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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2004 "True Spirit of Pioneer Traditions": An Historical Anaylsis of the University of Florida's First Dean of Women, Marna Brady Rita I. Herron Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF EDUCATION “TRUE SPIRIT OF PIONEER TRADITIONS:” AN HISTORICAL ANAYLSIS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA’S FIRST DEAN OF WOMEN, MARNA BRADY By RITA I. HERRON A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2004 The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Rita Herron defended on June 2, 2004. ____________________________________ Victoria-Maria MacDonald Professor Directing Dissertation ____________________________________ Robert Schwartz Outside Committee Member ____________________________________ Emanuel Shargel Committee Member ____________________________________ Sande Milton Committee Member Approved: Beverly Bower, Chair, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I should like to thank my devoted husband, Douglas, for standing by and assisting me in whatever possible way with this endeavor. I thank my wonderful parents for instilling my thirst for knowledge and desire to obtain a higher educational degree, and our cat, Camilla, for relieving stress. I would like to thank all of my friends, family members, co-workers and students who have pushed me along the way and have, at times, had more faith in me than I had in myself. I would like to thank my committee for supporting my research and writing. I would especially like to thank my committee head, Dr. Victoria-Maria MacDonald, for her guidance and the opportunity to pursue a life-long desire. I would especially like to thank Carl Van Ness, Head Archivist at UF, and his staff. The Ohio State University archivists, and Dean Phyllis Meek, who were all extremely helpful. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT vi 1. COEDUCATION AND DEANS OF WOMEN IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT Page 1 Progression of Coeducation Page 1 Conception, Transformation and Disappearance of Deans of Women Page 5 2. “A LONG WAY TO GO:” THE EARLY YEARS: 1948-1953 Page 15 Historical Synopsis of the University of Florida Page 15 Background of Marna V. Brady Page 20 Women’s Organizations Page 28 Housing Page 40 Future Plans and Needs Page 54 3. THE STRENGTHENING AND THE “GROWTH IN THE HISTORY OF WOMEN:” 1953-1958 Page 59 The Reshaping of the UF Campus Page 59 Women’s Organizations Page 61 Housing Page 68 Counseling Page 79 Academic/Scholarship Page 82 Social Page 85 Health Page 85 Safety Page 87 Residence Hall Newspapers Page 88 iv Off-Campus Housing Page 89 Dean of Women’s Counseling and Other Duties Page 91 Strengthening and Growth Page 94 4. PROGRESSION AND PROBLEMS: 1958-1962 Page 95 Women’s Organizations Page 98 Housing Page 104 Counseling Page 113 Academic Scholarship Page 116 Off-Campus Housing Page 121 Dean of Women’s Counseling and Other Duties Page 122 5. END OF A CAREER: 1962-1966 Page 133 Continual Reconfiguration Page 133 Women’s Organizations Page 144 Housing Page 151 Counseling Page 164 Off-Campus Housing Page 167 Dean of Women’s Counseling and Other Duties Page 168 6. A NEW BEGINNING FOR “AN EXCEPTIONAL WOMAN” Page 174 REFERENCES Page 200 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Page 209 v ABSTRACT The dissertation is an examination of the position of Dean of Women at the University of Florida (UF) and the first woman appointed to the post, Dr. Marna Brady. The scope of the study was from the position’s creation on UF’s campus, in 1947, until Dean Brady’s resignation in 1966. The study examines the shifts in Dean Brady’s responsibilities as well as the changes occurring on the university campus concerning women students. The backdrop of Dean Brady’s tenure varied from the entrance of ex-Gis into higher education via the GI Bill, to the judgment and implementation of Brown v. Board of Education, the McCarthy Era, the Civil Rights Movement, the passage of The Higher Education Act and the beginning of the student movement. To uncover the history of Brady’s tenure and the development of the position various primary documents were used: annual and biennium reports of the Dean of Women, correspondence and reports, newspaper articles, and works of Dean Brady that were published. Although there have been other works written related to deans of women, the amount is small compared to other topics in the realm of educational history. This dissertation is a departure from the other works concerning deans of women. In the literature that exists, the majority of the material compares and contrasts two or more deans of women at various colleges/universities and the multitude of their responsibilities and additional literature was written in the early part of the twentieth- century and is comparative in nature for it concentrates upon an individual dean at a particular university. This history considers the changes with the physical aspects of campus and the modifications of administration, staff and the students Brady served. vi CHAPTER ONE COEDUCATION AND DEANS OF WOMEN IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT Why is it, that, whenever anything is done for women, in the way of education it is called an ‘experiment’ –something that is to be long considered, slowly opposed, grudgingly yielded, and dubiously watched, - while if the same thing is done for men, its desirableness is assumed as a matter of course, and the thing is done? - Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 18921 Progression of Coeducation The initial purpose of hiring a Dean of Women at coeducational institutions was to monitor the growing number of female students’ activities on campuses. Coeducational higher educational institutions had come about through years of change that can be traced to the founding of the nation. Although New England colonies had set up elementary type schools that young girls could attend, their education was limited to a few years. It was seen as impractical for a woman to learn anything other than how to become an excellent wife and 1 Patricia Palmieri, In Adamless Eden: The Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 4. 1 mother in colonial America.2 The learning of young female children was limited to the ability to read Biblical passages and complete the stitching of a sampler. Barbara Solomon states that “the demands of Puritan religion and Yankee commerce accelerated the growth of literacy; bible reading as a means of achieving piety was as important for females as males.”3 However, women reformers, in the late 1700s, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, began to gain momentum as they asserted that the “lack of education made women frivolous and socially irresponsible, unfit to be companions to their husbands, good mothers to their children, or self-supporting in the absence of a male provider.”4 Responding to this cry Benjamin Rush stated that the “education of women was critical to the well-being of the new nation, with emphasis on mother’s responsibilities for the early instruction of children.”5 Coeducation was a slow, “decentralized and obscure process” during the second half of the nineteenth century that continued to grow “despite a number of challenges.”6 The opinion that women gaining education would be beneficial to the whole of the nation infiltrated the societal mainstream and the “adoption of coeducation “ was a gradual movement that shifted from “why to why not.”7 There was a growth in academies, seminaries and 2 Amy Thompson McCandless, The Past in the Present: Women’s Higher Education in the Twentieth-Century American South (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1999), p. 24. 3 Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 3. 4 Lynn Gordon, A Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 474. 5 Solomon, 1985, p. 12. 6 David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot, Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Public Schools (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1990), pp. 46, 5. 7 Ibid., p. 47. 2 normal institutions that welcomed women into their educational community and these women were pioneers.8 It is important to note that during this time not all of society agreed with women studying at higher levels of education. In some schools, specifically high schools, there was a sharp decrease in male students, which became known as the “feminization of public education.”9 Medical personnel began to worry about the connection between studying and a female student’s health. Claims were made that a woman’s health, specifically to her “catamenial function,” otherwise known as her reproductive system, could be severely damaged.10 It was argued that over activity in a woman’s mind would drain energy away from her reproductive organs and threaten “her basic physiological development and future health and happiness.”11 Regardless of such allegations women’s education experienced rapid growth and the foundation was laid for the rationale of the movement of women to be accepted into established male colleges, thus creating coeducational institutions.12 The woman’s movement claimed that coeducational schooling should not be restricted mainly to elementary and secondary institutions since women’s education “should open to them any occupations and activities available to men.”13 Some opponents of the coeducational higher educational movement argued that such schooling would “blur the God-ordained differences between the 8 Usually the women who enrolled in these higher education institutions became teachers.

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