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This is the first in a series of stories by Grinnellians about Grinnell, which we hope will become a regular feature of our website. Please feel free to use the link at the end of this story to share your own memories of residential life. We also welcome your suggestions for future topics at loggia@grinnell.edu.
We all remember that in our time the men's and women's residences were not only designated as North Campus and South Campus; the men were housed in buildings known by the straightforward and manly term "halls," whereas women, on the other hand, resided in those prim and prissy places Dean Gardner always referred to as "cottages." One of the many marked and diverting differences between the men's halls and the women's cottages in the drastically delineated "two-campus" Grinnell of our era was the fact that the men's halls each had a more or less distinguishing identity, readily acknowledged by members of that particular residence, but also by pretty much all Grinnellians of whatever condition. The women's residences-nice places full of splendid young women, to be sure-decidedly lacked this characteristic. Except for their location in the "Quad" set-up and minor physical distinctions, these cottages were virtually indistinguishable one from another.
Oh, it was generally known that a given female student resided in James or Main or wherever, and the women themselves, so clustered, sometimes liked to give themselves colorful monikers like "Loose Women" or "Haines Hellers"; but no one took these names seriously or found them helpful as clues to character, personality, or inclination. On North Campus it was far otherwise. Clark was full of wiseguys; Cowles men were somehow more mature (and given, curiously but not coincidentally, to early signs of baldness). If the term nerd had been known in those days, I'm afraid it would have brought Smith Hall to mind. Amiable, well-behaved, always competitive in intramural sports; but we Smith men, taken in sum, were a tad nerd-ish, nevertheless. And then, of course, Gates. . .
The reason women's residences lacked "identity" is obvious. It's because in those days women students typically changed halls every year. Wasn't it uncommon for women to stay in any given cottage two years in succession? Hence there really wasn't sufficient opportunity for women to give to or to take from those places much distinctive spirit. On the men's campus, a student who did not spend all four years in the same hall was a rather rare exception. As a result men, thus grouped tended to acquire, not "character," perhaps, but "characteristics."
The causes of this phenomenon may be ultimately mysterious-remember, as entering students we were assigned to our halls quite at random; we neither knowingly chose our halls nor were deliberately chosen for them. And I think nobody would argue that our housemothers-different from one another as they certainly were-had any influence whatsoever on how we behaved or what we made of ourselves. So put it down merely to some vague "socialization process," if you will, and leave it at that.
We're not claiming that the men's halls retained an "institutional personality" that was fixed and changeless; of course each class brought in something new and graduation always meant the loss of certain almost legendary "characters." But still, we maintain that the identity, the prevailing personality, of each hall was (oh, more or less) a real thing that had a certain durability.
Would it be fair to say that the difference we are asserting here comes down only to this (dubious) generalization? For men, it's clubs; for women, it's cliques. We invite your comments.
- Jim Kissane '52 and Nancy Duke Kissane '52
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