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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview L-0041, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Sharon Rose Powell attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
during the mid-1960s, when women students began to attend the university in
greater numbers. Powell entered UNC in the fall of 1964, when ten percent of the
entering freshmen class was women. Powell's mother had attended the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the "Women's
College," and thought it was still more common for women to go to
school in Greensboro, Powell recalls her strong desire to follow in her
father's footsteps by becoming attending UNC. Powell remembers her
years at UNC with great fondness. During her freshman year, she lived in Spencer
Hall, a small dormitory for women students, and she discusses the friendships
she formed there. Powell turns her attention to outlining the rules and
expectations the university had of women students, focusing primarily on the in loco parentis rules; these literally gave the university
permission to act "in place of the parents" of the female
students. Powell describes how the Dean of Women, Katherine Kennedy
("Kitty") Carmichael spent considerable time familiarizing
women students with the rules and overseeing their enforcement. Powell quickly
became active in student politics at UNC, especially during her sophomore year,
when she was rejected by campus sororities because she was Jewish. Arguing that
had she joined a sorority she would have devoted most of her time to that
organization, Powell grew more involved in student government, especially after
she started to date the future student body president (and her future husband),
Robert Powell. Although Powell firmly attests to her belief that rules should be
kept and not broken, she explains that she increasingly began to question the
justice of in loco parentis. Recalling an incident in 1965,
when the girlfriend of then-student body president Paul Dickson was suspended
for spending the night at Dickson's fraternity (Dickson was not
punished), Powell began to campaign more actively for a reconsideration of
gender-specific rules. During her senior year (1967-1968), Powell was elected
chairman of the Women's Residence Council. When she gave her speech
to the incoming women freshmen that year, she called on them to question in loco parentis rules, much to the dismay of Dean Carmichael.
That year, Powell presided over a series of forums and committees that evaluated
the rules for women and eventually offered their recommendations for new rules.
Dean Carmichael, who had a close working relationship with Powell, vetoed the
recommendations, which included the removal of closed study sessions, the
establishment of open dorms, and changes to the dress code. Chancellor J.
Carlyle Sitterson, however, adopted the recommendations for fear that the women
students would protest. In addition to offering vivid anecdotes about the
experiences of women students in the South during the mid-1960s, Powell also
draws comparisons between her experiences at UNC and her experiences at the
University of California-Berkeley as a graduate student in 1969 and her work as
a psychologist in later years.
Sharon Rose Powell attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
during the mid-1960s, when the university began to admit women students in
greater numbers. In this interview, she vividly recalls her experiences at UNC,
focusing primarily on the in loco parentis rules that gave the
university permission to act as surrogate parents and her own role in
challenging and removing many of those rules.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is Pamela Dean. The date is the twentieth of June, 1989. I'm talking with Sharon Rose Powell.
I'm Sharon Rose Powell, and I was born in North Carolina and grew up in North Carolina and, of course, went to college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My father graduated from the University of North Carolina so I had been hearing about Chapel Hill since the time I was quite young. My mother took me to classes when she continued her education at Women's College, which is now UNC-G. She didn't complete her degree until after she was married and had two of her three children. But I do remember, I was probably no more than three or four years of age, I used to go to classes with her, so I was introduced to college life quite young. I was always intrigued by it. My father is a certified public accountant, and my mother was a teacher. Now she's head of her own public relations firm in Florida. My parents are divorced, and while I was raised in Greensboro, at the time of my parents' divorce, as a young adolescent, I moved with my mother and sister and brother to Charlotte, where I completed high school in Charlotte before attending Chapel Hill.
Why did you choose to go to Chapel Hill rather than what was still more common, going to Greensboro?
It had never occurred to me that I would not go to UNC at Chapel Hill. As
I said, my father went there. I remember listening to the radio and
hearing Choo-Choo Justice score touchdowns, and that's all I'd ever
heard of. It's really quite
You didn't even apply to other schools. This was it.
No, that was it. When I discovered that you could only apply in certain medically-related areas as a freshmen and because I had had interests always in education and psychology, but I had had some trouble with my knees coming out of joint, so I'd had some experience working with physical therapists. I knew enough about it to ask to be admitted into to the physical therapy program, knowing, at the time, that that really was not the area that I'd probably end up in, but it was my way of entering as a freshman. I had only visited the campus once briefly for an interview, and other than that, I really didn't know what to expect. I had not been aware that only ten percent of the freshman class were going to be women. I guess I had been told that I would get a great education and that it would be a wonderful place to live and grow for four years. And, it was not so far away from home that it was terribly frightening, and yet, it was far enough away to really begin to develop some independence, so it had all the ingredients that I was looking for in a college.
You lived in Spencer, is that right?
Yes, I certainly did, and that's one of the very special memories I have
of Chapel Hill is 218 Spencer Dorm, which is where I roomed. It's
interesting, when I came to Chapel Hill, I arrived early. That's pretty
typical of me, coming to a place early, probably because I needed the
security of checking the place out, and I met another young woman from
Lenoir, North Carolina. Just as I was walking up the steps, there she
was, and we hit it off immediately. She's very warm and friendly, and we
both unpacked. I was on the third floor, and she was on the second
floor, and we together decided that we would go around and spend the
rest of the day, after we said good-bye to our parents, we would spend
the rest of the day helping girls get into their rooms, knowing how
scary it must be for them as it was for us. So we went around and helped
girls unpack and just sort of became a welcoming committee for everybody
in the dorm. It was just a wonderful way to meet all the girls from day
one, and they were from all over. They were from all over North
Carolina, from towns that I'd never even heard of because I had not
really travelled very far in the state. And they were from New York, and
I'll never forget Suzanne Aiello from Brooklyn, New York with this heavy
New York accent, and I fell in love with her the day I'd met her. I'd
never known anybody with such an accent and such a manner, just a
presence about her. She was quite frightened. She was one of the few
girls on our hall who had a single, which meant that she didn't have a
roommate, and so I really felt a particular interest in getting to know
her. I didn't want her to feel isolated, and there were probably not
So they weren't threatening to each other.
They weren't at all, and we also, Frances and I, in our talks with each
other, discovered that we both had had mononucleosis that summer, and
actually, I was still getting over it. My doctor wasn't even sure he was
going to allow me to enter as a freshman because my resistance was down,
and Franny had the same problem, needed to get to bed early. We both
told our roommates that we were really going to have to have lights out
fairly early because we both had mononucleosis. I don't think
I think they were hostesses at that time.
It was a hostess, but it was something "mother."
Dorm Mother?
Dorm Mother, something like that.
House Mother?
Yes, House Mother. I think that's exactly what it was, and they, Anne and
Betty, went to our House Mother and said, "Please, you've got to move us
because we don't want to be with these two girls who have
mononucleosis." They made the exception, so they were roommates. Frances
and I got to room together. That's when I got down to second floor, to
room 218. Anne and Betty roomed for all four years. They were best
friends, and Frances and I have remained very, very close friends for
all of our lives, so it just worked out. Living in Spencer was not just
living in a dorm. This was really before the Residential College system,
and yet Spencer had a lot of the flavor of a Residential College because
first of all, it was a relatively small dorm. It was not like some of
the much bigger dorms that the guys lived in like Eringhaus, these
super-huge, impersonal places where people lived. You really could meet
everyone on your hall, and we had meetings regularly. The other really
special thing about Spencer was that we ate all of our meals together,
and so there was this opportunity to meet everyone and talk to them on a
regular basis through the year,
This was a coveted job assignment, I imagine.
It was, and one story that I'll never forget, a group of us were at
breakfast, and we were being waited on by this absolutely adorable
senior. My roommate, Frances, when he finished serving us looked to us
and said, "That's the guy I'm going to marry." And she did. That was
literally the first week of school. She did not even date him for two
years. He was already out of college and came back to the campus. It's
really quite incredible. We all laughed. "Right, Frances. You're going
to marry this guy." She did. She knew it, and she did. I found the girls
in Spencer to be very diverse. There's another one, Karen, who was from
Atlanta, and it was a chance for us to meet girls from different
regions, but also with varied interests, and we were small in number.
Tell me about some of the rules and how she presented the rationale for them, if you could.
Again, keep in mind that we're living in the South at a time when being a
lady and acting like a lady at all times was very important. Your
demeanor, the way you dressed, the way you speak, those were the ways
that people judged you, and not just your female peers, but the guys. We
were still living in a time when guys expected women, also, to act like
ladies, or rather, they might date you if you were wild and lived
daringly, but you weren't going to be asked out more than once or twice.
It was just the norm that being lady-like was accepted. The rules, many
of them, revolved around academics, and they were there to ensure that
we studied, that we took our studies seriously, and that there was a
quiet time and place to study. It was not encouraged, because we were on
a rather large campus, to do a lot of moving around at night, and I
think partly for safety reasons and partly because of the University's
in loco parentis philosophy about women, that
you're better off in your own room, and so we had closed study hours.
Monday through Thursday nights, we had to be in our rooms, and we were
checked, from seven to nine, and we were expected to be studying. There
was no music, no talking, and I don't ever remember breaking that
rule.
This was for freshmen. Was it for upper classmen as well?
Yes. I want to say yes because as a sophomore, it's interesting because I
remember as a sophomore leaving my room more. But I have a feeling that
was because you could sign out once a week and go someplace else to
study. There was a church basement next door and there was the library,
and I think, probably, I did that more as a sophomore, but my memory is
that closed study in Spencer Dorm pertained to all women of all ages. We
were primarily freshmen and then sophomores. We were the only freshmen
in the dorm, but there were juniors and seniors in the dorm as well, and
it was quiet wherever you went. We also had closing hours. We had to be
in the dorm with the doors locked at eleven o'clock on weekdays and
twelve or one o'clock on weekends, and maybe for special events, we
could stay out until two. If it was one of the big dances, they'd let us
stay out until two, but that was a big deal. If you were late, if you
were five minutes late, you were penalized, and you would have to then
stay in the next weekend. It never happened to me. I was just one of
these women who lived by the rules, so I never questioned them or
challenged them at that time, but I know girls who ended up having to
stay in on Saturday night because they abused that rule. There was never
ever any question of girls smoking or drinking in the dorm. It never
even occurred to us, I don't think, that that might happen, or that you
would even do that without people seeing you. It just didn't happen.
There
Did Dean Carmichael say that?
Yes, oh absolutely. I remember Dean Carmichael having teas in her apartment, and I don't know how many women were invited to these teas, though, because starting as a freshman, I was very involved in Student Government, and I don't know whether it was just the women who were active on campus or whether she did this for all women. I do remember on several occasions sitting in her living room, which was filled with antiques and all kinds of interesting momentos and talking about the proper attitude and behavior for women on campus. I don't remember much discussion about disagreement on that. I think what she was saying was something that we all valued. Again, as a freshman and a sophomore, there were other rules that didn't make much sense to me, partly because I didn't see how they could be enforced. Those were things like you couldn't be in a room with a guy, an apartment. The guys were allowed to live in apartments, and you weren't allowed to be in an apartment, even in the living room of a guy's apartment, unless two other couples were present. That always struck me as kind of funny because how in the world would anybody know, but again, I think most of the women just sort of accepted that that was for your own protection, that that was not a moral issue as much as it was just a safety issue.
Of course, as far as enforcement goes, there was the Honor Code. You were supposed to report yourself or other people that you knew had broken those rules.
That's absolutely correct, and I think the way that girls were actually turned in was more, the factor was that they would end up being late. They wouldn't get back to the dorm on time, and they'd be locked out, and some girls would end up spending the night out of the dorm, and then, of course, you had to go before the Honor Council, and there was a good chance that you would be suspended from school. I was on the Honor Council my sophomore and junior years, and I started to become disturbed at the numbers of girls that we were bound by certain rules, and if girls stayed out all night, it was not a question of judgement. Once you made the judgement that that in fact happened and she was found guilty, you didn't have a lot of leeway in terms of the penalty. The penalty was, the only leeway was whether it was a semester or a year suspension from school. That started to disturb me because her date faced no penalty whatsoever, and that just didn't seem to make sense. Of course, we were not allowed to wear slacks my freshmen year on campus at all. We could not wear jeans without wearing a raincoat over those jeans. In terms of going to classes, the proper attire included skirts and dresses and then the wonderful football weekends when everybody would get dressed up. That was quite common. It's very different from what you might see today on campus.
Yes, very different. Back a moment to the dormitory itself. You mentioned that one of the ways you got to know everybody in the dorm was house meetings. Were those required? Compulsory?
Yes, they were. We had them on a regular basis, and we had them by floor.
Then sometimes we'd have them with everybody downstairs. But I remember
more intimate ones on the floor where we would meet and talk about what
was going on in the dorm. A lot of the focus was around just dorm living
and working out a system. For example, we had a system, we had one
telephone for the entire—we had wings—and for the second floor new wing
that I was on, there must have been at least twelve if not fifteen
rooms, so we're talking about between twenty-four and thirty girls in a
wing. We shared one telephone, and when you received a phone call, you
were then obligated to pick up and answer the next phone call.
Dean Carmichael had mentioned, had begun complaining as early as 1963 that there was a breakdown in respect for the rules. The Women's Residence Council had begun to say that they did not want to enforce some of these rules, particularly the apartment rule was one they raised, but you don't sound like you're sensing much of this when you came in the fall of '64.
I came in the fall of '64, and again, this may have been coming from the
upper class women, who were older. They were juniors and seniors coming
from other schools, and I don't know whether the women who were
transferring were experiencing a different attitude in the schools they
came from. I expect that they might have, some of them. We were
seventeen and eighteen
But as freshmen, you were not thinking about this, you were not questioning it?
Our goals were to do well academically, to make friends, to become
adjusted, and I have to say, in all honesty, many of the rules helped
the adjustment, particularly the ones that ensured that the dorm was a
quiet, peaceful place to live and work. As I visit dormitory and
residential situations today, I'm struck by the litter, by the noise, by
the lack of privacy in coed living that we, of course, did not face. We
didn't have those as issues. I remember one of the things that happened
sophomore year was that we were now eligible to go through
Rush.
It was prestigious.
It was. The sororities, they were quite nice. You could have your meals there, and I knew that I wasn't probably going to stay at Spencer Dorm all four years, which really was the ideal sorority. It was a larger mix and a more diverse mix of girls, and it had all the wonderful qualities that a sorority would have plus. But most juniors and seniors did not live in Spencer; they lived in the other dorms. Faced with that for the future, I thought, "Well, for a living situation, I might like a more intimate situation." There were older girls that I had met that I really admired and liked, so I joined my friends, and we all went through Rush. I remember Dean Carmichael saying to me quite early in that whole process, "You really ought to look at Kappa Kappa Gamma." I said, "Well, Dean Carmichael, I'm going to look at all the sororities. I haven't made up my mind." She kept saying over and over, "But Sharon, you really you ought to look at Kappa Kappa Gamma." That's all she would say to me, and I started meeting the girls from the different sororities, and I didn't know.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
I didn't know girls from Kappa Kappa Gamma, but I did know some from ADPi
and Tri Delt and that was where I really thought I would be more
comfortable. There was a policy where you went to Graham Memorial, and
we all went, and you would receive an envelope. On the third night, you
would write down the three sororities you wanted to be asked back to,
and if those sororities wanted to have you come back, they would extend
an invitation back to you. You knew if you got through that round, which
was not the last round, but the second to the last round, that you would
be guaranteed of getting in at least one of the three, and everyone,
everyone, would get through that round. It was just not something,
everybody would get into one sorority or another, it just may not be
their first choice, but at least you're going to get into your third
choice. I will never forget, it was probably something that changed my
life in more ways than one, the experience of going with my friends to
Graham Memorial and receiving our envelopes with the invitations and
receiving an empty envelope. I knew as soon as it was handed to me that
it had nothing in it, and as I walked through the line past Kitty
Carmichael, she was ashen, and she looked at me and said, "I told you to
look at Kappa Kappa Gamma." What I learned later was that—I'm Jewish—and
that the sororities, at that particular time, were not inducting Jewish
girls, except for Kappa Kappa Gamma. They were the only sorority that
had alumni who had given permission for Jewish girls to be in the
sorority, and I had two strikes against me. I was not only Jewish, I had
These sorts of things would come out during your meetings when you went to get to know these girls. These things would become known.
Yes, that's right. Well, the girls who had made the recommendations for their sororities and had recommended that I be in the sorority were told by the alumni, by their parents, that they absolutely could not consider me. It was just not acceptable, and they had veto power, so I learned this later and, of course, realized later what Kitty Carmichael was trying to tell me. It was fortunate for me that I had started going out, just that fall, with a young man who is now my husband, and he was waiting for me after we had found out where we were going to be asked back. He said, "Well, who are the lucky sororities?" And I said, "None of them because I didn't get asked back." I just felt mortified and embarrassed, and he said "That's their loss. Let's go to lunch." And that was sort of the end of that. He just had this way of saying, "Too bad for them."
That's why you married him?
Yes, one of the reasons. Of course, what that did for me is give me the time and the interest to continue to live in the dormitories, rather than move away from that into a sorority, and to devote my time and energy to the majority of women who were not in sororities, and pay more attention to their needs—and our needs—and our living situation within the dorm.
Let me ask you, had you encountered, previously, before coming to Chapel Hill, anti-semitism in any overt way? Was this something that was totally unexpected?
We were living in Charlotte. We had applied to join the country club, the Myers Park Country Club, which was a few blocks from our house, and were denied an invitation because we were Jewish, and we discovered that Jews were not allowed, and so we had to go across town to the Jewish country club. So certainly, on that level, it was a less personal level, I was younger, but I was aware that, it was not a shock that Jews were not allowed into certain places. I knew, from a very early age, that not only were Jews not allowed, but even more so, blacks were not allowed into restaurants, into bus stations, and it was something I grew up with and always abhorred, but discrimination was a way of life in the South.
Chapel Hill, just prior to your arrival, had gone through about a year and a half of major Civil Rights demonstrations.
Yes, I remember quite well my friend, Mary King, had been involved with Girls State, and she had met some lovely girls who were black from the all-black high school, and she'd remained friends with them, and she had invited them to come to Chapel Hill and spend a weekend. When she did, the shock that she received, so many of the girls in our dorm just really didn't know what to do with it, and one of the girls stayed in our room and one stayed in Mary's room, but she had a hard time convincing the girls in our dorm that this was O.K.
I'm not surprised. That would have been quite something at that time. Clearly you were able to go on and play a significant role in campus life without being a member of a sorority, but generally, how important was it to be a member of a sorority or a fraternity, as far as power and prestige on the campus went?
I think it was probably pretty important for a lot of kids to be, all of us want to be a part of something. I think that's a need that, particularly young people, but even all people have. I felt a part of the University in the larger sense, so for me, not being a part of a smaller piece was O.K. I was very involved in campus life. I had an opportunity to be head of the Toronto Exchange and worked very closely with that group of students for two years. As I said, I was involved with the Honor Council and then became very involved with the Women's Residence Council. I was very active in residential life. It's amazing to me the size of our campus and how close we were able to get to the professors, and they were, for the most part, really interested in students, and they would invite us to their homes and we would have discussions focusing on campus life as well as on some of the academic subjects that they taught.
Can you give me some specific examples of specific professors?
I remember Peter Walker and Sam Hill were two that really reached out,
and Barry Hounshell, who's still in the School of Education, as someone
who I became very close to, and
Remarkable.
Yes. So we were really very involved, so when you talk about fraternities and sororities, yes, I think there was an identity. I think for kids who depended a lot on partying, and certainly then, as today, that can become a major preoccupation, I don't know where they would party if they didn't have the fraternities and sororities because that's where, but if you were not in a sorority, you still could go to those parties. It was not something you were kept from if you met guys, which was fairly easy to do with the ratio the way it was. It was easy to be involved in that. The drinking, I remember, before I went to Chapel Hill, one of the things I was told is that "You're going to a big drinking school." Of course, this is something that Dean Carmichael spoke to her women about very early, really, to watch out for that, and I think there were quite a few of us who just were not as interested in becoming big drinkers and that whole party atmosphere and were just as comfortable going out to dinner in the evening and having a quieter time to be together. Football weekends were great because everybody would go to the games, and there was this wonderful sense of school spirit and camaraderie, and the same for basketball games. Those were just extraordinary events. Then there were things like, I'm going to forget what it's called, but I remember who came. I remember we had Petula Clark. Now what in the world was that spring fling called? Do you remember the name of it?
No.
It was a special event every spring, and we would have big name singers and entertainers, and it was wall to wall kids on blankets and picnics. It was all day and evening, and it was one of these things that brought the whole campus together, and there were always things like that. I think even without being involved in a fraternity or sorority that kids could feel a part of something special. Certainly back then that was true.
There were many things that brought them together, the whole campus.
That's right, and speakers—we had the Carolina Political Union that used
to sponsor speakers. I'll never forget when Teddy Kennedy came to speak,
and those things were happening all the time. We had a very active
Student party and University party. There was tremendous, heavy
competition between the two-party system in our school. I don't know
many campuses that have such an active system. There was a lot of
competing, running for President and Vice-President of the school and of
the grade. in loco
parentis, and he really stirred many of us to think about those
issues. Dean Carmichael later said that she blames Bob for my
radicalism, and I have to laugh thinking of me as a radical,
You've been such a good little girl.
I had been such a good little girl, and I had really supported all the rules that the University had sponsored on our behalf, and then to change so dramatically from that to what happened as a senior really shook her up I think. We can talk about that in a minute. I want to share an incident that's probably been written up somewhere. Certainly, if you go back and look at the newspapers, it filled the newspapers for an entire semester, and that was something that occurred the fall of my sophomore, so that would be 1965. Is that right?
Yes.
The fall of '65. As I said, we had all these rules for women. The summer
before the fall of my sophomore year, the President of the student body
and a student who was, I believe, at Women's College, UNC-Greensboro,
had stayed out all night. She was in summer school at Chapel Hill, and
they were at his fraternity and just fell asleep, and she never got back
to the dorm. She had to go before judiciary, before the Honor Council,
and she was suspended from school. Of course, as I said before, nothing
ever happened to guys because there were no rules for them. I heard
about it when I got back to the campus in the fall, and I was in the
Student Legislature at the time, and again, there was something that was
stirring inside of me about what would make this happen. Here was the
President of our student body breaking a rule for women but not breaking
a rule
Party politics.
Exactly. At that point, once the University Party got involved in it, Paul, in retaliation, he was in charge of selecting the person who would look at the recall petition list, and we had more than enough signatures, people who had signed for this recall, but because the person that he had appointed was worried that Paul would not be re-elected, what they did was disqualify enough names, either by saying they couldn't read the names or I don't know what else they used, but they said there were not enough names on the petition and so the petition was denied. At that point, rather than press further, I felt that it had really turned much more into a political issue, which I was not at all interested in, so I just pulled out of it. But it took a while for members of his fraternity to forgive me for initiating that. I want to tell you, I was what, eighteen or nineteen years old? The media, not just on the campus, but I was getting phone calls from television stations, radio stations coming to the campus to interview me. It scared me to death. I thought, "What in the world is going on?" It was just quite a media event.
Why was there such interest? What did they see in this incident that made it newsworthy off campus?
I'm not sure I could have told you or understood then what I understand now, but I think the primary interest for them was beginning to address the issue of differences in the way the University treated men and women. I think that was much more of an interest, and I think a more appropriate one than the in-house fighting that went on between the University Party and the Student Party. They could care less. But it was the beginning of questioning, for me, about that whole issue of fairness and realizing that women could be and are as responsible, if not more so, than the guys on the campus and that we ought to be treated in the same way.
Were you talking to the administration, to Lyle Sitterson who was Chancellor at the time, about this? Did you have dealings with them or was this strictly a student issue?
During the recall petition, I don't remember talking to the
administration, but when I became Chairman of the Women's Residence
Council as a senior, my platform and the reason I believe I was elected
was that I told the women on the campus that I wanted to take a second
look at the kinds of rules we were living under and that my promise to
them was not to change them. I never said that. I said, "I want to study
them. I want to understand why we have them and whether we need them and
what else is going on out there." We were pretty isolated. What were
other campuses doing, both all-women and coed campuses? That was my
promise and when I started as a senior, I remember, again, I
Yes. You know, you don't want to get the women excited. So I did, boy.
What I did was I formed ten committees to study each major section of
our handbook, the Women's Handbook, that looked at the closed study
issues, that looked at the dress issues, that looked at the issues about
dating guys and
I believe there were at least one or two women. Adelaide Holderness, I know, was on there for a long time.
I think it must have been the women members, and I remember we hosted
this tea for more than one or two, so it may have included another group
of women, but I do remember our
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
This is tape two of the interview with Sharon Rose Powell, June 20, 1989. Continue then.
We also made recommendations that the dress code be changed to simply have no dress code, just as the guys on the campus had no dress code. Any rule that could not be enforced we removed. In our recommendations, we asked that they no longer be there. We used to even have silly rules like you couldn't kiss for more than five seconds when you said good night to your date at the door of the dorm. Can you believe it? That was a rule, and if you broke it, then you might get punished. There were some funny ones like that. They were not in the handbook. Those were more the dorm codes that were discussed at the house meetings that we used to have.
So at the house meetings, the individual dormitories could add on and elaborate these things.
Oh yes, and they did, absolutely.
Why?
Why would they? Well, you see, you start with the premise that it's an
in loco parentis situation, so then you even have
the girls getting into this whole way of thinking about themselves and
creating a system that's probably even harsher than the one that the
University might put on them. Again, it was "What is proper?" There was
a lot of discussion about having the respect of the men on the campus
and what is proper, and so you wanted to create a climate that
encouraged that. So sometimes you'd add rules on top of rules, and it
kept our Honor
That was definitely one of the early concerns, when women were first being admitted, when Spencer Hall was being built. Would the admission of women mean that men would come under all sorts of restrictions? It's one of the reasons men were not enthusiastic about coeducation for fear that they would be restricted in some ways.
Yes, that they would also be.
Of course, it did not happen.
It did not happen. Basically, we turned what was a rather thick handbook into, I think, when we finished, there might have four or five pages left to it, and those were guidelines that just clarified for women what living situations they might choose and that kind of thing. We also looked into the idea of open dorms. There was a system with a key where everyone in the dorm would get a key, and you could come and go as you pleased.
This was something you discovered other campuses had, Michigan?
We discovered, yes, Michigan and some of the northern campuses were already, for years they had been using this system, and we discovered that it had worked quite well. We were recommending this kind of system. It did not take place my year, upon graduating, but I know that within a year or two after I left that they did move to a system, and not only that, but they did move to a coeducational system where then the boundaries really broke down. There were guys and girls living, I believe, on the same hall and certainly in the same dorm. It may have been alternate halls, but today, I'm pretty sure, I think I've walked through the residence halls and seen guys and girls on the same floor.
It usually, perhaps, separate wings or more, perhaps, alternate floors.
Yes, separate wings, because of the bathroom situation.
But no restrictions as to passing back and forth between the sexes.
Oh no, and you could go in each other's rooms and all those things that, of course, were unheard of when we were there. What happened, and we were feeling so good about ourselves making the recommendations very thoughtfully, using the democratic procedure, and then handed all of these recommendations to Dean Carmichael, and she vetoed the lot of them. [Snap] Just like that. She said it was unacceptable.
Did she sit down and talk to you about this or was it just
Yes, absolutely. She was an eloquent, she had quite a presence about her,
and she wouldn't talk with you. She would lecture. She had this voice
that carried, and I used to love to listen to her talk, but it was very
clear. I remember sitting in that room, and I believe Daryl Walker was
there and a couple of the other Assistant Dean of Women and some of the
women that worked with me, and she sat and explained to us why this just
wouldn't work. She appreciated all the hard work we had put into this,
but it just was not the right time for all of these changes to occur. I
remember leaving that meeting, and I felt that she was really
undermining the whole process that we had gone through, knowing full
well while we went through it that we were going to be recommending some
pretty significant changes and that it had been a farce. I'm talking
about a campus where I had experienced students being given a tremendous
amount of responsibility, and even when adults didn't agree with us, we
had the authority to make those changes and live with them. So I felt
terribly undermined, and I asked Dean Carmichael what recourse I had,
and she said, "Well, the only one who can change my veto is Chancellor
Sitterson." So I told her that I was going to be meeting with Chancellor
Sitterson. She said, "Well, you just go right ahead." I made an
appointment, and I had the ten women who were the heads of the
committees join me, and we sat in his office, and Chancellor Sitterson
was then and still is one of these very fatherly, very kind, open, warm,
easy-to-talk to
You wrote a letter back to the Daily Tar Heel to that
effect. Do you remember that at all?
No, I don't remember. What did I say?
You said something to the effect that you'd spent four years at Chapel Hill and had been denied the opportunity to learn to be independent, to take responsibility for yourself and that at Berkeley, the women students had this, and it hadn't seemed to do them any harm. They hadn't had nervous breakdowns or got pregnant or anything else. They seemed to be able to cope with this responsibility quite nicely and that you were denied at Chapel Hill the opportunity for that growth experience that should be a part of college life.
That's so interesting. I had forgotten that I had written that letter,
but it is coming back to me. I was so concerned after I left that the
class following wouldn't understand and that the teachers and
administrators that I'd worked with would resist the change. It was so
wonderful to live in an environment where men and women were treated the
same and had the same opportunities. It did, it worked beautifully, but
I had forgotten that I had written that back to the school.
The phone answering system's breaking down. Let me go back and fill in
just a couple of questions I had on this.
I have an answering machine that will pick that up.
These forums that you held when you were reviewing the rules and you said
a lot of women, hundreds of women, came to
It was basically for women. I don't remember any of the guys even invited to come, and the only women, Dean Carmichael and her staff, were there, always, always invited and always came with interest. They were exciting forums. I remember girls getting up in the auditorium and speaking on, I wanted to know, what are the advantages of closed study? What are the disadvantages? I wanted to hear them. I wanted to know what worked and what didn't. I wasn't interested in just throwing out every rule just because it was a rule. If it served a purpose, then it made sense to keep it, but if we could achieve the goals behind the rules—and there were some very good reasons for having the rules in terms of the goals and the climate that the school wanted to ensure for its women and for its students. The issue became one of discrimination, and the issue more importantly became one of whether this University should take the place of our parents at that age in our lives. That was even, probably, a more important issue than whether we were being discriminated against because men didn't have these rules, and I think the conclusion was that it was not the place of the University to be our parents and that couldn't be and didn't need to be, and they really could let go of that responsibility and feel O.K. and not feel as if they were somehow letting us down.
Subsequent to your graduation, a whole series of
faculty/administration/student committees were set up to work out these
rule changes one after another. One of
We were aware of that as an issue, but I have to tell you, in the mid-60's, the notion of security was not a pressing issue. We felt safe on that campus. There had been one rape in the arboretum, and that really frightened everyone, and I don't think
There was, in fact, a girl who was murdered in the arboretum.
I was just going to say, it was not just a rape. It was a murder.
Sue Ellen Evans in 1965.
That's right. That's right. That was very frightening and tragic, but it was something that was so unusual, it was just not something that happened or was thought about.
There was no pattern of women being harassed or no sense that you might be assaulted or anything of that nature?
Never. Absolutely not. The notion of my walking through the campus alone
at night was just never ever an issue, and it might have been for the
adults, as I say, but for the women, it just was not a concern. We
certainly, when we looked at the options and the idea of keys and losing
keys, and there were all kinds of ways to ensure, by having security
guards letting you into the dorms rather than worrying about keys.
And the appearance of morality.
Exactly, and I think, in fact, that was the case. I would love to hear what the administration and the teaching faculty would say about that now, about their reasons for wanting this protective stance on behalf of women, but I know, from discussions that we had, that the big issue was morality, was not fooling around. Don't get pregnant.
If you got pregnant, you had to leave school.
Oh yes, that's right, and that was the great fear. I don't remember having a vandalism problem or a theft problem when we were in school at all. I'm sure there were isolated incidents of it. We started to address the issue of drugs. This was one of the wonderful things about the University is that whenever there was a problem, we always formed faculty-student committees. All the committees had students on them, every single one, and I remember being on one of the committees that looked at drugs. I had not, at that point, ever seen drugs on campus, knew anybody who used drugs.
Not even marijuana?
Not even marijuana, and that's 1968, and I went to parties. I did a lot
of things socially. I never ever saw it or heard of one person using it,
and the reason I know that is
And students did turn to them?
All the time.
They were considered, it was recognized that they were helpful? They weren't there just to keep an eye on you or anything like that?
That's right.
One other fill-in question I had, back when you were beginning to
initiate this review of the rules, somewhere in Dean Carmichael's
papers, I found a memo to the effect that her perception of this review
was that it was partly in response to pressure from male students, and
there are a couple of mentions I
Sandra Burden was, and I was not close to her personally, but I remember her as a very bright, vocal, what we might have called a feminist back in those days, and that's interesting. Kitty really didn't like women who were outspoken, and I don't think she'd ever consider me a radical because I was too respectful of the rules, as I said. I came from a background where I never believed in breaking the rules. I think Sandra would break the rules, so she wasn't just somebody challenging them or challenging the process, but my sense was that she might have gone a step further and really challenged them. I don't remember her being that active. I don't think she was that active in the process of actually making rule changes, just being a very outspoken young woman on the campus. I think Dean Carmichael's perception about the men being behind all this is accurate.
She wasn't simply speaking of Bob?
Oh, she may have had Bob Powell in mind because I know, but it wasn't
just Bob Powell. There were other guys as well, and they really were,
their motives were not to change women's rules so that guys could get
away with more in relation to women. Their concerns were really quite
pure in the sense of believing that women were, and they probably were
the minority,
This was a time with the Civil Rights movement, with student uprisings in general, when young people were demanding more autonomy, more responsibility, and at least some of them were including women in this.
That's right, and I have to say that it was my good fortune to marry one
of the guys who believed in this. Bob has continued to support me in
every way he can to be everything I can be. Everything from coming home
early from work so I could go to graduate school for ten years. It
wasn't just a verbal support. He backed it; he always has backed it by
being home to take care of the children when they were little so I could
go to graduate school, doing the grocery shopping from year one because
it was not something I particularly liked to do, really sharing in all
the household responsibilities. So I married a feminist. You think,
"Great!" I wish I could tell Dean Carmichael that today. I think today
that she might look at it a little differently than she did. I think she
was very frightened about, she was fearful that the changes in rules
meant anarchy. It just meant total chaos and confusion and lack of
structure and lack of commitment. Listen, she had good reasons to be
fearful. We were then and still are in a situation in our society where
kids and adults are always looking for an easy way out. They're
searching for ways to get high and be happy that don't look inward but
I think that's the quality I've begun to see in the women's colleges that I've been studying that I do think, certainly, my college experience lacked.
There are no rules. There are no rituals. It's the rituals; we had the
rituals. We had Sunday dinner where Professor Reckford, Kenneth
Reckford, who is just one of the most beloved professors, a Classics
professor, used to come with his family and have lunch with us on a
Sunday and talk to us. We would invite our favorite professors to come
and eat with us, and we'd sit together out in the garden after Sunday
dinners, and we were always dressed up for Sunday lunch. That was a
ritual. Those dorm meetings where we congregated in the lobby, and
somebody would play the piano or we'd sing songs. Those were rituals;
those were special times. Even coming in all at the
I think that's a real good point.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
A complete change of topic, back to Dean Carmichael. There are a lot of stories about Dean Carmichael, stories about her rigidity, in some cases. One I've heard is that if you violated the dress code, you were liable to be hauled back to her office by your ear.
That's true.
That never happened to you, of course.
It never happened to me because I loved the dress code. I always loved
dressing up. I have since I was a little girl,
Could you describe her physically?
Very fair skin, and I remember her having lots and lots of wrinkles, and
vibrant eyes, laughing eyes. She was slightly plump, but always
well-groomed, exquisitely groomed, and held her head high. I remember
her having grey hair, and I don't know whether she really did, but it
seemed grey to me at the time, and as I said, she seemed very matronly
and old. I was sure she was past retirement, and I know she couldn't
have been because she continued to be the Dean of Women for many, many
years after I left, but she just gave that matronly appearance. I don't
remember Dean Carmichael smiling very often. She was very intense and
could be intimidating, but spoke eloquently. I
Daryl Walker was
Daryl Walker was the Assistant to Dean Carmichael that I remember.
How about Sue Ross? Was she there when you were?
She might have been, but the name is not someone that, do you have any other names besides that? I know there was someone else besides Daryl, before Daryl.
Those are the two I remember off the top of my head.
Daryl's the one that really stuck out