An average Friday night for University of Idaho students in the 1970s wasn”t much different than it is now.
Katherine Aiken, UI history professor and alumna, said students watched movies at the theaters downtown, attended football or basketball games and, as the legal drinking age in the United States was 19 at the time, flocked to the bars.
Yet while in some respects, university life has remained the same, Aiken said in others, it has changed.
Gem of the Mountains yearbook 1969
For women on the University of Idaho campus, some things have changed, and some things have stayed the same.
Aiken, who graduated from UI in 1972 and became the history department”s first female professor in 1985, said it was a very different time for women.
“When I first came to U of I, women still had hours,” Aiken said. “All residence halls and sororities had people who sat at the door, and they locked the door at the time when the hours stopped so you had to ring the doorbell or, at the residence halls, someone would let you in.”
Aiken said women were required to be back to the dorms by 10 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends.
A staff member would stay by the door to keep track of the number of minutes a student was late. If the minutes added up to 10 or more over the course of the semester, Aiken said the student would be reprimanded.
“On weekends, everybody would be rushing up to the dorm trying to sneak in at the last minute,” Aiken said. “Men didn”t have hours so they all went and did whatever.”
Linda Copple Trout, UI alumna and first female Idaho Supreme Court justice, said the environment for women on campus was relatively conservative and began to change over time.
“They were still very conservative at that point,” Copple Trout said. “Very protective of women – you know, where you could wear pants and that sort of thing.”
In addition to a more socially conservative environment, Copple Trout said there were more gender-specific traditions, like the Pajama Parade.
“One of the campus activities they had was called the Pajama Parade, where all the sorority girls dressed up in pajamas and ran through campus,” Copple Trout said. “I look at that now and think, “Who in the world would ever do something like that?” but at the time it was cute and funny and of course it was only women. Men at the time did not dress up in their pajamas and run around.”
Copple Trout completed her undergraduate degree in 1973 and returned for law school the following year. Although only one year had passed, she said she saw a large shift in the environment for women.
“By the time I got to law school, the interesting thing was there were as many women in my first-year law class as there had been in the entire law school the year before,” Copple Trout said. “It was a dramatic increase in the number of women in one class and I think that really changed the dynamics – women were more accepted and that sort of thing.”
While the environment began to change for women, Aiken said the positive parts of university life, such as the strong sense of community, remained the same.
Gem of the Mountains yearbook 1973
Women Vandals before the “70s often had to adhere to dress codes and curfews.
“One of the things U of I has always had is professors who take an interest in you and relatively small classes where you get to know people,” Aiken said.
Today, there are more women at the university, and gender specific policies like curfews are gone, but Aiken said she believes there is still progress to be made, especially among UI”s administration and faculty.
“I was the first woman dean in (the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences) and it took a while for people to look at me and think, “That”s what a dean looks like,”” Aiken said. “When you look at our upper administration now, we have very few women, so we haven”t really made a lot of progress in that area.”
During her time as a professor, Aiken said she also faced challenges that are still real for many women today, such as receiving comments on student evaluations about what she wore to class and balancing her work and home life.
“I think the whole tenure system was made for men when their wives stayed at home and took care of things,” Aiken said. “You do tenure early on at the same time you”re trying to raise young children. It”s a challenge to balance having a family and doing the work academia requires.”
Despite the challenges that women still face today, Aiken and Copple Trout both said they believe female students can succeed as long as they remain open to a variety of different opportunities.
“It never occurred to me I would be a judge, let alone be on the Supreme Court,” Copple Trout said. “College degrees open a myriad of opportunities and I encourage (women) to explore all possibilities.”
Corrin Bond can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @CorrBond