MR: How does it feel to be back on campus?
ST: Well, I’ve spent a lot of time on campus...have for about the past ten years so it feels
comfortable. I keep coming because I like it.
MR: Where are you originally from?
ST: I’m originally from Northern California, the Bay Area.
MR: And do you live in Los Angeles currently?
ST: I live in Los Angeles now, I have since I graduated.
MR: Why did you first choose Scripps College?
ST: Probably...well, for several reasons. I’m from California. I spent three years in boarding
school in New York and I was ready to come back to a little nicer weather. So I had applied to
three colleges in the East as well as Scripps and Mills and I got in everywhere I applied, but
Scripps seemed the best fit. I wanted to be an art major and I liked everything I’d seen and heard
and experienced about it so I picked Scripps.
MR: Did you visit the campus before you decided to enroll here?
ST: I did, I had a tour and an interview, I think in the fall or the summer, something before I
applied. So I did see it.
MR: What was your major? Or majors?
ST: My major was studio art, and no minors.
MR: What were some classes you took here that you really liked? Or what programs drew you to
Scripps?
ST: Well, at the time we had, instead of Core, we had what was called Humanities. And that was
an actual three year, not three semester but three year program so freshman through junior year
everybody took Humanities 1, Humanities 2, and Humanities 3 and it - it was absolutely required
and I was interested in that because I was basically interested in basically a good liberal arts
education so that was - that was pretty much, that took up a lot of time! As an art major I took
almost everything I could in that field and otherwise I took whatever was required: basic
science...Spanish, I went through three years of Spanish, liked that a lot. And that was pretty
much it. I got required stuff out of the way and then stuck pretty much to art along with
humanities.
MR: Great, what were some other popular majors while you were a student here?
ST: Uh, (long pause) American Literature, Literature in general, Psych. I think there were a few
history majors and a few Classics majors. Math and Science was not big. At all! I mean, I know
there were people who did it, but it was not really pushed as a Scripps major. So I would say the
more sociology, you know, the Liberal Arts stuff, primarily.
MR: So was it that a lot of the girls who liked math and science more chose to go to Harvey
Mudd or Pomona?
ST: Probably. As many as there were - there were a handful of women at Harvey Mudd, and I
imagine that there were a lot of Science students at Pomona, I just didn’t hang out with them so
I’m not sure who they were!
MR: Okay, what dorm did you live in, and which years did you live there?
ST: I started out in Kimberly, and lived there for two and a half years and then half-way through
my junior year I moved to Grace Scripps, which is what you guys call Clark, and was there for a
year and a half.
[5:06]
MR: What was dorm culture like back then? Did you have many friends who you lived
with?
ST: Dorm culture was pretty much everything. Which is one of the reasons that I, probably, that I
came to Scripps was that, I mean, I’d spent three years in boarding school so I knew that I really,
really liked living with a community of women, with a group of women. And when we were here
at Scripps you really belonged to your dorm. If you didn’t like living there you had the option to
move generally at the end of the year, unless you were miserable and they would move you some
other time, but once you were in a dorm by choice, that was really your core, your home, and
since we had the dining rooms were in the dorms, and every dorm had a dining room, a living
room, a rec room, a kitchenette, those kinds of things, pretty much all of our activity was
centered around that. People were really involved in, like, hall council and we had, I’ve sure you
heard this before, but Scripps was really into tradition in the early sixties when I was here, midsixties,
another thing which kind of drew me to it and so a lot of stuff went on on the dorm level.
We had hall parties where we did, like, skits that we presented for the other dorms and there was
a lot of stuff at holidays, and there was this thing called Spring Sing where the dorms competed
against each other singing and.... So we were a tight bunch and everybody got to know each
other, that way you really knew the people in your dorm, not that you didn’t know people in
other dorms, but this was a very handy way of - of, you know, having a small community on
campus.
MR: You mentioned the skits, which I actually hadn’t heard about, do you remember a specific
skit that you did? Or what were they typically about?
ST: Well, at Christmastime we had hall parties and each dorm had a theme, and the only ones
that I remember were that Kimberly was Williamsburg and Grace Scripps was - they had this
medieval dinner, which was really fabulous. So people people basically dressed up and had a
dinner for faculty, friends, that kind of thing. Spring hall parties, they were some kind of a theme,
but I can’t remember what it was, but I do remember one year we did a big Peanuts thing, where,
with, you know Charlie Brown and Lucy and all that, but in terms of what the subject matter
was, it seems to me that it was related to Humanities because pretty much everything was and I
kind of recall that I think the Peanuts one may have been Dante’s Inferno, or something that we
did was like, either my freshman or sophomore year, was Dan - around a modern take-off, sendup
of it. And I’m trying to remember if I was actually Dante...I know that I would not have been
Beatrice, but...anyway, that was the kind of thing that we did. We used whatever we were
studying. Freshman year, there was also a...and this was not a dorm thing, this was a class thing
which also served to kind of unite people was May Fete, which we had in the Spring. And the
freshmen class would, or maybe it was the sophomore class, we had Freshmen Convo where we
did a take-off of all of our Humanities teachers. But then we had May Fete which I think was
either freshmen or sophomores would get together and also do a big sort of theatrical production
that was a take-off of something or other and the sophomores, I guess, would always try to find
and steal our script so that they could do a rebuttal kind of performance, I mean it was hokey as
all-get-out, but it was a huge amount of fun but you just really got to know people in your class
and elsewhere so that was another sort-of fun tradition.
[10:04]
MR: Did you read the official Scripps handbook at the time, or were there any
particularly strict rules that you remember?
ST: I don’t remember if there was a handbook like you have the student guide, don’t know if that
existed, I don’t remember, but what we did have was a booklet and - that contained more or less
the rules, and we had an honor code which was what this little booklet was about. Kind of what
the rules were and what happened if you broke them or saw somebody breaking them or
whatever. I think, kinda looking back, I think the rules at the time were really more social rules
as opposed to academic rules which I think the honor code, if there is one, whatever it’s called,
kind of refers mainly to academic rules, you know, cheating, plagiarism, that kind of thing and
that was sort of a given. But the rules that we had really governed our social activities or our
extra-curricular activities and that kind of thing but we had hours and you had to be in the dorm,
and I think you could sign out, I don’t remember, but you could sign out until 11:00 and if you
weren’t in by 11:00 you had to have already be signed out to be out until 1:00. You had a certain
number of one o’clocks, and seniors got some two o’clocks, but you really had to be in the door.
And when you signed out a key and you had to be in the door by 11:00 or 12:00 or whatever. Or
you had broken a rule and there was no - the house mother, which we had, house mothers: little
old ladies, the house mother was not standing there generally waiting for you but if you did come
in late you were on your honor to report yourself, and if you saw someone coming in late there
was this whole shenanigans about how you were meant to to talk to them and tell them that
you’d seen them break this rule, and they really needed to report themselves and it kinda went
from there to hall council and whatnot.
I didn’t see it as a strict rule, at least not at first. After a while it just became kind of a hassle just
to get back in time. But, you know, to me, I was perfectly happy to be in a sheltered place when I
was seventeen, eighteen whatever and to feel like someone was kinda looking after me. And the
college was really big, at the time, on what they called in loco parentus, which was, you know,
we’re your parents when you’re away from home and we have to set all these boundaries and...so
I didn’t really mind that, you know, they made me come in at a certain time. And there were
enough times when I was out, like, on a date when I was really happy to come home. And the
guys were usually pretty respectful of that because they knew, you know,if you were late, you’d
get in trouble, and you’d be mad at them and that kinda thing, so they pretty much hustled to get
us back in time, and if I just really wanted to be back, I was really happy to have that rule. The
rest of them were things...you know, drinking...drinking, there was none of the freedom that you
guys have in terms of parties where alcohol was served and, I mean, it was basically a big no-no,
even if you were 21, and, so people usually did their drinking off-campus and if you were off
campus
and you were not of age, you basically were on your own. There was no rule against it. If
you were on campus, or any of the other campuses again, and you drank, you were supposed to
come right home and report yourself! I did that once. I drank in the wash at Pomona and came
home and reported myself and tried to talk the other people that I was drinking with into
reporting themselves as well and that didn’t go over very well. And I think after a couple of years
at Scripps I didn’t take all of that quite as seriously as I did. I could see the reason for some of
the rules, but I felt if I was behaving responsibly then I wasn’t gonna take it quite so seriously.
[15:30]
MR: So you mentioned going on dates, what was the dating scene like when you were at
school?
ST: Well, when I came to Scripps, I did come from a girls’ boarding school, which I really loved,
and I particularly loved a couple of people there! And so when I came to college, I thought, you
know, now is the time when I should start getting interested in boys. And here’s all - it’s a new
place and there’s all this freedom and there are all these boys around and maybe they won’t be as
obnoxious as the high school boys were and and there was still - there was a certain amount of
pressure to date, you know, there was a mixer every night for, like, the first month of school and
I dutifully went to the mixers, and didn’t find that it was really what I had expected, or maybe it
was what I expected...I do have a story: I think, the first week of school, I went to a mixer at
Harvey Mudd and, you know, get to know other freshmen and they give us those name tags, the
stick-on ones that say, “Hello, my name is” and I had my sticker on that says, “Hello, my name is
Sue” and some Harvey Mudd boy came up to me right away and said, “Oh, what’s the other
one’s name?” and I thought “Oh God, four years! What have I gotten myself into?” We had a
thing which I am fairly sure they don’t have any more called “The Look Book” where the
summer before your freshman year they made you send in a picture of yourself, not really saying
what it was going to be for, and so they didn’t send in their high school senior pictures, they just
sent in this thing that you went and got took, and they published it in a book, all 5C’s, the entire
freshmen class, alphabetical order, with your picture and your dorm and so invariably, you would
get Look Book dates and someone would call you and say, “do you want to go out, I saw your
picture in the Look Book” and I didn’t turn those down because I figured it, you know, that was a
good way to get dates and stuff. I lasted through a couple of those but they were not choice
specimens. After the first half of my freshmen year I was not into dating at all. I had a boyfriend
my sophomore year who was a grad student, an art grad student, and that was really exciting, he
was really sweet, but somewhere around the middle of my Scripps experience I came out to
myself, and I’d had lesbian experiences before but it - it wasn’t...I didn’t see it as a lifestyle, it,
you know, it was boarding school! So I basically, and - but I didn’t have any idea that it was
anyone else in the world besides me at least in Claremont that was going through the same thing
so basically I just didn’t date any more and had a lot of crushes on people and actually was not
until the end of my senior year that - no, the end of my junior year, I guess, I hooked up with the
woman who is currently my partner, so we had this college romance. So dating for me was not,
personally, for me was not the best part of my Scripps experience, or even a very big part of it. It
was, however, a big thing when we were here, pretty much...
[20:10]
There was a joke that said you came to Scripps to get your MRS degree, and a lot of
people did, I mean they met people either at the other 5C’s or came with, you know, had a guy
somewhere else, but the big thing was to get married when you got out of college, whether or not
you had a career and not very many people really were motivated to go on big time, I think in
general, I mean, there were plenty of women, even before me, who went into careers. I would
venture a lot of those were in the arts, writing, there were probably a lot of women who were
writers, perhaps, or certainly teachers, a certain number of women went into law, but there were,
like I say, no scientists or mathematicians. I remember being in absolute awe of a woman who
graduated a couple of years before I did who went to business school after Scripps: Harvard
business school, I was so impressed, I thought, “Oh my God” you know, that is impressive she’s
got to be incredibly brilliant. Most people were really looking to be a well-educated wife and
mother, I assume. We used to joke about the humanities that you were being trained or educated
so that you could be a really good conversationalist at cocktail parties. Which I never found to be
the case. I didn’t go to a lot of cocktail parties afterwards, or we called them something else, but
I never spent a lot of time talking about the fall of Rome, or the Enlightenment at any cocktail
parties.
We had an interesting custom, though, when girls got engaged. Or it wasn’t even engaged, it was
pinned. When you were at Scripps you would maybe be dating I guess I don’t know if it was a
frat boy or what, but somehow or other you would end up with a pin, and that was I guess I
really big deal and they would have this ceremony at meals where they would pass around and I
think it was pinned it might have been engaged, because it had something to do with a ring, but
they would pass around a candle and when it got to the woman who was pinned or engaged or
whatever she would stop and hold it or blow it out or I don’t know put a ring on it or some hooha
thing and so everybody would shriek and sob and, you know, get excited. So that was then, that
was forty years ago and it was the big thing to have a boyfriend and hopefully get married at the
end. In Margaret Fowler Garden.
MR: So did people get engaged a lot while you were here?
ST: Yeah!
MR: Was it like really common?
ST: Yeah.
MR: Yeah?
ST: Yeah. I mean I wouldn’t say...maybe not the majority, but it happened often enough that it
was really part of - a very open part of the culture.
MR: So, when you mentioned what your own romantic life was like, it sounds like there wasn’t
really a very open lesbian or bisexual culture here?
ST: Not at all.
MR: Not at all?
ST: Not at all. I mean, I think, I know there were other gay people in the 5C’s but just because I
have either met them since or, you know, subsequently found out and there were always rumors
about various people, mostly staff but there - it was just not part of anybody’s culture. You did
not speak out, at all. And I think most people were afraid of, you know, that you’d be kicked out.
Even if there was a rumor. It was not...it was a time when gay rights were just sort of starting to
pick up in this country. People were more interested in racial civil rights and so there was no
movement at all on these campuses and if there was, boy, I sure never heard about it because like
I say I was convinced that there was nobody else. And if there - I didn’t know how to find out if
there was anybody else! So we were all pretty much in the closet.
[25:24]
MR: Did your partner also go to Scripps?
ST: Yes she did. She was actually a class ahead of me and took a semester off so we graduated at
the same time.
MR: How did you meet her?
ST: I had met her I think my freshman year. She was a theater major, and I was into theater, sort
of, so we met doing a play together. And we were casual friends for most of the rest of the time.
And, again, I certainly had no idea - I didn’t know any other lesbians, it was clear who the
heterosexuals were, for sure, but.... She actually, her semester off was she was kicked out for, this
is kind of a fun story. She and five other women were kicked out, I think, for smoking marijuana.
I was on the judiciary board at the time for my dorm and what we were told was, cause they had
to be tried before the court of their peers, and we were told that the initial charge was drugs and
homosexuality and oh man was I excited! Because I thought, it exists! There’s somebody, even if
it was a rumor, you know. But the only crime that they would be charged for was the drugs
because homosexuality was a personal thing, or something like that. They knew they couldn’t
prove it, and that they would probably, you know, get in trouble or didn’t want, you know, to
libel somebody or whatever. So I subsequently found out, you know, that there was somebody
besides me and they ended up getting kicked out for a semester because of the drug thing. That
colored my attitude toward the honor spirit a lot cause it had not been followed. They were just
turned in and semarily dismissed. So after, when they came back, which was my senior year, we
were able to sort of meet each other on different terms and find out a little more about each other,
that kind of thing.
MR: Were there - well, you mentioned the Civil Rights movement for racewas a big topic at the
time. Were there a lot of people of other people of color at Scripps?
ST: Well, not at Scripps, no. In fact there were pretty much none. One of my best friends my first
couple of years was an Asian American woman. And there was one black woman when I came
here who was a foreign student, an international student. So the answer to that was no, we all
looked a lot alike. On the other campuses, however, Pomona particular, there was a decent-sized
black student population. There was a decent-sized Asian American population. Latino students
did not stand out as that, they didn’t identify, so in case you were looking, paying attention, the
Chicano rights movement didn’t really happen until the 70’s.
[29:43]
While I was here, though, black power was big time, and - so there was a lot of that on
campus. The students had, I don’t remember again the timing of it, but there was a lot of
demonstrating and demands for a black study center, which happened, almost immediately,
because, you know, the rest of the world was going up in flames and I think Claremont at least
had the foresight to accommodate those students. There were all kinds of rallies and
demonstrations and stuff. I think it was Stokely Carmichael or somebody spoke on the CMC
campus and...there was a lot going on, and Scripps students were participants and allies, but not
because of our population. Subsequently, we got maybe a handful, at most, black students who...I
just recently found out that there was a recruiting effort at that time, and that they were
practically, you know, sorta going down to minority high schools and loading students on buses
and bringing them out and kinda thing. When I was a sophomore, we had, instead of peer
mentors but sponsors and sponsees and a student would sponsor one or two freshmen when they
first came just to kind of orient them, and tell them how to get to the library and how to, you
know, do the laundry and that kinda thing. I had signed up to be a sponsor my sophomore year,
and for whatever reason, I got one of the first black students as one of my sponsees. I do not
know what happened to that woman, I believe she graduated, but I’m not absolutely sure, but it
was a hideous experience, I think, for both of us and I regret it to this day that I wasn’t able to do
anything for her. But she suffered really badly, from just being one of two or three or four people
on Scripps campus who was not white. And I had no skills, I had no clue, you know, I don’t even
know how well I did with my other sponsee. But this gal was sweet. She was, you know, very
alone, and I didn’t know how to make it any better for her, I had no idea what she needed. I think
other students maybe had it a little better, and as there were more and more (and by more and
more I mean two or three more) it probably was a little easier, but it was one of the things when I
came back sort of got re-involved with Scripps about ten or twelve years ago, it was one of the
things I was amazed and actually kind of appalled by was how slow Scripps was in just including
more women of color, you know, that’s just the very basic, admitting them and you know, getting
them here, to say nothing of faculty of color. The longer it takes, it seems like the - the harder it
becomes because you’re so far behind and when someone comes and doesn’t see anybody else
that looks like them I think it’s that much harder for them to come here, much less provide
services they need. If I was applying to Scripps today, probably would be impressed by the
diversity, but I would sure ask if there was a queer student movement. Back then, there were just
a lot of women so I didn’t care, I was comfortable, but it was - it was a shame and a sin back
then, but that’s kind of the way the world was. This is a small, private, liberal arts, women’s,
expensive college and at the time people were not doing that kind of outreach. It was a nice,
white school.
[35:05]
MR: So were there many international students? Even ones who were white or
European?
ST: Not that entered my consciousness. One woman that I knew was an international student was
- she was from Ethiopia and she stood out like a sore thumb. Or not sore, because she was really
wonderful and nice and people liked her but she was, like, special. She was not from south
central or anything like that, and she was probably here, certainly here on her own merits. And,
you know, at the time, it was sort of like if you were a student of color it was probably because
they picked you up and you were on some program and they’d gone and picked you up on some
bus or something. I’m sure that wasn’t true, but that’s where we were coming from. They were
special.
MR: Were there-most students from California? Or, I mean, you know, not counting International
students, were there students from all over the country, or was it pretty much just Northern and
Southern California?
ST: I’m going to guess it’s pretty much like it is now. Which is the majority from California and
the West Coast. There were lots of students, as I think there are now, from like Oregon and
Washington. Otherwise, pretty much everywhere, although not huge numbers. I think we had
maybe the whole school was five hundred at the time, and I don’t know in terms of percentages,
but there were people from all over. I had a roommate who was from Alaska, so she came that
far. I think there were a fair number of people from, say Florida or...not so much new England. I
think most women who were interested in women’s colleges went to women’s colleges in the
East if they lived up there. Chicago, that kind of thing. The Midwest. But I would say, yeah,
predominantly California, the West Coast.
MR: What were the interactions with the other schools like? Because there were four other
Claremont schools then. So did you have friends at the others, or did your friends have friends at
the others? Were there any inter-collegiate activities?
ST: There were plenty of intercollegiate activities, a lot of them being social activities, all kinds
of mixers. The theater department was - I think Pomona had a theater department, but Scripps
was the only other one, and so in order to get, you know, men to be in the plays, in
classes...classes were open to pretty much everyone like they are now, so it depended what your
major was. I had, we never had guys in the humanities classes needless to say, because they were
all Scripps, but my art classes, invariably, had guys in them, and grad school classes for a couple
of years in art. Lots of people went to Pitzer. Pitzer was brand new then, it was probably three
years old when I got here, or something, and their focus was pretty much the same as it is now,
with less social justice, but the psych classes and that kind of thing, people went. I think people
did a lot of class, academic mixing. Nowhere near as much social mixing in terms of like eating
together, that kind of thing, because we each had our own dining room, so rarely did you eat at
another campus, for example. The social scene, of course, might has well have been one college.
People inter-mixed on that level. You know, each college really had an identity, well Spring Sing
for example was, actually was five college. And Pomona was always having love ins and
concerts and whatnot so we mixed pretty freely.
MR: What was Women’s Lib like at the time? Was Feminism big?
[40:00]
ST: No. It was kind of, I think “Women’s Lib” was kind of on the same chronological
scale as the queer rights movement. I wasn’t really introduced to feminism until I graduated,
until I was out on my own, and then it hit me, like, you know with full force, so it obviously had
been going on, certainly through the sixties, but it did not penetrate, really, the walls of Scripps.
Plenty of strong women here, with a voice, and we were at a women’s college which really
appealed to me at the beginning, because it meant certainly less competition academically from
men, even though they were there, there were not dominant. And, so, one got the sense
empowerment and that kind of thing, but in terms of the movement itself...I mean, all of our stuff
was about men. You know, dead white men, mostly. Or live artists, in my case. I mean, I went to
a lot of gallery showings and stuff in LA and stuff that happened here and rarely if ever was there
a woman artist that I was interested in. We weren’t necessarily motivated or encouraged to read
books by women, or I mean, there just wasn’t that focus. We were pretty much, I think, just
raised at the time to be, I don’t want to say second-class because it sounds like we were way
down there, but it was just the trade of the times, is that you were somewhat subservient in
everything in life and we had not gotten the message when I was here that there were a whole lot
of alternatives. So no, the word feminism, I do not believe was offered.
MR: Well, what were other issues that students were particularly fierce about, I guess? Or
particularly interested? Like, politically or Claremont?
ST: Civil Rights was really what was going on in the world, and I think that transferred to, you
know, politics and government and the electoral system and that kind of thing. I forget what year
it was, I guess ‘68, before I graduated, there was a presidential election, so that prompted a
certain amount of debate, but not a lot. The war of course was going on. And that was probably,
in addition to Civil Rights, that was probably the big concern, and it was the concern mainly
because of the draft. So the guys, every single guy here, unless they had a physical disability or
something, was eligible for the draft, and even being in school, a lot of people did not get
deferments, so there was always this worry, you know. Or maybe there was an interest in it, there
was a big Razi contingent on campus. And I dated a guy for a while who went off to war, don’t
know what ever happened to him, so there were lots and lots of marches and protests, and that
kind of thing. You know, somewhat unsophisticated, I would say. we didn’t have lots of outside
people coming in and organizing, other than the black students, so we did have little candlelight
marches and that kind of thing, and but I don’t remember a lot of heavy duty, you know,
demonstrating. We didn’t really get involved with much outside the walls. There was plenty to
keep us busy here, you know. I mean there was a lot of...my last couple of years there was a lot
of, you know,“should seniors be allowed to drink on campus?”
[45:54]
And then there was the whole...Senior year they built the Humanities - this very building!
And I’m sure you’ve heard about the olive grove, and it’s true, we did in fact sit down front of
the bulldozers. They were not running at the time but we did our protest. That was - that kind of
thing that was sort of -any thing that kind of disrupted our daily life was kind of a bigger thing
than was going on in the bigger world. And I’m really speaking from my own personal
perspective, and my closer circle of friends, people were involved in things but it tended to be on
an intellectual level, and less the issue of the day.
MR: So, just because I’m having trouble remembering, were most of the classes held in Balch?
ST: Well, most of the academic classes were. As an art major, all of, the entire art department
was in what is now Malott and what is now, like, Seal Court. In other words, that whole building
was the art department. And what is now Vita Nova was music. And those offices down there
were practice rooms. So we had lectures in Vita Nova, whatever it’s called, the lecture hall, and I
had most of my classes in what was Lang, now Malott. I mean, I painted in the Motley, you
know, and did print making in the Scripps Store, and that kind of thing. If you took classes off campus,
obviously, you went there. But yeah, most classes were in Balch. There was no Steele
Hall, if it was even built...I think Steele...if it was even built, which I think it was at the very end,
was all belonged to Harvey Mudd, it was all science stuff...labs and stuff over there. So I did
not...I took a couple of grad school classes, but they were on the Scripps Campus. I never went to
Pomona or Pitzer or any place for a classes. But that was just me. Other people did.
MR: So you mentioned the Motley. Was the Motley still in it’s original location?
ST: The Motley did not exist.
MR: Oh! Okay!
ST: In the...well, when I was here, and for many, many years before that, we had Scripps tea
every day. For an hour, an hour and a half, something like that, and it was held in what is, I
believe, the Dean of Students Office. Whatever it is, was right off that courtyard, that’s between
the library and Balch, in from the rare book room, or that conference room there. And it was a
big, open space and I’m not sure but I think was, it was made into the Dean of Students office, or
is currently the Dean of Students office. Anyway, that was a big open room and filled with like of
couches and stuff and it opened up, onto that courtyard, big doors. And every single day in the
afternoon they poured tea. And I’m talking a silver tea set with cups, china cups and hot tea and
cookies. And it was wonderful because everybody came. People from other campuses came.
Faculty came. Students came. It was enough time if you had a class, you know you could come
at any time. And everybody took their tea and sat in the courtyard or the commons, we called it
the commons room. There was no program or, you know, presentation and I thought it was just
hanging out. Way in the days before Starbucks or coffeehouses or whatever were big on college
campuses, so we had tea. And dorms were in charge of pouring tea on different days. And we had
these rules about only two cookies. And it was very quaint and old school and it was really
wonderful because it was sorta like like recess. It was a little rest break, you could meet at tea.
[50:05]
The Motley came into existence...geez, way after I was here, I’m gonna say late
seventies, something like that, and they took over that space. Tea went the way of all good
Scripps traditions, there was no more May Fete, there was no more Spring Sing, there was no
more hall parties, no more tea. And so the Motley came into existence. They were there for a
while, then something else took its place. Then it was in Lang, Malott, and it would’ve been
where the North/South dining rooms are down there, they had a nice space down there for
several years, and then it moved to the Routt/Frankel Dining room, since they didn’t have dining
rooms any more, that space was empty, that space was used for a gym or a work-out space. And
they moved there, and then they moved to there, when they did their Malott commons, they
moved there to their current space. So we never had any Motley, we had tea. Which at the time,
was really perfect. A good thing. And it was free. You didn’t have to buy it.
MR: So what was your daily schedule? Like when did you wake up, and then when were your
classes?
ST: Well we had a kind of - a different kind of a meal plan. In that it wasn’t a meal plan. We ate
in the dorms. And everyone basically went to every meal. Except maybe breakfast. And since
there was nothing like the Motley, if you didn’t eat breakfast and you were hungry, you were
kind of stuck, you’d have to go to another campus to get something to eat or whatever. So most
people ate breakfast. And I don’t remember when it started, but I know that Humanities, which
everybody went to for three years, I’m gonna say was either 9:00 to 11:00 or 9:00 to 12:00, or
something like that every day, it was a double class, and you had to be at that lecture. So I got up
- and the other thing was we had sit down meals for lunch and dinner, and breakfast was buffet.
But all of those meals were served meals. Which means that work study students were
waitresses, which is a whole other story. So if you were a breakfast waitress, which I was, you
had to be up super early to be down there to make peoples eggs and stuff like that. Other
waitresses got there early to serve and ...they got to eat, sit down, but there was a waitress
table...and an interesting discussion about class could be had from that, but...anyway, so I was a
breakfast waitress, so I got up fairly early. And there was a head waitress in each dorm, who had
a xylophone, in the hall, banging on the xylophone, about fifteen minutes after breakfast so late
risers could get up and at ‘em. People got up or didn’t get up, but everybody got to Humanities at
nine. And people had the habit of putting on a trenchcoat over their PJ’s to make it to Humanities
in time. The other rule was that, and I don’t know how much longer after I was here that this
lasted, but we were required to wear dresses to class. And to meals. Not to breakfast, necessarily,
but you did not show up at Humanities or anywhere else in pants. However, art students were an
exception. For art classes you could wear pants. Probably one of the reasons I was happy to be an
art major. I did get sent back to my dorm from a class where I showed up in a culotte, which is a
skort, a split skirt with shorts underneath (or whatever). “Miss Talbot, you will go back to your
room and put on a skirt.”
Everybody got up for humanities, and your elective classes were, I guess, the rest of the
mornings and afternoons. And everybody ate lunch at the same time, in their dorm. You could
finagle eating in another dorm, but it was kind of - much harder than it is now, it wasn’t just a
question of swiping your card or whatever, you had to do all kinds of maneuvering. Basically
you just went to lunch, and got in line for lunch, got done. There was a PE requirement, my first
year, I think, so somewhere along the line you went to PE, and we had to learn how to swim,
also. You had to take a swimming class at some point. You studied whenever you had free time,
and then you had dinner, went to the library, you made sure you were in by eleven, you studied in
your room. People pulled all-nighters, but it was either your room or browsing room cause the
libraries would shut down at a certain time. So it was very standard. Weekends, if you had a car,
you could disappear if you wanted to, not very many people had cars. I think freshmen were not
allowed to have cars, as I recall. I was lucky enough to have a car, sophomore or junior year,
can’t remember which. People were very nice about lending their cars if they had them. So there
was not...there were plenty of activities, mixers, parties, dances, concerts, whatever on
weekends...you could walk downtown anytime you wanted to, pretty much. That was kind of a
weekend thing because were were pretty busy rest of the time. Downtown was not quite what it
is now, you know, there was no - there was a movie, that rarely showed movies and a couple of
stores, a couple of restaurants, a record store, that kind of thing nothing like there is now, we
didn’t go out to eat or anything, we would go out to in n’ out and that kind of thing...Donut
Queen. But it was pretty routine, mostly studying, hanging out.
MR: Had sports teams started up yet?
ST: Not really. We had tennis, was a big thing. I don’t remember if it was actually intercollegiate.
I know there were women who were really good and got some kind of, you know, were in
tournaments and stuff, I’m not quite sure what the set-up was. Boys had football. There were the
Sagehens and the...there were two football teams, CMC and Pomona had a team and Harvey
Mudd...or something like that anyway. Boys basketball, football Some swimming, mostly at
Pomona. Scripps students basically played - did PE which we had volleyball and briefly field
hockey and swimming. But competition, there were no teams I knew of except possibly in tennis,
and I don’t know how they organized that. So if you were an athlete, you were probably at the
wrong school.
MR: Currently the CMS teams are the Stags, were they the Stags back then-?
ST: Oh yeah! The Stags and the Sagehens! Right, right, that was it!
MR: Let’s see...did you have a favorite professor? Or a favorite book that you read while you
were here? Favorite text?
[1:00:00]
ST: Book...most of the reading. I cannot remember a book I read for pleasure, to be
honest with you. Most of the reading we did was for Humanities, and there was probably as
much of it as you -well, going off of how much as you guys have, we had less readings per se
and more just read this whole book, or read this whole play, or read this whole anthology. And...I
cannot think of one that stands out in my mind mainly because it all kind of ended around 1910
or something like that. We didn’t really get into anything very contemporary except a little bit of
history. And it was total Western Civ which meant not a lot of fiction, per se. I remember we
were required to read “Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann which I did not read. Cliff Notes
were a big thing then. So no favorite books. I made up for lost time, needless to say, but...I guess
we read, probably we read Jane Austen or something like that, but stuff I had read in high school,
mainly, for the most part.
Favorite professors...I loved all of my art professors. Paul Daro, Jim Fuller were two of my
favorites. Humanities professors were always sort of curmudgeonly. And, you know, you liked
them, but in my case they weren’t my favorite professors. There was a guy...oh, I can’t even
remember, in Sophomore Humanities I had that I liked. I liked my Spanish teacher. Mrs. Lamb,
Signora Lamb. Generally I did not dislike any of my teachers, some of them I just got along with
them really, really well. It was cool.
MR: Were you the first woman in your family to go to college, or had your mother and
grandmother gone to school?
ST: No, I was the first -or, my mother and grandmother did not go to college. My older sister
went to nursing school, so I guess I was the first of my generation to go to a typical, four year
liberal arts college. Again, we were not...being a nurse was really revolutionary, in our family,
anyway, And that was acceptable, probably because my father was a physician, so at least my
sister was staying in the field. But my sister would not have been sent to med school, for
example, or even to a program where there was pre-med, she just went right into nursing school.
And did very well, and was a good nurse, but I was never encouraged to -college was acceptable.
Particularly if I was like, something like an art major, because it was not any great threat, to
taking a job from a man or anything like that.
But in the Milieu that I grew up in, women were not really expected to rush out and get a job. If
you were really bound and determined -if I’d gotten some kind of commercial art job, which is
what I had originally planned on, that would’ve been okay, but as long as it didn’t sort of deter
me from my real role as a woman. I was not ever, by anybody, ever really educated even at
Scripps to look for something beyond college unless I had this burning passion, and I never did,
so I kinda went into the world “whatever happens happens” so I had a very checkered career
before I kind of settled down into something, or several somethings, so I forget what your
question was, but I, you know, I basically did what I was told and kind of graduated and then it
was like, “Oh, now what?”
[1:05:30]
MR: Did you have much contact with home, or did you go home much?
ST: I lived in the Bay Area, and, so I was close to home and plane flights were relatively cheap at
that time, so I could go home, certainly more often than I did at boarding school because that was
like Christmas and summer. Here, I would go home, for probably Spring Break, we didn’t have a
Winter Break, I think I probably didn’t go home for Thanksgiving but I might have, you know, it
cost thirty dollars to hop on the plane and round-trip. They..as far as I remember, there was not a
lot of accommodation for people who couldn’t go home, I think you pretty much had to find a
friend or faculty member or something like that. I’ll tell you, though, from the time I left home
when I was fifteen, I was just thrilled to be out from under my parents, who were not mean in
any way, they were just very conservative and very, sort of, restrictive. And I think, I had some
sort of hints about my sexuality and knowing that I would not be really comfortable living at
home. The minute I got, when I was away at school, I was in heaven. So coming here was just
kind of a continuation of that...a little more sophisticated and intellectual, and that was fine. So I
was never not for one second was I homesick and, you know, I made my weekly phone call and
that sufficed.
MR: Okay, let me see how we’re doing on time. So what was your life after Scripps like? Did
you go to grad school or did you just sort of enter the work force?
ST: I had planned from most of my senior year that I would continue in art school because I
thought I would go into graphic design and that would be my career, so I went to -I applied to
and was accepted at Art Center, it’s now in Pasadena, it was in LA at the time. And went there for
two semesters, having begged and pleaded with my parents to support me for one more year, and
that’s a four year school, and after a year I still didn’t have, you know, have the skills to go out
and get a job, so I was sort of on my own, and there was just no way for me to go to school and
work at the same time, and earn enough for tuition, plus I didn’t like it that much anyway, so I -
but there I was living in LA so I was kind of like...I was absolutely, completely, and totally
unprepared to do anything except I was smart and flexible and adaptable and could pretty much
talk my way into a lot of things and I’d had enough odd job stuff at Scripps and during summers
and that kind of thing that I had some skills that I could, you know, parlay into jobs. So I did,
over the years, until I got a real job with a paycheck and benefits. I was...I did a lot of childcare
and nursery school teaching because I’d been a camp counselor, so I got into that really easily. I
was a delivery driver, I was a process server, I was...I, with a partner, I started a small crafts
business which I did for about thirteen years, which I got a lot of skills out of and had a
wonderful time, but I was basically a starving artist, you know, barely paid for itself. I did a lot
of freelance graphics, which paid off a little bit, and then I finally got smart, and I was still
interested at graphics, so I went to junior college so I could get a certificate in graphic arts and
ended up working at the college for the rest of my career and I went from doing production
printing to doing public education coordination in the PR office. My Scripps education paid off
in the long run, short term, it was just - it was not today. It was back then when you could be...I
mean, I was a starving hippie for a number of years, and it was fine, you know, I made it work.
My parents were chagrined, needless to say, for most of it.
MR: So I guess, for one last question, do you remember when your class did their mural on the
graffiti wall?
ST: I do, because it was not when we graduated. That was one of the traditions that was falling
apart really quickly, partly because the Toll gate was getting filled up, and it was not being
maintained, and so a couple of the classes before us, the rain was coming in and it was just not a
big thing to do anymore, and so we didn’t do it. And nobody cared one way or the other. And
then for our...I think it was my 25th year reunion, one of my classmates, and there were a bunch
of us there - thirty or forty people showed up for this reunion, and one of my classmates had
arranged for us to get a space, and in the meantime, they had done a lot of restoration and picked
up the tradition again, so there’s probably a gap in the seventies and the eighties where there are
no wall things, but we came back and we took - there’s a corner, I don’t know if you went and
looked, between -at the very end of Browning, we’re right on the corner around a window and
then we got everybody’s name, and a peace sign, and that, because that was, that was us. Class of
‘69!
MR: Yeah, well, that’s very cool! Thank you so much for taking the time out to do this!
ST: You’re very welcome, I hope it can be of use!
