| |
They shaped the things to come
By Kim (Lopas) Sullivan ’95
Three of St. Norbert’s first female students recalled their college experience during this spring’s panel discussion “We Were the Change”
|
| Cathy Jacobs ’56 |
During her days at St. Norbert, Cathy Jacobs ’56 took some
ribbing from classmates about her fashionably late morning arrivals. “I
must say it became a joke if I was on time for the (8:30 a.m.) class,”
she says.
She wasn’t simply oversleeping. As one of the first
female students to enroll after the college opened its doors to women in
1952, Jacobs was not allowed to live on campus. Instead, she often
drove a carpool, picking up four to six female peers en route to that
early class. One or other of the group was always late in being ready.
“Thank
heavens [that professor] was one of the ones that found us refreshing,”
Jacobs says.
Not all the faculty did, she adds. “Some were
passive, some tolerated us and one clearly did not like us.”
|
Jeanne Pischke ’57
|
She
related her story during a spring Killeen Chair Lecture Series panel
discussion entitled “We Were the Change.” Jacobs and fellow panelists Jeanne
Pischke ’57 and Arvilla Rank ’58 spoke of the difficulties
they encountered on an overwhelmingly male campus, as well as the
encouragement they received.
Current female students dominated
the audience. Terra Alvarez ’10, a student panel member, says, “I
perceived that (these three women) did not focus on their presence on
campus as creating radical change or paving the way for women of future
generations, but rather that their individual experiences shaped each of
them in a unique way, allowing them to make a real impact on the world
after graduating.”
|
| Arvilla Rank ’58 |
That they did. Each went on to a successful
career – Jacobs as a teacher, Pischke as a teacher and principal, and
Rank in accounting and as an advocate for the deaf.
But getting
there took courage in the early ’50s, when some questioned the women’s
motives for being on campus. Pischke remembers men saying, “She’s only
here to get her M.R.S. degree.”
Jacobs recalls that some of her
male classmates were upset that once women arrived, the men had to
adhere to a dress code – no more T-shirts in class. “At our 50th class
reunion, one of the males was still complaining about that,” she says.
This
is not to say that all men were against them. Some male students were
fond of having women in their classes and wished only that there were
more of them. Also, Rank found her male professors helpful in overcoming
two barriers as a student – she was a woman and she was deaf. At the
time there were no interpreters and she did not sign, so communication
was limited. She drew the discussion’s biggest laugh in saying, “I was
maybe the only student here who read the textbooks!”
Her
studiousness paid off. During her senior year, she scored the highest of
any student up to that time on a national accounting exam, an
accomplishment mentioned at her graduation.
During the panel
discussion, former St. Norbert athletic director Larry Van Alstine
’57 acknowledged that the women’s achievements went beyond the
academic. His comment struck audience member Anna Czarnik-Neimeyer
’11, who noted:
“He said he had never been able to
understand (the women’s) experiences from their perspectives, and how
after hearing their stories, he recognized what an accomplishment it was
for each of them to attend and graduate as one of the first women on
campus. He stated how proud he was of them, and I agree.”
|
|
|
|
Look here for web-only
content that expands on topics presented in the current 
Your ideas for future magazine
stories are most welcome.