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University Daily Kansan, October 17, 1980
'50s rules stifled even serenades
BY MIKE ROBINSON
By MIKE ROBINSON Staff Reporter
Late one night in 1959, ayoug. woman at the University of Kansas arrived at her residence hall after the hall closed at 11:30 p.m.
The woman, not wanting to awaken her housemother, called at the window to her roommate, who came down and let her in through the fire escape door.
The next day, the housemother found out about the incident. The woman was placed on probation and prohibited from attending any social events in her hall for a week by the Board of Standards, a division of the Associated Women Students, which was run by the dean of women.
**THIS ACCOUNT**, which comes directly from the minutes of a Board of Standards' meeting, shows how the women for women were at KU in the 1980s.
Women at the University faced a myriad of regulations concerning where they could live, and with which they could go and how long they could stay.
According to AWS rules, all women at the University had to live in a sorority, scholarship hall, residence hall or an apartment approved by the dean of
Individual or unsupervised apartments were prohibited for all women stairs
Women were not allowed to visit men's residence halls without a housemother or other chaperone and were restricted to the "public areas" of
ONE WOMAN who was accused of going upstairs in a man's hall—she told the board she was looking for her husband. She was in a criminal probation and restricted to her hall.
with a friend either in or out of town, the permission said she had to have the permission of the housemother and the woman with whom she was staying.
If a University woman wanted to stay
She also had to have a written invitation from the parents of a friend in town, and she had to observe the same that she would if she were on campus.
IF SHE FAILED to follow any of the instructions she could be hauled before the board.
Closing hours, also set by the AWS.
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fluctuated from year to year, though they usually were 11 to 11:30 p.m. weeknights and 12:30 to 1 a.m. weekends.
A woman who was going to be late was supposed to call and notify the
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housemother and then tell her when she arrived.
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There were even regulations there. The serenading of women's balls by men.
According to the rules, the serenaders had to register with the dean of women and had to be acclaimed by either a mother or full-time University employee.
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A survey by AWS showed that several universities and colleges in Texas, Louisiana, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Alabama had similar systems.
school in the country with stringent rules.
Resistance to the system among women does not seem to have been widespread, except for an occasional incident. After a few months and a negative attitude toward the rules
The men had to finish their serenade by 1 a.m., and a women's residence hall could be serenaded no more than three times in one night.
The Board did complain, however, that many halls dealt with their own rule violations, making uniform punishment difficult.
An AWS regulations convention in January 1959 showed that some women favored a lessening in the rules while some wanted even lighter restrictions.
IF EITHER the men's or women's hall violated these rules, they could be suspended from having any social interaction as long as the Board deemed appropriate.
SUGGESTIONS FOR changes included an extension of closing hours, and elimination of both the on-campus living requirement and a rule prohibiting women from wearing jeans outside of residence halls.
But KU was by no means the only
The AWS noted that women on campus wanted a loosening of the regulations—especially the closing of classrooms with expanded open hours the next year.
But it would be some time before women at the University were allowed to live where they wanted without supervision.
By RAY BRECHEISEN Staff Reporter
ON MARCH 8 OF that year, after more than two years of negotiations and efforts to solve civil rights issues at KU and in Lawrence, a group of civil rights activists occupied the office of Chancellor Clarke W. Wescos and the hallway outside his office.
'64 sit-in marked civil rights advent
The activists refused to end the sit-in until their demands were met. Their main concern was what they called the University's tacit appeal for government campus housing. They presented several demands to the chancellor.
Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 partly was designed to end discrimination in job placement, someone attending a faculty or program at the University of Kansas in 1985 would not have seen any black faces.
After Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech during the 1963 march on Washington, the civil rights movement gained con- fidence. In 1972 and Lawrence were affected by the wave of emotion and action
Blacks nationwide then were struggling to make reality out of the legislation of previous years. The laws were intended to control unfair practices in hiring, housing purchase and rental and access to employment. They were wipe out more than two centuries of oppression and hatred overnight.
They wanted Wescoe to order fraternities and sororites to end discrimination. They also wanted the office of housing to eliminate landlords who discriminated against blacks from their listings and they wanted the University Daily Kansas to refuse advertisements from landlords and organizations that rejected blacks.
In 1965, many landlords in Lawrence would not rent rooms or apartments to blacks, and several others accused of racial discrimination.
"It (the sit-in) was fairly well orchestrated and controlled. It was
THE GROUP wanted other changes in University policies, notably for the University to break all ties with discriminating institutions of the Student Council to pass legislation to improve campus race relations.
obvious that there had been some planning beforehand," Laurence Woodruff, who was dean of students at the time, said recently. "There were a few individuals who insisted on getting out of hand, but there were those who did their best to control them."
Both Woodruff and Don Alderson, who was then dean of men, said they
The 1960s
thought the sit-in was instrumental in changing race relations.
"I would say that this rather dramatic way of presenting the problem caused the people (administrators) involved to say 'We have to respond quickly,'" Alderson said.
ABOUT 100 of the students refused to leave the office at the 5 p.m. closing time and were arrested.
The students who were arrested were suspended immediately from the University, and each side accented their undering civil rights improvements.
"Now these young men and women want to stop talking and start acting," Wescoe said, then. "But their actions may well help to back up a wall other men have been working to take down stone by stone."
Wescop and his family were alarmed by the disturbance, and according to Woodruff, Wescop was distracted "by the week's incidents.
But the Civil Rights Council, a campus civil rights group that staged the sit-in, could not agree with Wescoe, and thought that patient negotiations had gotten them nowhere.
THAT NIGHT, the sit-in and the arrests, sympatrizes staged an anti-Wescoe parade that continued down Jayhawk Boulevard and around Lilac Lane in front of the chancellor's home.
Wescoe reinstated the students suspended after the sit-in. On March 10, with promises of cooperation from the council, he announced the formation of a campus Human Relations Committee to investigate charges of racial discrimination and to make recommendations.
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