Notes for Your First Year:
A Handbook for Women, Fall 1971
Notes for your first year
Sharp notes?
Flat notes?
Natural notes.
Notes scribbled on the back of class schedules.
Notes in the margins of your shopping list.
Notes on the wall of the women's bathroom.
Take notes. Take note.
Notes for your first year.
Your first year in Chapel Hill?
We hope this booklet will help you to begin it
on a good note. In fact, that's what it's all
about.
We've all had our first year in Chapel Hill.
Obviously. Except then we were on our own.
Asking the same questions. Your questions?
Wondering what this place could offer us. You?
Worrying the same first year worries
and muddling through the same first year problems.
Your problems?
Some of our experience is shared here. As a
guidepost. As local background information.
As suggestions, observations, answers and more
questions.
As notes from us to you.
Who are we?
We're women in Chapel Hill, like you, except
we've been here longer. Mapping out the terrain.
Getting together.
Together, we are a women's liberation group.
Women, who are concerned with our own roles, common
experiences, current limitations, alternatives.
and most of all, potential.
Individually, we are students, faculty and
student wives, professional women, mothers,
single women, working women.
We share your face and form, frustrations and fears, fantasies and future.
And we are writing you a note for your first year,
a note that says, "Welcome, sisters.”
A Handbook for Women, Fall 1971
Shuffling through the halls of academe circa 1921
Want to know where you are now? Then look at
where you've been. Turn back your mental clock
for a look at:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1921.
Yes, you are among the handful of women admitted
into the sacred halls of academe. But take a look
at the rules which governed your student life in
this fall of '21:
In class, you must sit in the back of the room, and not speak until spoken to. When class is over you must wait to leave the room after the men. That means last!
Dress? A generous code for women. Anything at all, as long as it is a dress. And you must wear a hat and gloves. Like a “proper lady.”
If you want to go out for a breath of evening air, fine. But make sure you have an escort.
No, your picture won’t appear in the student yearbook. That’s reserved for the men.
But persevere ‘till graduation day comes.
You will get your diploma, but remember your place: graduation exercises are for men only.
A lot of rules to make sure that nobody saw you.
Yes, there were a few women graciously admitted
to UNC 50 years ago. But the rulebook made sure
these were Invisible Women. Certainly not
heard, and preferably not seen.
But now, it’s the fall of ‘71.
Women are one-third of the University.
Discriminatory rules are not blatant, but subtle.
And reinforced by still subtler social norms
About “women’s place” in the University.
We are here, and there are a lot of us.
What makes us invisible now?