Tree Trimming at Brown College, 1972

Posted on December 17, 2014 by Melissa Kean

This feels like a very long time ago to me. Something was gained but something also was lost in the switch to mixed sex colleges:

Brown Christmas tree trimming 1972

Brown Christmas 72

Brown Christmas 72 1

Brown Christmas 72 2

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11 Responses to Tree Trimming at Brown College, 1972

  1. marmer01 says:
    December 17, 2014 at 10:31 am

    I should probably get my mind out of the gutter, but it looks like in the hand printed description of the tree trimming party that “many floors have _panties._” No doubt they did.

    Reply
    • Francis Eugene "Gene" PRATT, Institute Class of '56 says:
      December 17, 2014 at 4:50 pm

      I was also struck by that Freudian slip of penmanship!

      Reply
      • vkbenson says:
        December 17, 2014 at 6:10 pm

        You are imagining things. Compare the “r” and “n” in “popcorn”, “cranberries”, “strung” and elsewhere. Freud is not in this one; her r’s and n’s are consistent and easily distinguishable.

        Reply
      • Francis Eugene "Gene" PRATT, Institute Class of '56 says:
        December 18, 2014 at 4:13 am

        vkbenson,
        You, sir or madam, are a party-pooper.
        Cut us oldtimers a little slack please.

        Reply
      • marmer01 says:
        December 18, 2014 at 9:54 am

        I am not imagining things. No doubt the scribe intended to write “parties,” but there are other examples such as the word “important” in the center of the third line, the first “r” and “n” in “cranberries” and the final word “strung,” where the “r” and “n” in the same word are nearly identical and have to be identified from context. I really did read that as “panties” first and had to read it again to be sure that wasn’t it.

        Reply
  2. Terry Kilpatrick-Weaver says:
    December 17, 2014 at 11:04 am

    I was a sophomore at Brown in 1972; I don’t remember the tree trimming in particular (I was probably too anxious about finals to participate), but I do retain fond memories of living in an all-girls college. I still see my friends from the suite next door, Katrinka Moore and Nancy (Knowlton) McMahon, on a regular basis, 43 years after we first met. My sister Wendy Kilpatrick Laubach was a freshman Brown girl when I was a senior, but she was one of the advocates for dual-sex colleges, and she moved over to Baker her sophomore year. My daughter Emma Weaver (Baker 2003) found it highly amusing that there had been single sex colleges at all. I took her back to see my room at Brown, The room looked exactly the same, but now there were two young men occupying it. They were hard at work at the same built in desks as my roommate and I had used as students. Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose.

    Reply
    • Francis Eugene "Gene" PRATT, Institute Class of '56 says:
      December 17, 2014 at 5:01 pm

      “Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose.”

      I don’t agree:
      I continue to be puzzled and bewildered by the fact that the people attending Rice University (‘Institute’, says the 3 neurons of my memory) get younger every time I see them — NOT only in person but also in photographs. Photographs are NOT supposed to change.
      Has any scientific inquiry been made into that phenomenon?

      Reply
  3. Philip Walters says:
    December 17, 2014 at 4:03 pm

    I remember studying for a Chem 101 final with a group in Brown that very December. We were studying late into the night in one of the floor lounges, and I fell asleep on a mattress on the floor. A kind Brown resident soul woke me up the next morning with a hot beverage, either coffee or coco, but I forget which. I guess everyone had been tiptoeing around me up until that point. I appreciated the hospitality and being allowed to sleep where I had dropped. The study session definitely helped; Over in the men’s colleges, the usual inter-college Dead Week warfare had ensued and it was hard to get any studying done at Sid Rich. Brown and Jones were islands of comparative sanity back in those days.

    Reply
  4. Deborah Gronke Bennett BSEE Hanszen (co-Ed) 1982 says:
    December 17, 2014 at 7:24 pm

    I was a tomboy. The idea of living in a single-sex college repelled me. Even today, I lament ladies’ parties where the primary focus is shopping, decorating, or (shudder) manicures. You can mourn the loss of “genteel” activities, but how about recognizing the oppressive nature of gender separation before the women’s revolution in the 1970’s? What about those of us who prefer hiking out to fell the tree rather than waiting around to make it pretty?

    Reply
  5. Bill Allison Hanszen 1975 says:
    December 23, 2014 at 8:51 am

    I recall seeing the application of one young woman, who being asked if she wanted to be in a co-Ed college said “I heard the guys treat you like a brother. No thanks, I have a lot of brothers.”

    Reply

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