June 14, 1934

Speaking to some 300 representatives of the North Atlantic Section of the American Association of University Women at a dinner in Main Building prior to their annual convention, President MacCracken and the president of Wesleyan University, James J. McConaughy, were intriguing complements. Addressing, in “A Layman’s View,” the question of the role of college women in the community,” President McConaughy discussed the value of college women “amateurs” as foils and mediators of the often strident words and the efforts of “professionals,” who were “always lodging protests and sending petitions instead of taking action” and who, when active, “promptly get so far ahead of everybody else that nothing can be seen but their dust.” The woman “amateur,” however, is usually a “good sport” who “is not too efficient to make a real contribution out of her sincere desire to help, and plays an individual game as against the organized team play of the professionals.”

In his response, President MacCracken suggested that professional training was often indispensible in great calamities and that the role of professional women in the community is to support and co-operate with their amateur colleagues. Women trained, he said, in history, public health, law and child care are especially able to assist those less well-trained in stressful times.

The New York Times