Girls (or Boys), Who Needs Them?

Girls (or Boys), Who Needs Them? A septuagenarian looks at the colleges today and tells how it was in his day at Harvard—back about the time of the Second Punic War When the President of Haverford Col- lege, an all-boy Quaker institution on Philadelphia’s Main Line, an- nounced the removal of restrictions on visiting hours for girls in students’ rooms, the Board of Managers was moved to add that it assumed that Haverford men would continue to re- gard the “presence of women in the dormitories overnight, or for exces- sively late hours and sexual inter- course as unacceptable behavior.” A spokesman for the college stuck in his oar to say that there were occa- sions when “it would be inappro- priate for women to be in the dorm at high noon,” but, on the other hand, it did seem a shame, ‘when there was a really productive discussion going on,” not to let it continue until dawn.

Thus ends the bull session, to be succeeded, I suppose, by spirited dis- cussions of family planning, the posi- tion of women in Thailand, and should the Pill be distributed free of charge to freshmen.

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About the Author

Frederic Nelson

Girls (or Boys), Who Needs Them? A septuagenarian looks at the colleges today and tells how it was in his day at Harvard—back about the time of the Second Punic War When the President of Haverford Col- lege, an all-boy Quaker institution on Philadelphia’s Main Line, an- nounced the removal of restrictions on visiting hours for girls in students’ rooms, the Board of Managers was moved to add that it assumed that Haverford men would continue to re- gard the “presence of women in the dormitories overnight, or for exces- sively late hours and sexual inter- course as unacceptable behavior.” A spokesman for the college stuck in his oar to say that there were occa- sions when “it would be inappro- priate for women to be in the dorm at high noon,” but, on the other hand, it did seem a shame, ‘when there was a really productive discussion going on,” not to let it continue until dawn.

Thus ends the bull session, to be succeeded, I suppose, by spirited dis- cussions of family planning, the posi- tion of women in Thailand, and should the Pill be distributed free of charge to freshmen.