Struggle for equality in education. Without further ado, would you welcome Anne Gardiner perkins, the author. Can you get us started by telling us a little bit about your book, yale meets women. Absolutely. And the history of coeducation in this country. Coeducation in the ivy league in particular. Terrific. Thank you so much, mark. This is so exciting. Over the next hour we are all going to explore together that moment in americas history when yale and its peers, when americas most prestigious colleges, finally admitted women students. For those of you who havent read the book yet, that moment was just 50 years ago. Close enough that we can touch it, which is why we are so lucky tonight to be able to include elizabeth spawn and connie roster, two of yells first women undergraduates, in our program. But before i begin, two thanks are in order. First of all too mark schmidt and the museum whove been terrific sponsors. Its delightful to work with you, mark. I know that in my community how important independent bookstores are. Independent bookstores have also taken a hit economically over the last three months. I would really encourage you to support your local independent bookstores. All of their books are available online. Mark, i will give you a brief overview to give you a context of this history. And then connie, elizabeth and i will talk for about a half hour. Think about it as watching a live interview with two of yells first women undergraduates. We will then open it up to questions and look to close right on time at 8 00. We will see how that goes. Lets turn back to 1969 when those first women students arrived at yale. Yale needs women is the story of those first women undergraduates. They arrived to a campus that had been all male for the previous 268 years. They were outnumbered seven to one by their male classmates. Dont think coeducation is 50 50 or even close to it like it is now. Yale put in place a gender quoted that limited the number of women graduates. They wanted to be able to admit as many men as possible. Those young women students dont have women faculty to look after them either. Of yales 407 tenured faculty members in 1969, just three were women. But of the dozens of women i interviewed in writing this book, i was struck really again and again by their persistence and courage and buy their creativity. If we think of september 19th, 1969, in some ways its really been reminding me of our time right now when lots of individuals were speaking out against longstanding injustice. The vietnam war was raging as was the protest against it. The black Power Movement was changing how americans saw race. The stonewall riots had just happened right before those first women students arrived. It was sort of showing people the discrimination faced by gay and transgender people. Its at that moment that those first women under graduates at yale arrived like connie and elizabeth. They seem to give you some more context, just 7 of u. S. Doctors in 1960 set 1969 were women. Just 3 of u. S. Lawyers and just 2 of the members of congress. Discrimination against Women College students, faculty and administrators was perfectly legal. If you think yale was the only college that was turning women away at that time, you should think again. It really is the entire top tier of american colleges and universities with few exceptions. Seven of the eight ivy league schools. Even to public universities. It almost reads like a list of sort of whos who. When yale finally announces that is going coed, the news is so shocking that the New York Times plays in on the front page. Ten months later, those first women students arrive. Yet if yells president had had its way, yale would have never admitted women at all. So what were those first women students like . The New York Times called them super women, but most of them were just teenagers. Some were wealthy, but others had to patch together the tuition through summer jobs and Financial Aid to work on campus. Most of them were white, but 40 of those first women students at yale college were black. 13 were Asian American. Three were latina. They were smart and they were tough. That is how yale picked them. Yale looked at first year for women who played on sports teams. Women who had traveled abroad. Women who had endured some sort of hardship. Women who had lots of brothers. I interviewed one of the two administrators who selected that first class of women and yale. I will never forget what he told me. There was no point in taking a timid woman and putting her in this environment. That was because it could crush you. So they were smart and they were tough. Tonight, you get to hear from two of those women, connie royster, constants royster, and elizabeth spahn. Connie and elizabeth arrive at yale in the fall of 1969 as sophomore transfer students. Yelled took a group of freshman women that first year, a group of sophomore transfers and a group of junior transfers. Connie had transferred from Weekend College here in massachusetts and elizabeth from George Washington university in washington d. C. Both of them graduated right on time in 1972 and both went on to become lawyers. Elizabeth worked as the professor of american constitutional law at new England School of law in boston. She lectured broadly both nationally and internationally throughout her career. Connie had a distinguished legal career in new york city before returning to yell as the Development Director at yells divinity school. Connie, why dont i begin with you. Just an observation. From many of the first women students arriving at yale, it was like arriving on a foreign planet. Between it being all male and for many of the wealth of the place was really overwhelming. Many are coming from small towns or the west coast. New haven and yale seemed very foreign. But for you, it felt more like being at home. Wanted to tell us a little bit about that . Sure. It was very much like coming home. Indeed, i was born and raised in new haven. Although i had been away. So new haven was hometown to me. The church that i grew up in was just a couple of blocks up whaley avenue. I went to new haven Public Schools up through the ninth grade, more or less. I then went away to boarding school. I went to england and then a year and we can, so it was like coming home. Moreover, my family had worked in yale fraternities for, at that point, half a century at least. My maternal side had emigrated to new haven at the beginning of the 19 hundreds and immediately started working in the fraternities along fraternity row, if any of you have gone to yale, you will know what im talking about. Fraternity row on york street starting with wolfs head and fence club and data and data. They were all managed by my uncles and cousins and so there was a long history of my family being at yale between my grandfather who was the shift at skull and bones. I knew new haven and i knew yale very well. Coming back to new haven, my mother and father, my sister lived just outside new haven. He had moved out to the suburbs when, while i was away at boarding school. Soft and coming back, my cousins and uncles were still in management at the fraternities, so i would ride my bicycle through fraternity row, and they would come out and greet me and say how is your how are you doing . It was a very protective feeling and so i was literally coming home and feeling very good about it . Connie, youre grandfather was no longer living when you were accepted, but wasnt there a story about one of your aunts that said to you about the hat . That is true. First of all, as a woman coming to yale, no one ever thought that women were ever going to go to yale, and lets face it i, certainly not an African American. It was totally unheard of. When i was accepted, one of my aunts said to me that my grandfather, and i was a favorite granddaughter, my aunt said youre grandfather is rolling over in his grave thinking about his granddaughter going to yale. As a little girl i was going over with my parents to help them serve meals that big occasions. We would all go, because everybody had to go. Everybody had to help i, so i would crawl around on the floor in the kitchen and he was always so pleased and happy about the grandchildren. She just thought he is rolling over with joy that his granddaughter was at yale. Elizabeth, you and connie were roommates that first year. Here you come from illinois. Can you tell me a little bit about the story of how the two of you met . Dont you want to hear about my background as well . Absolutely we could not be more opposite. She was coming home and felt safe and protected, and i was an alien from a different planet. I came from the midwest. I come from a small town in the middle of illinois. I went to a public school. Not an elite boarding school. My family did not know i had applied to yield. I didnt know i had applied to yale. My roommate said she had applied for me. I thought yale was in boston. My family did not want me to go to yale, and when i arrived i was just dropped off in the courtyard and lugged my one suitcase up the stairs and sat in this empty room. There was no furniture. There was not a chair. There was no furniture. And connie comes in with her entourage, her parents, and they immediately begin furnishing the place. They take us to the Salvation Army and we find furniture. Connie knew what she was doing. I had no clue. Conte felt safe and protected. I felt unsafe. A lot we could not be more opposite, and yet when we stood in that living room, she walked in the door and it was one of those moments i think almost all of us have had, the french call it a krutika. Where you just know this is my best friend . This is going to be my best friend forever. I think she has always been my best friend. And i know she still is my best friend. We became bonded in a way that i dont really know how to explain except im sure most of you had that experience. Two more opposite people and yet we did bond and for that i will always be grateful. Wonderful. Connie, you come to yale interested in the arts, interested in drama. You get involved in the theater there, which was very unusual, because many of the Extracurricular Activities at yale, either women were not allowed at all or they were sort of given the position given some of the leftist groups, not given leadership roles. Can you tell us what it was like in the Theater Community . I came to yale. I did not know that that was going to me my place except that i came with that background. I had gone to a boarding school where the arts were very important. It was part of the education law that wed be educated in all of the arts. Then when i was that we can, i just jumped right into theater. I just had an amazing experience. In fact, when i applied to yale i did it because, why not . Yuck lets give it a shot. If i had not gotten in, i would have been perfectly happy at wheaten. I loved wheaten. So coming to yale, i came with this wealth of a year at wheaton immersed in the interactivitys. When i got to yale i thought theater was going to be an extracurricular, but i found a court that became part very much part of my life. So much so that i transferred that is where my theater and music friends were. Because there really was no undergraduate major and drama, we spent a lot of time in the drama school being taught by and mentored by professors and practitioners and the drama school, so we became a very close theatrical community. I think that if yale had had then what i would call a humanities major, a true liberal arts major, that is probably what i would have done. I think they do now have a humanities major, 50 years later, unfortunately, but i did a lot of theater and a lot of our history, and a lot of music. It was a wonderfully embracing community, which meant, i think raw, that i did not experience some of the Horror Stories that you, i am sure, heard as you wrote the book. About some of the women who were in some of the more traditional disciplines where women were not particularly welcomed or accept it. My experience was really wonderful, actually. Terrific. Now elizabeth, so connie is off practicing for this play and that play all the time. When you are not working at your campus job, or eventually working at the post office to earn money, when you are not studying, you are involved in politics, and you were one of the two women who founded the yale sisterhood, the yales first womens group. You were very involved in the Womens Center in that group. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how different the whole culture of that womens group was then a culture at yale . Coming from the midwest and coeducated Public Schools, it had never occurred to me that women should not be educated or should not be educated my mother was a teacher. My grandmother was a college graduate. Women were educated and i arrived at yale and discovered that this was a controversial topic. We were still struggling our way into the 18th century. There were a lot of people at yale says who of all ages, faculty students, who really did not think women should be getting a yale education, or who said its okay for them to get a yale education, it will help them raise their sons. So it was heavily masculine. At that time, in 1969, there was a lot going on with the feminist movement, it was just in its very early stages. There was another woman who maybe on a call here, i cant see, kate, and i went around and stapled some notice and said lets get together. Lets get the women together. There was no place for women, coeducation classes to meet each other. We were scattered around in one of the 12 Residential Colleges and we had no place. We did not know each other. Many of us to this day, still dont know each other, although some of the reunions have helped that. So we started putting up notices and we were just astonished with what an amazing reaction there were 60 women who would come and sit around, and we will talk. During this period of time we worked in a format called consciousness raising groups where people would take turns discussing things, and we would share our experiences. I can remember hearing for the first time from women who had been maybe beaten at home or who had been raped. We just did not talk in the midwest. We did not talk about those things. I really had no idea this was going on. We also just shared some of our experiences and found out that a lot of us were having the same experience in classrooms. We would make a statement and the discussion would continue on as if we had not spoken. Five minutes later a man would make a statement and everybody would say how smart he was. I thought it was not articulate enough, but then dalia radomski was making the same point. It turned out more of us were having this problem. It was not just me. It turned out some of the women were survivors of what we would call rape or incest, but at that time you could not talk about it. The last thing i want to say about the Womens Centers we worked closely together with the new haven womens liberation center. A lot of this was because of connections there, but we had a connection to the town, to the city of new haven that i did not find in other yale organizations frequently, although the may day demonstrations certainly put us together with the town closely. The Womens Center really focused on womens issues that were not limited to yale. It had a much broader context. For me it was the single, other than meeting connie, the single most important substantive event of my time at yale. It is so interesting what you say, elizabeth, about the connection with the community, because there really was a town gown divide between wealthy yale and the new haven neighborhoods that surrounded it. The women center, the sisterhood and the black Student Alliance at yale, both of those groups sort of violated those taboos against working with townspeople and helped build those bridges. Just one other thought on what you were saying about midwesterners. They didnt talk about it. When you think about it, you all started at yale before the term date rape had even been invented. Before the term Sexual Harassment, that term had not been invented, yet. It did not mean it was not going on but it was not even a language yet to talk about that. Sexual harassment was not illegal yet. Right. It took a case brought by yale women that made Sexual Harassment illegal on college campuses. You brought up may day. I have certainly been thinking about that a lot. For those of you who do not know the background. In may of 1970, there was a Major National trial at the new haven city courthouse, which is two blocks from the yale campus. It was a trial of a group of black panthers. A leader from new haven and a National Leader and protesters from across the nation came into yale to protest what was seen as a trumpedup trial. And indeed, both charges were eventually dismissed. It was a very tense time on the yale campus. The National Guard came in. People recount saying seeing army tanks driving down the streets right next to new haven dormitories. inaudible it was a tense time, but it was an extraordinary time. I think some of whats going on right now is really reminiscent of what those times were like, frankly. Right now it raises a whole host of emotions and anger and just visceral feelings about whats going on in this country right now, as it did back then, which had lots to do with racism and the war and people being killed mercilessly. And so there were lots of reasons to be demonstrating in support of the panther trial, which is what we called it. And to have the support, as it were, of the University Behind us. It was a moral statement that was made that made us actually feel good about where we were. Some people left. The university effectively closed down. Classes were canceled for the most part. We had pass fail. There were some nuances, i suppose. 50 years later, no one really remembers in full detail. Classes were canceled. People stayed, storms were still open, but every college essentially had a role to play. You were free to participate in whatever way you felt you could, which