented—
PWL: Yes, university. I hate to see that happen myself but I think it's inevitable. That's the direction it seems to be moving in. I think it had a very strong undergraduate program. I had some of the best teachers anyone could hope to have anywhere, you know. I mean, to have teachers like Fred Chappell and Randall Jarrell. You know, you could have been at any school majoring in English—any of the best schools in the country and not had better teachers and—
MF: Yes.
PWL: I never had a graduate student teach me anything when I was here. Now I, you know, having gone on to a PhD myself and been a graduate student teaching other students, I know the difference from both points of view. And I did, you know, then go on to the University of Pennsylvania and was, for five years, part of a very large research university and my impression of the undergraduate experience there is that it was very different from the one I had.
MF: Yes.
PWL: And mine was much more personal and in terms of human development, much richer than I would have had had I gone, say, to the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate. So I hate that that was lost there but [laughs] that's, that's the choice that was made, I guess, somewhere along the line there.
MF: Yes, you always wonder who made those choices. Bureaucracy.
PWL: Well, Singletary was, was the head of the college when I came. Otis Singletary and then [James S.] Ferguson.
MF: Yes, Jim Ferguson.
[telephone rings, recording paused]
MF: I guess what we were talking about was I had asked you about what you saw for the future of the school.
PWL: Right. I guess that's about the best I can—what I think is going to happen? What I'd like to see happen? 19
MF: Well, either or both, yes.
PWL: I think it's too late to preserve any of the character that I was describing before.
MF: Yes.
PWL: And since the course seems charted.
MF: Yes. What about with the move toward [NCAA] Division 1 athletics? Towards the big school athletics, I guess, with scholarships—
PWL: I personally could have done without that whole thing but I think that, you know, I recognize that I work at a very different vantage point than most people on that.
MF: Well, I don't know. Most alumni I have spoken with, if they had to choose a side, they're not—they're against the move toward bigger athletics, but yet there must be a faction somewhere that's for it or the school wouldn't be moving that direction.
PWL: Well, I have assumed, they're just trying to watch these changes. I have assumed that with a co-ed school at this point in time, that that is probably something that attracts male students to the school. Has—what is the ratio between men and women now?
MF: Now, I'm not sure.
PWL: It's about equal, isn't it?
MF: I believe so.
PWL: And I think one of the problems, you know, in making a transition from a women's college to a co-ed [recording error]—I think that you need to create a whole new identity that needs to feel fully like a co-ed institution. Maybe this is one way to do that. To move it forward in that direction.
[Begin Side B]
MF: Yes.
PWL: I think that in between was probably the worst time.
MF: Sure, yes. I can see—yes, I can see that point.
PWL: And it will certainly never go back to what it was before so it needs to have some—needs to have some great strengths that will create a new image of it and perhaps this is, you know, one way of doing that. 20
MF: Yes, well I've heard some people say, and if you think about it I guess it is, it is, it does ring true, that UNCG in the—within the UNC system has never reached that sort of top tier in the sixteen campus system. And I've heard some people say that they think this is a move to try and push UNCG up to that top tier instead of sort of being the school that people go to when they can't get into UNC Chapel Hill.
PWL: See that was never, I think, I don't know as well, being an out of state student that that was never the feeling when it was Woman's College. It was the top, you know, it was one of the places, if you had a daughter, that you would definitely want her to go.
MF: Right.
PWL: She might apply to Duke or she would go here but it was a feeling, I think, about—that it was one of the finest women's colleges in the country.
MF: Oh, yes, certainly there was, at the time, that—
PWL: And after it left the realm of being a women's college, it didn't continue, I wouldn't think—
MF: Yes.
PWL: —to maintain that status, although some, you know, schools like Smith certainly do. It was interesting to me to compare those two schools, you know, while I was here because I did then go up to Smith and visited the three women who had come down to spend a week with us.
MF: Yes. I know I've jumped around an awful lot, but is there anything that you can think of that is important that I have not gotten to? Or just that you would to be able to have a chance to say?
PWL: [pause] I guess I have touched on it. I think the most important thing that I gained from my experience there was the relationships that I was able to have with what I consider to be some of the finest professors that I've experienced in any of the academic settings I have found myself in. Particularly Warren Ashby. These people really changed my life, you know, in an incredible way. So for me it was a real transforming experience because of the opportunity to work under these people very directly for four years and I would say that was the most important thing I took away—
MF: Yes.
PWL: —you know, from the experience. No, I can't, I can't really think of anything else unless you can jog my memory in some other area. The questions are helpful. [laughs]
MF: All right, well, thank you very much.
21
PWL: Oh, you're welcome.
[End of Interview]