For the students at Tufts College, the start of classes in the fall of 1892 was a radical time indeed. That semester, for the first time in the college’s forty-year history, women were admitted on equal terms with the men. Co-education had finally come to the small school founded by the Universalist church. But while the women were allowed to enroll at Tufts College, they were not exactly welcomed with open arms – most of the faculty and nearly all of the male students and alumni were defiantly opposed to women in the classroom, and they were not shy about making their thoughts known. Despite the cold shoulder, ten women enrolled in the fall of 1892, representing about 5% of the total student body. As pioneers, though, they came to a campus that had absolutely nothing to offer them outside of class: no clubs, no dormitories, no athletic teams, no nothing. Well, not quite. For the two women enrolled in the Tufts Divinity School, there was one organization that welcomed them: the local Hebrew-letter fraternity, Heth Aleph Res.
The rest of the post and pictures are at:
http://wp.me/p20I1i-Dn
My thanks to Charlie Trantanella, Sigma Nu, for this contribution. A graduate of Tufts University and the University of Arizona, he is currently writing a book entitled "Brown and Blue and Greek: A history of fraternities, sororities, and early student organizations at Tufts University". He plans to publish his work in 2015.