Dating Culture and Courtship: Centre and the 'MRS' Degree

By Melissa Collins

Introduction

What is the purpose of a college education? Most would argue a college education is a necessary step towards achieving a desired career path. A college education provides a degree, such a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) or a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.). However, history has shown that the college experience, for women specifically, was also an effort to achieve another degree–an M.R.S. Women oftentimes sought a college education to place themselves among eligible bachelors in hopes of eventual marriage. However, over time, the college experience has shifted to become more equal among men and women in regard to its purpose. Career aspirations, as opposed to courtship and marriage, have become a top priority for women during their college experiences.

Throughout this exhibit, I will examine the phenomenon of dating culture and courtship at Centre College. At Centre, dating culture and courtship have shifted over time as women have become more career-focused during their undergraduate experiences. Sarah Shepard, a Centre student during the 1970s and 1980s, depicts the shifting values in a Centre education as she explains the generational tensions between her and her mother:

Yeah, my mother was traditional, even though as I said she was highly educated…
She still had a lot of old-fashioned values about her. And she thought women should be married and have children…I would say, ‘But mom, not everybody wants to have children.’^[1]

This tension in regard to marital and parental expectations of women is evident at Centre throughout the 20^thcentury. Like Sarah’s mother, the College sought to uphold the traditional societal expectations of women. However, as women became more visible on campus, shifting values allowed women to reclaim their college experience and the purpose of their education.    

Methods

To examine the history of dating culture and courtship at Centre, I first conducted an oral history interview with Centre alumnus, Eileen Everett ’76. My interview was one of many oral history interviews collected to explore the history of women and gender at Centre more generally. After having conducted the oral history interview, I gathered resources and evidence from Centre’s digital archives, as well as Centre’s special collections archives. My research and analysis span from the early years of women’s involvement with the College in the 1920s to the late 1980s. Using the oral history interviews coupled with archival research, I drew conclusions concerning the trends of dating culture and courtship at Centre College. Despite the institutions’ historical role in dating culture and courtship, as women’s visibility increased on Centre’s campus, the purpose of a Centre College education for women shifted from marital aspirations to career aspirations.

Centre and KCW Consolidate

To fully understand the early culture of dating and courtship at Centre College, we must first place Centre in the appropriate context of the time. It is important to understand the societal pressures in relation to marital expectations. In the early to mid-twentieth century, women were expected to pursue marriage. In 1926, Centre consolidated with Kentucky College for Women (KCW).^[2] KCW became known as Centre’s Women’s Department. While the Women’s Department remined separated from Centre’s main campus during this time period, the consolidation of Centre and KCW made the search for eligible partners more easily accessible. The consolidation placed both men and women of marital age in close proximity to one other. The relationship between the two colleges allowed for greater ease in courtship during the late 1920s and into the mid-twentieth century. Having the ability to acquire a college education at an institution like Centre College and the newly consolidated Women’s Department at Centre College was an outward marker of class status which made courtship a streamlined process among the middle to upper class students who attended the College.

Detail of pg 1 from the 1914 Sanborn Insurance map of Danville, KY

Aims of the Kentucky College for Women 1913-14

Sample of Seniors from the 1930 yearbook

Proximity and Courtship

Location and proximity are important factors to consider when examining dating culture and courtship at Centre. Despite the consolidation that occurred in 1930, the Women’s Department remained at the former KCW location in Danville. The Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Danville depicts the distance between both Centre’s campus and KCW’s campus.^[3] Centre College was located in Section 21 on the map, while KCW was located in Section 4 (in dark blue). The campuses were situated at opposite ends of the city. As a result, dating and courtship was an extremely visible and formal endeavor. Centre, as an institution, played an integral role in the regulation of dating and courtship that occurred between the men and women of the College.

Centre’s Institutionalized Role in Dating and Courtship

Regulation of women was institutionalized prior to the consolidation of Centre and KCW in 1930. The 1914-1915 Kentucky College for Women Catalog and Announcements depicts the active involvement of the institution in upholding and cultivating women students to achieve favorable societal standards. The “aim” of the College was foster the development of “womanly character” in an environment where “the influences surrounding the resident pupils are at all times cultured and refined, while the government is as near that of the home as conditions peculiar to any boarding school will permit.”^[4] The Catalog and Announcements exemplify the active role of the College in the monitoring and regulation of women. The College ultimately took on a parental authority role in the women’s lives during their educational experience. The College admits to its prominent involvement in rearing respectable women who will enter society following their schooling. These sentiments of parental authority and regulation over women from the institution continue throughout the 20^thcentury specifically in relation to dating and courtship of students.

Courtship became an integral aspect of the female collegiate experience after consolidation occurred and KCW became the Women’s Department at Centre. The yearbook of the 1930s Women’s Department depicts a write-up of each of the Senior women.^[5] These write-ups provide a snapshot of the traits and characteristics of each of the women. Interestingly, only Senior women are showcased with the write-ups suggesting the institutions finalized efforts in rearing respectable women who are entering into society. Thus, the yearbook ultimately provided a curated list of suitable women for Centre’s eligible bachelors to choose from in their marital pursuits.

In an oral history interview, Betsy Wilt, Class of 1965, discusses her experience living on campus at KCW. She states “If you had a date, there was a desk down on the first floor and you had a intercom. Pressed a button that your date was there and that's how you need to go down, you knew to go downstairs. It just, you know, it's different.”^[6]The gender segregation among the two campuses resulted in a formality of courtship and dating culture. Thus, dating culture became a visible and public aspect of the college experience. If one wished to interact with an individual of the opposite sex, formal rules created a public spectacle. The conventionalisms of dating culture and courtship coupled with the martial expectations of women in the mid-twentieth century resulted in women at Centre being heavily focused on the search for suitable partners during their college experience.

Gender Integration at Centre

After more than 30 years of separation between Centre’s main campus and the Women’s Department at KCW, in 1962, the two campuses integrated as “the women students took up residence in new dormitories on the Centre campus.”^[7] Women found themselves in the same learning and social environment as their male-counterparts. The visibility of women on Centre’s main campus created a new norm that Centre had never before experienced. In an effort to maintain its role in curating respectable members of society, the institution continued to regulate dating culture and courtship following the integration of women on campus. In the 1962-1963 Student Handbook, the first student handbook relasesed following the integration of women on campus, stringent rules were provided for women of the College in an effort to regulate interactions among the sexes. The dormitories remained separated on campus according to gender during the 1960s. Women were required to stay in their dormitories from 6:00pm to 6:00am unless given special permission otherwise. Social rooms were provided in the women’s dormitories and fraternity houses for men callers to visit with the women during designated hours. Dances and other social events were required to have chaperones from the College present at all times. Thus, the dating scene was heavily monitored by the College following gender integration of the 1960s.

Women’s Changing Aspirations

By the 1970s and 1980s, dating and courtship no longer seemed to be the central aim of the college experience for women at Centre. As gender integration had settled in on campus over the past ten years, increased visibility and involvement of women on campus impacted how women viewed their own place within the institution. In the 1970s, Centre became the first college in the state to allow co-ed dormitories thus aiding in the visibility and integration of women on campus. In addition, with both the Women Liberation movement and the implementation of Title IX–a 1972 federal regulation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex–as broader societal contexts, equality among the sexes was certainly on the horizon. Women began thinking more about their own career objectives as opposed to fulfilling martial expectations placed on them by society. In discussing her experience at Centre, Eileen Everett, Class of 1976, states:

Um, I think I would say it was pretty much empowering because it was just at the cusp of the women's movement. Um, that women did go to college before that, but they usually married after that. Their going to college was the point was to find a husband, and that was not the point for us. We were definitely, you know, my senior year, we talked about graduate schools. All of us talked about graduate schools. Where were you going or what was your job you were going to have, that kind of thing. Um, so I think that it was a launching pad…^[8]

Women at Centre were beginning to consider their college experience as a gateway to career aspirations as opposed to marital aspirations.

Conclusion

Despite decades of institutional regulation of dating and courtship at Centre, increased gender integration allowed women to acquire a sense of agency in regard to the purpose of their college education. Historically, Centre has played an integral role in upholding societal expectations of marital pursuits. The College capitalized on gender segregation to formally regulate the dating and courtship experience of its students in an effort to help cultivate well-esteemed and reputable members of society. However, as women’s visibility increased following the integration of Centre and the Women’s Department, women found career aspirations to be a motivating factor of the collegiate experience. An M.R.S. was no longer an essential “degree” women sought to acquire while attending Centre College.

Footnotes

[1]Sarah Shepherd, interviewed by Kate Leahey, March 11, 2021, Centre College Digital Archives, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.

[2]“Kentucky College for Women,” Centre College CentreCyclopedia,Special Collections, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky. https://sc.centre.edu/ency/k/kcw.html.

[3]Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Danville, Boyle County, Kentucky. Sanborn Map Company, Apr, 1914. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn03155_006/.

[4]Kentucky College For Women, “Kentucky College for Woman 1913-1914,” Centre College Digital Archives,accessed May 16, 2021, https://centre.omeka.net/items/show/1240.

[5]“Old Centre 1930 Women's Department,” Centre College Digital Archives,accessed April 28, 2021, https://centre.omeka.net/items/show/1236.

[6]Betsy Wilt, interviewed by Natalie Warren, February 25, 2021, Centre College Digital Archives,Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.

[7]“Kentucky College for Women,” Centre College CentreCyclopedia,Special Collections, Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky. https://sc.centre.edu/ency/k/kcw.html.

[8]Eileen Everett, interviewed by Melissa Collins, March 5, 2021, Centre College Digital Archives,Grace Doherty Library, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky.