University alumnae looked to the past for possible solutions to the future of undergraduate residential life at a panel discussion Saturday.
Members of the Women's College class of 1964, who were on campus for their 30th reunion this weekend, discussed the social and residential climates of the University then and now.
While, students of the Women's College were all housed on East Campus, where each woman lived in the same dorm for all four years, many women remembered with fondness their years of an all-female East, a time when "commons rooms" were called "parlors" and dorms came equipped with dorm mothers .
Alumnae, however, recognized that times have changed.
"Having men and women in close contact and sharing dorms has started a certain closeness that we don't understand," said Lee Clark Johns, Women's College '64.
Still, many women maintained that a living group where students from all classes lived together may be the best way to foster security and maturity.
"I think with our system, having that group of girls there for four years, there was much more continuity," said Karen Frueggerford, Women's College '64. When she was a freshman, Frueggerford's mother died, and other freshman women did not know how to handle the situation, she said.
"They didn't know how to deal with my grief. I was very glad at that point that I had the older women in the dorm to rely on."
All-freshman dorms may also lead to an unstable and unsettling residential experience, others said.
"I get the feeling that the freshman regard their dorms as a holding pen," said Jeanie Price Slaughter, Women's College `64. "They spend their whole first year waiting to become something else."
While some women approved of theme-based houses as a way to bring together students with common interests, others found such a system to be unnecessarily segmented.
"I disagree with splintering the student body off through academics," said Meredith Sabel, Women's College '64. "I lived with girls who had so many different majors and interests, and the conversations that came up in our dorm were unbelievable. To me, the beauty of this school is that there are so many choices academically, and I love that every student at this school today has an opinion."
Alumnae recalled long-lost traditions that they feel should be reinstated, such as holding topical symposiums on East, and the more laid-back lifestyle student enjoyed in 1964, such as long games of bridge and silver tea service in the "parlors."
"There's a lot of balkanization of the campus. The students are just too busy," Conway said.
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