| Summary |
The purpose of this thesis is to show how the national student movement of the 1960's affected campus reform at Duke University. Using records from the Duke University Archives, this thesis traces women's student activism during the 1960's and 1970's. The thesis outlines Duke's traditional coordinate college system and explores how the female student body challenged this system. This coordinate system placed female students at a disadvantage academically, socially, and politically. Not until the 1960's for example, did It become acceptable for women at Duke to pursue majors outside of teaching and nursing. During this period, female students also demanded new social freedoms and challenged administrators to abandon the concept of in loco parentis. Duke women used gender unification both m student organizations and in residential living arrangements to seek change. By the early 1970's, the female student body at Duke applied increasing pressure on the administration to abolish the coordinate system. In 1972, the Duke administration merged the undergraduate men's and women's colleges into one, thus ending the decade long struggle for gender equality. Though this thesis provides a microcosmic view of a national phenomenon, it exemplifies the efforts of female students across the country m their attempt to transform an extremely influential institution within society - the university. For many female graduates however, their activism did not end here but continued into the seventies with a new movement for women's rights. Thus, this thesis shows an important step in the development of the women's rights movement. |
