Helen, the Stewarts, and a few others worked through the night to arrange the furnishings in nearly 100 rooms. For years, R. B. repeated a story that on that occasion at 4 a.m., he went into one of the rooms and stretched out on a bed. He claimed to be the “first man to sleep in a women’s residence hall at Purdue.” R. B. was joking, but just the next year another man would actually sleep several nights in the hall—George Palmer Putnam, the husband of Amelia Earhart. Amelia stayed in the Women’s Residence Hall when she spent time on campus as an advisor.
The hall was filled beyond capacity, so two small annexes were created to house the overflow, and twenty students had to be turned away. Female students were enthusiastically streaming to Purdue and staying in the hall that looked like a storybook English manor.
In 1937, through PWA funds and donations, a duplicated women’s dormitory was created near the first and referred to as “North Hall,” making the original building “South Hall.” A third women’s building was built two years later. By 1951, there were five identical women’s halls nestled together on the same plot of wooded land and connected with cave-like tunnels. Collectively, the stately five were named Windsor Halls. Individually, each hall was named after a woman or family who contributed money for construction: Duhme, Shealy, Warren, Wood, and Vawter.
Windsor was designed so that nearly every room in each hall received sunlight at some point during the day. Another distinctive architectural detail of four out of five of the Tudors is that they line up like soldiers. When the lobby doors of Duhme, Shealy, Warren, and Vawter are opened concurrently, one could, hypothetically, shoot an arrow in a straight line through them all.
WHEN DOROTHY BECAME DEAN OF WOMEN, she experienced the culture of sororities and fraternities for the first time. The effects of sorority rush on the female students were difficult for her to watch. “Rush” is a term that comes from a time when sorority and fraternities literally “rushed” to invite “desirable” incoming freshman to live in their houses before another organization got to them first. Dorothy said of sorority rush:
There are always those who are chosen and those who are not chosen, and I had to deal with those who were not chosen, and this, to put it simply, broke my heart. I just couldn’t take this. Here a student came to the University looking forward to it. It is terribly important what your peers think of you when you are seventeen. Either your skirt looks too short or your hair isn’t cut right or somebody didn’t like you, and you didn’t get in. I just didn’t think it was fair that a student would come to the University and be treated that way.
At the objection of the National Panhellenic Conference, Dorothy made the decision to establish deferred rush at Purdue. Rush would not take place until the second semester, allowing incoming freshman time to become acclimated to academic life, make friends, and get to know themselves to determine if being a member of a sorority really was something they wanted.
Members of the sororities saw Dorothy’s deferred rush plan as a tactic to fill the women’s residence halls, but this was not the case. Deferred rush was Dorothy’s way of limiting the number of women with bruised self-esteems and increasing the number who garnered self-knowledge. Deferred rush became an example that other universities followed and remained in practice at Purdue for more than seventy years until it ceased in the early 2000s.
Many of the social regulations at Purdue and on most campuses during the first half of the twentieth century were aimed at female students and stemmed directly from the “protectionist” concept, which implied subtlety that control of women meant control of men. One of the purposes of the Women’s Self-Government Association (WSGA) was the design and enforcement of regulations for women. All female students were automatically members of WSGA. There was no counterpart organization for the men. It appears that there were few rules for the male students and none regarding a curfew calling them in at night. In Cary Hall, The First Half Century, a history written in 1984, the first male dormitory of the early 1900s is described as “so despicable that residents ‘sneaked in after dark to sleep, and left as soon as possible in the morning.’”
The new Cary Hall was built in 1928, and Lloyd M. Vallely, the first manager, called a meeting of all residents the night before Orientation Week. The historical account conveys Vallely’s message to the male residents: “He spelled out his hopes that Cary would become a ‘free’ organization, with no restrictions placed on members except those necessary for the welfare of so many individuals living together.”
Conversely during the mid-1930s, the WSGA printed a handbook with regulations for females that included: “No woman student shall be permitted to leave town to be gone overnight unless given permission by the Dean of Women. Permission to stay away from residence houses overnight shall be limited to two nights per month unless further permission is granted by the Dean of Women. No daytime social engagements with men shall be permitted in residence houses except on Saturday or Sunday. Women students leaving residence houses to be gone after 7:00 p.m. shall be required to fill out in full a W.S.G.A. blank provided for that purpose.”
The booklet’s introductory sentence was an attempt of the association to pat itself on the back for its “leniency.” It stated, “Rather liberal are these rules by which you live, as you’ll find by comparison with regulations of other universities.” The words are laughable by today’s cultural standards. One may wonder what hard and fast rules beset the women at the “other universities.” The practice of “locking up” the women students in order to control the men students would continue into the 1960s, and Helen would be the one to voice the battle cry of change.
The book of regulations for women ended with this declaration: “Landladies and housemothers shall be responsible to WSGA for the enforcement of these rules.” Unfairly, one conjures an image of “the enforcer,” a matronly woman in a washed out floral cotton dress standing at the door of the residence hall, scowling at her wristwatch as the clock strikes 7 p.m.
In actuality, housemothers were often widows who had a strong desire to do something useful with the second half of their lives. Dorothy instituted “Housemother Training School” at Purdue in 1939, the only one of its kind in the United States. Helen helped organize and implement the training. It was for women in midlife, without family responsibilities, who were looking for a new direction and eager to train for a career to help others. Housemother Training School was directed particularly to women who were asking themselves, “What can I do with the rest of my life?” Women came to Purdue from across the country to learn how to become housemothers during two-week summer sessions. They lived in the Women’s Residence Hall while in training. The women would then be hired in sororities, fraternities, cooperative houses, and residence halls on campuses throughout the United States.
In the first half of the twentieth century, widows at the midpoint of their lives had few options for employment. Purdue’s Housemother Training School filled a much-needed void for women who had no working experience and were often frightened of where their lives would go next. Housemother Training School gave women confidence, a career, housing, and companionship. “The enforcer” was actually “the empathizer,” for the housemother was often like a student’s second mom far from home.
AMELIA EARHART, CABBAGES AND KINGS
OFTEN IT TAKES A BRAVE MAN in power to step outside the traditional modes invented by males to make possible the advancement of women. Purdue President Edward C. Elliott was the father of two daughters,