SCRIPPS WOMEN TRANSCENDING TIME 26 [in]Visible Magazine By Victoria Davis Within the corridors of Denison Library and seated beside the stone fireplace, time ceased to exist as Victoria Davis ‘14 interviewed Judy Harvey Sahak ‘64, the Sally Preston Swan Librarian at Denison, to learn more about the expectations and perspectives of past <strong>Scripps</strong> women.
During your time as a <strong>Scripps</strong> student, what kind of an impact did body image have on campus? I heard rumors of a girl who would eat all of her dinner and then return to her dorm—we ate in our residence halls then—to throw it up in the bathroom. It seemed strange to me, to a lot of people. It was really the only instance— of deliberately throwing up to not get “fat”—that I had heard of as a student because there was not a huge emphasis on the body. [Today] girls go to gyms and work out. There is pressure to be healthy and fit. [When I was a student] I did sports and had P.E., but there wasn’t the need to work out, slim down, and have a perfect body. Gyms? Prize fighters would go to gyms and bash their brains out. I wouldn’t have gone to a gym, for heaven sakes. Constant exercise was not of importance to us. How did food affect the idea of female body image for past <strong>Scripps</strong> women? Food just wasn’t a big deal. Today, in 2011, no two people have the same lunch or dinner. When I was a student, meals were served in individual residence halls. Everyone had the same thing. For dinner, you had your meat, salad, vegetables, and a starch. That was it. Now, there are so many choices and temptations. You go to [Malott] Commons, and there is so much variety: four options for soups, chicken, hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, demonstrations, salads, stir fry, tofu—just all this food. I think there are so many issues that young women have today that we just didn’t know. We didn’t have the ubiquitousness of beautiful people everywhere you turn. So past <strong>Scripps</strong> students weren’t as concerned with the idea of a “perfect” body. Were students preoccupied with clothing styles or fashion trends? In the early to mid ‘60s, what we wore was fairly conservative and restrained. There were rules. Clothes could not be revealing. We couldn’t wear shorts unless we were in the residence halls or on our way to a P.E. class. We wore dresses to class. If we had dress-up parties, we wore our dress-up clothes. But we weren’t even allowed to wear jeans to town. We were told what we could and couldn’t wear. No one [could] ever lie in front of Toll Hall in a bikini. Yes, we do like to soak up the sun. That reminds me of a stereotype I’ve heard about <strong>Scripps</strong> women: there are three “types” of <strong>Scripps</strong>ies; you have the very promiscuous <strong>Scripps</strong>ie, the social activist <strong>Scripps</strong>ie, and then the nerdy and studious <strong>Scripps</strong>ie. Were <strong>Scripps</strong> women stereotyped like this when you were a student? As with all stereotypes, there was probably a bit of truth and a lot of legend in our images. Many <strong>Scripps</strong>ies were stereotyped by the residence hall they lived in. At <strong>Scripps</strong>, before there was the Hall Draw, students stayed in one dorm all four years, so I think that’s why the residence halls carried their own “typical” personalities. Clark was where you could find the really good, serious, and studious students. Toll was sort of social, but the women were pretty well-rounded. A lot of Toll residents were daughters of alumnae. Browning? Now talk about social and sophisticated! Kimberly housed your all-American and studious <strong>Scripps</strong>ie—like me. And Dorsey was where you could find your very Bohemian kind of <strong>Scripps</strong>ie. Dorsey was where you could find someone who would whip out [a pair of] bongos and start banging. That sounds like something a Pitzer student would do! How did <strong>Scripps</strong> students in the past interact with other campuses? Did you have party scenes like those that exist on campus today? Pitzer didn’t exist [when I was a student]. Back then there was nothing north of Foothill [Blvd.] but orange groves. On Friday afternoons, some <strong>Scripps</strong> students would go to the groves with students from CMC and Harvey Mudd to have small parties—TGIFs, thank goodness it’s Friday! Of course there might be a keg there because the drinking mainly went on off campus. There was no drinking on campus. We did have organized hall parties and seasonal dances, but no large 5C college parties like today. If anything, at CMC a small group of guys would get together and drink, but it was never as huge a crowd of people. CMC had two types of guys: there were the jocks and then there were the cool preppy guys. Within those groups, friends would have parties and it was mainly the guys who [drank]. I know that sexual practices today are much more casual, but when I was a student, dating mostly consisted of two people going out, holding hands, and kissing. I’m sure women were sexually active: we heard of the occasional girl taking a semester off if she was pregnant—but it didn’t happen a lot. In the days before abortion was legal, if you were pregnant you had an illegitimate child and your family would be mortified. [in]Visible Magazine 27
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