Student life outside of the classroom has also reflected changing sexual and gendered mores. As a service to arriving women students, women in the mid-1990s published A Woman's Guide to the U of C, sharing information on student health care, nutrition, sexual harassment, and resources for lesbian and gay students. University support for a student-centered space at 5710 South Woodlawn has made additional space available for students of color and a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Resource Center, yet a series of articles in the 2008 Chicago Maroon has pointed out the continuing need to address quality of life issues for transgendered students on campus.
Other campus developments have remade tradition across campus, referencing the long history of women at the University of Chicago. In 1985, women organized the University's first sorority, Alpha Omicron Pi. Today there are multiple Greek-letter sororities on campus, overturning Marion Talbot's historic prohibition of such groups in the early years of the University.
Female athletes continue to make the Women's Athletic Association a thriving organization. Residents of Breckinridge Hall, named after pioneering scholar Sophonisba Breckinridge in the late 1970s, call their annual Spring Quarter house party "Sophie Day." Combined with new methods of studying women and gender in the academy, these traditions remind us that Chicago women have always made rich contributions to the University, and continue to have distinct stories to tell about the coeducational experience, both inside and outside of the classroom.
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6. University of Chicago Women's Rugby annual prom dress game, 2008. On loan from the University of Chicago Women's Rugby team.
Each year, Women's Rugby challenges gender conventions, playing their physically demanding sport in feminine formal wear. |
