The Miscellany News reported that library thefts had significantly dropped since the installation of an electronic security system in July of 1974.
1976
Department chairmen protested the January 14th vote by the board of trustees freezing salaries and wages for all college employees for the 1976-77 academic year. Twenty-eight out of 29 department chairmen signed a letter to President Simpson, the administration and the trustees which asserted that the vote breached The Governance. The Faculty Compensation Committee (FCC) also reacted to the vote, drafting a letter to the faculty in which they declared the board made “its decision unilaterally without regard to the FCC’s position.”
At a faculty meeting on January 28, President Simpson defended the action, saying, “The Dean [Dean of Faculty Barbara Wells] and I reject the suggestion that The Governance was violated in either the letter or the spirit by the procedure through which the compensation decision was reached.” The faculty endorsed the department heads’ January 20th statement, and biology professor Patricia Johnson observed that she “had never seen the faculty so united on an issue.”
The issue was resolved on April 16, when the trustee Committee on Budget recommended a five percent increase in faculty wages for the coming academic year. The Miscellany News
Pop-rock band Orleans, known for “Dance for Me” and “Still the One,” performed a concert in the Chapel.
The Vassar Library presented an exhibit of samplers from the Martha Reed Collection, collected in Europe around the years 1910-11. The collection was given to the college in 1920 by Emmeline Reed Bedell in honor of her niece Martha Clawson Reed ’10.
Roger Wilkins and Charlayne Hunter of The New York Times and William J. Raspberry of The Washington Post participated in a panel on “The Press and the Black Community” in Chicago Auditorium. The nephew of civil rights leader Roy Wilkins, Roger Wilkins was Assistant United States Attorney General in the Lyndon Johnson administration and briefly an officer of the Ford Foundation before joining The Times. After two years of litigation Hunter was one of two students who desegregated the University of Georgia in January 1961. Raspberry was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1982 and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1994.
Wilkins, Hunter, and Raspberry were the first African-American journalists brought to campus by the Poynter Committee, which supervised the five-year $50,000 gift to the college by Nelson and Marion Knauss Poynter ‘46, publishers of The St. Petersburg Times. The grant was intended to increase students’ appreciation for and exposure to the media. The panel discussion was also sponsored by the Africana Studies Program.
Coordinator for Women’s Courses Teresa Vilardi and the biology department sponsored a lecture in the College Center on “New Research on Feminine Bio-psychology and Sexuality.” Speakers included Dr. Elizabeth McCauley from the departments of psychiatry and pediatrics at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Dr. Marcy Greenwood ’68, assistant professor at the Institute of Human Nutrition of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.
Dr. Greenwood was a visiting assistant professor of biology at Vassar in 1976, and she served on the faculty until 1989, becoming a full professor in 1981.
A controversy arose when a mural protesting coeducation, posted in the College Center by the Women’s Voice Coalition, was removed.
Mary Johnson Lowe, acting Supreme Court justice for the New York County Supreme Court, spoke at the Black Benefit Weekend held in Chicago Hall. In 1978, Lowe was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the second African-American woman to be appointed to the Federal judiciary.
In honor of retiring Professor of Classics Marion Tait, New York City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin lectured in Taylor Hall on “The Fiscal Reform of New York City” for the annual Helen Kenyon Lecture.
Feminist journalist Deirdre English lectured on “Ideology and Child-Rearing Practices” in the College Center. Her books Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness and Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers appeared in 1973, and For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women was published by Anchor Press in 1978.
In 1981, English was the first editor-in-chief of the liberal investigative journal Mother Jones, a position she held until 1986.
The Library reported that many woodcut prints by American landscape painter and printmaker Winslow Homer had been torn out of old issues of Harper’s Weekly. The libraries at Bowdoin, Colby, Harvard, Cornell, and Mount Holyoke described similar thefts.
WVKR, Vassar’s student-run radio station, became an FM station and was assigned FM band 91.3 by the Federal Communications Commission. The station began its FM broadcasts in the fall of 1976.
The Vassar men’s basketball team, dubbed “one big, tough, pink ball club” by The Miscellany News, won the North Eastern Atlantic Conference, ending the season with 12 wins and 5 losses, the best record in its history.
Rosalyn Carter, wife of presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, spoke at Pratt House in support of her husband’s candidacy.
The eminent English economist Joan Robinson spoke on “Ideology and Analysis: Kalecki and Keynes” in the College Center for the annual Martin H. Crego Lecture. Professor Emeritus of Economics at Cambridge University, Robinson worked with John Maynard Keynes on his development of his general theory of employment, interest and money. During a question-and-answer session, Robinson asserted, “the future of capitalism is not rosy.”
The Crego lecture, part of the Crego Endowment established in 1956 by Jean Crego ’32 in honor of her father was an annual lecture in the general field of economics, under the auspices of the economics department.
The board of trustees and the Associate Alumnae/i of Vassar College (AAVC) board of directors adopted the recommendations of a report on fundraising prepared in September of 1974 by the consulting firm of Robert E. Nelson Associates. Urging greater coordination between the AAVC and the Vassar board, the report also recommended that the college take administrative responsibility for the Alumnae House and the AAVC operating budget.
Former Undersecretary of State George Ball spoke in Taylor Hall as part of the two-day symposium “Bicentennial Reflections on American Foreign Policy.” Other speakers included Professor Robert Tucker, professor of American foreign policy at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins; Cornell University Professor of History Walter LaFeber and Kempton Jenkins, deputy assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations.
Professor Robert Klech of Dartmouth College, a researcher in non-verbal communication and interpersonal attraction, gave the psychology department’s Matthew Vassar lecture in Taylor Hall auditorium.
As President Simpson had announced his intention to retire at the end of the 1975-77 academic year, the search for his successor began.
The Student Afro-American Society (SAS) issued a statement opposing the relocation of the Urban Center for Africana Studies from downtown Poughkeepsie to Arlington.
The joint student-faculty Committee on Curricular Policies recommended that the faculty set the passing grade at a “D” for a pass-fail class.
The Miscellany News reported that the November 12th Student Faculty Coalition had issued a statement advocating increased use of the endowment to combat Vassar’s deficit woes, in place of the faculty wage freeze and the tuition increase.
Ed Crain, Libertarian Party national chairman, lectured on ‘The Libertarian Alternative” in Rockefeller Hall.
T.N. Kaul, the Indian Ambassador to the United States, gave a lecture on the “State of Emergency and Current Political Developments in India” in Taylor Hall.
Michael Specter ’77 and Lenny Steinhorn ’77 were elected as student representatives to the Presidential Search Committee.
The Rondo Dance Theater, an acclaimed modern dance group, performed in the College Center.
American folk singer Jean Ritchie performed in the Main Lounge and Matthew’s Mug.
The board of trustees financial planning committee proposed closing the Skinner Greenhouses in July as part of economic cut-backs.
Retiring Dean of Residence Elizabeth Moffat Drouilhet ’30 spoke at Spring Convocation.
Some 400 students demonstrated outside the All Campus Dining Center against plans to raise tuition, cut programs and freeze faculty wages.
The author of The Group, Mary McCarthy ’33, delivered the 1976 Commencement address, entitled “Proper Studies.”
The Helen Lockwood Library, an extension of Thompson Memorial Library, opened at the beginning of the 1976-1977 academic year.
Students from four colleges attended the annual Seven College Student Conference at Bryn Mawr: Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Barnard and Vassar. Delegates considered such topics as co-education and health-services.
Dr. Rita Jaeger ’54, the college physician, recommended that eligible students receive the swine-flu vaccine.
The college received a $75,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation to partially fund energy-saving improvements in eight residence halls.
The Poynter Program presented a symposium on “Selling the News or Informing the Public?” featuring three alumnae journalists.
Visiting Professor Michael Benedikt, poetry editor of The Paris Review between 1975 and 1978 and author of four books of poetry, read his work in Josselyn Living Room
AAVC celebrated its 100th anniversary with an open house at the Vassar Club of New York.
Moliere’s Tartuffe, directed by the director of the Experimental Theater, Professor William Rothwell, was performed in Avery Hall.
The Miscellany News reported that the administration had rejected the Student Government Association (SGA) admissions referendum concerning both Vassar’s use of gender as a determining factor in admissions and the “Vassar for Men?” pamphlet.
Elizabeth Daniels ’41, chairman of the English department, was named acting dean of the faculty, succeeding Barbara Wells, who retired because of failing health.
Phillip Bennett, assistant professor of philosophy at SUNY Cortland, spoke on “Wilhelm Reich and the Sexual Revolution” in the West Cushing Lounge.
A group of concerned student, Student Affairs Vice President Natalie Marshall and Admission Director Richard Moll agreed collaborative discussion of admission policies.
Former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter and his running mate, Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale, defeated President Gerald Ford and Kansas Senator Bob Dole by a narrow margin in the presidential election.
Dick Gregory, political activist and comedian, lectured on America’s “white racist sexist system” for two hours and 20 minutes to an audience of 900 in the Chapel. Finding little cause for hope in the outcome of the recent election, Gregory said, “It didn’t make too much damn’ difference which of those two cats got in…. I knew Ford was gonna lose when he watied until after people were dying from the flu shots before he got his.” Gregory “saved his most scathing barbs,” wrote Leo Crowley ’77 in The Miscellany News, “for Earl Butz,” the former secretary of agriculture who has resigned a month earlier after, after a salacious racist joke of his was reported in the media. Butz was, said Gregory, the “kind of guy who writes dirty words on bathroom walls—in his own house.” Gregory urged students to get involved in protest movements, inviting them to join a Thanksgiving day rally in front of the White House in protest of conditions in South Africa.
Student Government Association (SGA) President Steve Nelson ’77 reported being approached by “two neatly dressed, middle-aged men” after Gregory’s talk who, according to Jack Nadler ’77 in The Miscellany News, wanted “to talk to you about the future of our country.” Noting that Gregory had identified the men as FBI agents, Nelson said he’d been “non-commital” in response to questions about “the extent of radical activities on campus by both students and faculty” and about whether he planned to join the Thanksgiving demonstrators. But, Nadler added “he did tell them that, for the most part, ‘student opinion in closer to Dick Gregory than to the Ford administration.’”
Some 30 Vassar students joined the Thanksgiving protest. Dick Gregory, who had first come to Vassar to entertain during Christmas House Party weekend in 1964, appeared on campus again in 1981, 1990 and 1999.
The College Center Gallery exhibited the works of Seven Women Artists: Sandy Galleher, Jean Johnson, Mary Langston, Carole Reichgut, Lorraine Reiley, Elayne Seaman, and Sheila Tankard.
Speaking on campus, Judge William H. Booth, president of the American Committee on Africa, criticized US policy in South Africa—labeling it exploitation.
The department of psychology and the coordinator of women’s studies held a conference on “Women and Work” in Josselyn living room.
Associate Professor of History and Director of the Africana Studies Program Norman Hodges attended the Seventh Africa-America Institute Lesotho conference in South Africa.
Mime Bob Berky presented a solo performance of Foolsfire, mime and song, in the Main Lounge.
Thirty Vassar students participated in a 150-person march in Washington D.C. to protest apartheid in South Africa.
Curator at the Whitney Museum, Marcia Tucker lectured on “Issues in Contemporary Art.”
Vassar’s board of trustees purchased a $125,000 house and five acres behind the Vassar golf course, possibly for the next president of the college.
The Miscellany News reported that two students were charged by the College Court for breaking into the College Store during the Thanksgiving vacation.
The Student Entertainment Committee hosted its third annual Christmas Formal in the College Center, featuring the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.
Maura J. Abeln ’77 won a Rhodes scholarship in the first year that the competition was open to women applicants.