1922 Laurel Parade
This is a blog about fraternity history, and this post has nothing to do with fraternities, except in a round about way. My daughter’s Mount Holyoke Alumnae Magazine arrived in today’s mail and it just reminded me of the beauty of the Mount Holyoke campus and the rich tradition and history of the college.
Part of the graduation weekend festivities at Mount Holyoke happens the day before the actual ceremony, when the graduating class is welcomed into the Alumnae Association, by the anniversary classes celebrating reunions. Each class – first year, sophomore, junior, and senior – has a class color, either red, blue, green, or yellow. For the Alumnae Parade, each class is dressed in white. Each class has a uniform item in the class color – hats, scarves, boas, flowers, umbrellas, etc. to set the class apart from other classes. The graduating class marches last and carries a laurel chain. The parade ends at the gravestone of Mary Lyon in the middle of campus. The graduating class encircles the grave site while singing Bread and Roses.
2007 Laurel Parade
Other traditions seem akin to those found in a women’s fraternity. When my sons were discussing the fact that their sister was the only one in the family not a member of a fraternity, they determined that Mount Holyoke was like being in a women’s fraternity. Mary Lyon’s determination to educate women ultimately lead to women being admitted to other educational institutions, leading the way for women’s fraternities to exist.
Mary Lyon was an early pioneer in the quest for women’s education. While a student at Byfield Female Academy in Massachusetts, her mentor, Joseph Emerson, introduced Lyon and her friend, Zilpah Grant, to an environment where women were treated as intellectual equals. Both Lyon and Grant went on to teach at Adams and Ipswich Academies where they incorporated this element into their own teaching. It was during this time that the idea for a low cost female academy evolved. Lyon was unhappy that the expense of attending Ipswich was prohibitive for the daughters of many New England farmers. She began soliciting an endowment to establish a women’s seminary (a seminary in Mary Lyon’s day and age was a secular school for women, not the religious training institution of contemporary meaning). She wanted her seminary to be specifically for middle class women and to make it affordable, domestic labor was provided by the students.
Lyon traveled to New York and Detroit talking to fellow educators about her plans. In 1834, she left her job at Ipswich, started a committee, and hired an agent to help raise funds for her school. Two years and $15,000 later, Lyon’s dream became a reality. Chartered in 1836, Mount Holyoke Seminary opened on November 8, 1837 at South Hadley, Massachusetts. Training women to become strong teachers was its primary mission. From the very beginning Mount Holyoke was a controversial institution. The controversy rested on several key points. It was a school run by women for the education of middle-class women. This raised, in conservative minds, the specter of women in general having access to higher education, and all the disruptions to family life, etc., that this would entail. Controversy also centered on the daily household chores required of the students, and the weekly practice of public confession. The first sounded to the general public like manual labor, and the second smacked of popery.
Mary Lyon’s last year of full-time teaching was 1847-48 and she died the following year. By the late 1800’s, it had become necessary for Mount Holyoke Seminary to evaluate its educational status in order to keep up with the changing American society. Mount Holyoke Seminary met the challenge and reorganized its educational structure to meet the needs of young women scholars. It moved away from being a women’s seminary and became a full-fledged women’s college. The admission standards were changed in order to attract a more diverse student body. Four-year graduation requirements were established. The college began hiring professors rather than teachers. Science and literary courses were added and new buildings were constructed.
By 1900, Mount Holyoke was a progressively developing women’s higher education institution. Mount Holyoke set the example that would be followed by six other women’s colleges: Vassar (1861), Wellesley (1870), Smith (1871), Radcliffe (1879), Bryn Mawr (1885), and Barnard (1889). Two of these “Seven Sisters” colleges were started as co-ordinates to men’s colleges. Radcliffe began as the co-ordinate to Harvard and Barnard was Columbia’s co-ordinate. The Seven Sisters are all on the east coast. Mary Lyon’s Mount Holyoke is my favorite of the Sisters.
