Features

Celebrating Marquette women of the 1950s and 1960s

1950s

Women lived in apartment houses and halls sprinkled around the neighborhood. At Merritty Hall, 60 residents shared three bathrooms. Lisette boasted the slightly better odds of eight to a bathroom. On the nights of big dances, women signed up for bathroom time. AMUW launched a campaign to build a new dormitory on land occupied by Rigge and Nicolas halls. To receive federal funding for construction through the Housing Act of 1950, AMUW deeded the property to Marquette. O’Donnell Hall opened in 1952 with accommodations for 350 women and was described in a coed housing book: “The building has sun decks on top and marble sills to minimize dusting.”

A Woman of the Times

Barbara Fox, Eng ’57, enrolled in engineering and found herself in a distinct minority with just one other female student in the college. She became Marquette’s first woman civil engineering grad and the first woman engineer hired by Chicago’s Water Department, where she spent nearly 37 years working to build and maintain a clean water system. Fox was the first woman member of the American Society of Civil Engineers Board. She achieved all of this, she says, because the Mercy nuns at her high school encouraged every one of the girls in their care to follow their dreams.

News of Note

• Homecoming festivities lasted an entire week and included a parade along Wisconsin Avenue with floats built by the sororities and fraternities.

• Women cheerleaders were allowed at university sporting events in 1957 as long as their uniforms consisted of high-neck sweaters and long skirts.

• Mary Jeanne Bowen traveled to Ireland in 1958 as the first Marquette student to study abroad.

1960s

Women made more progress as the rules regulating nearly every element of campus life began to soften. Students argued for more personal freedom and objected to university-enforced codes of conduct—which for women dictated an earlier curfew, fewer visiting privileges and a requirement that they live in supervised housing throughout their time as students. Women were required to behave in a ladylike manner and prohibited from wearing pants or shorts in all campus buildings.

A Woman of the Times

Sister Janice McLaughlin, MM, Arts ’69, was a child of the ’60s and participated in civil rights and anti-war movements on campus. She left Marquette convinced one person can make a difference and spent 30 years proving it, representing the Catholic Church in Africa in positions designed to help people working in communication. In 1977, as press secretary for the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, she was jailed and deported for documenting war crimes in Rhodesia. Her work was published by the Catholic Institute for International Relations and American Committee on Africa. In 2008 a general assembly of representatives from 28 countries elected Sister McLaughlin president of the Maryknoll Congregation.

News of Note

• AMUW raised $1.5 million and established the Women’s Chair of Humanistic Studies in 1963, funding an annual visiting woman scholar.

• In 1966, students staged a “slack-in” to protest the rule against wearing blue jeans and shorts at social functions and on campus.

• Marquette tested student discipline in 1967 in the all-female Cobeen Hall by removing nightly room checks and quiet study hours. One year later all women’s dorms got the same freedoms.

• Dr. Frances Douglass was named Department of Psychology chair in 1961, one of the first women of color to be chair at Marquette.