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2.7.08

A student strolls by the initial construction of Jewett house in the early twentieth century.

Sarah Siegel Staff Writer

Since its opening, Jewett House has been home to more than 10,000 Vassarions. In preparation for the celebration of the dorm’s 100th birthday, Jewett House President Chris Smith ’07 asked some alumnae/i to share their stories. What emerged was a remarkable history of Vassar women and men: their concerns, their antics, and their community.

A life of luxury for earliest residents

Jewett opened in 1907 to accommodate a student body that was overwhelming the quad dorms. It was known simply as “North” until 1916, when the College dedicated it to Vassar’s first president, Milo P. Jewett. But the oldest alumna to respond to Smith’s query, Jean Smith Wilmer ’41, attended Vassar in the years preceding World War II. At that time, she said, “We had helpers in white uniforms called ‘White Angels’…We were waited on at meals—can you imagine—our beds were changed weekly, too! However, despite the difference in lifestyle, we worked hard, and certainly received as good an education as today’s students.”

Like the other dorms, Jewett had its own dining room, and the “White Angels” Wilmer referred to were a crucial part of Residential Life until the early 2000s. Elderly women dressed in white, the “Angels” took and gave messages at a front desk, controlled the comings and goings of the dorm, and generally looked after the students.

Getting dirty during wartime

World War II brought some serious revisions to the pre-war life of privilege. “During those wartime years,” said Ellen Zinsser Green ’45, “we got to know the building very well, as we did all the housework, cleaning and waiting on tables in the dining room.” Though some students paid others to do their chores, food rituals and their chores would provide a bonding experience for residents for years to come.

Mid-century conduct codes, small acts of rebellion, and moments that made history

None of Jewett’s mid-century female residents locked their rooms (perhaps because the doors lacked locks). Responding to an informal census which asked whether the College should authorize the wearing of bathrobes or the attendance of boys at breakfast, Jewett women overwhelmingly chose bathrobes. Nancy Wills Keteku ’72 recalled, “We had to shout ‘Man on the floor’ even if he was ugly, as the instruction went. And in our rooms? ‘Open the door, feet on the floor’ was the rule, not enforced that I can remember.”

Dorm dinners were formal affairs in the ’50s and ’60s. Skirts were required, and if a girl had a male visitor without appropriate attire, the young beau had to borrow a dinner jacket and tie from a grungy collection kept in a side room. After dinner, Jewetters would gather in the parlor to sip demitasse coffee and play bridge. “Some people didn’t get their work done because they played so much bridge,” recalled Ellen Van Alstyne Starratt ’55.

Despite the prim codes of dress and conduct, mid-century Jewett residents pioneered ways to break the rules using Jewett’s odd architecture. It was common to climb out of windows and fire escapes to get to the Dutch Cabin to drink a Tom Collins or for a lovers’ rendezvous, and then to persuade a friend to let you back in through a locked side door.

The close-knit girls who ate, played bridge together and helped each other sneak out at night also experienced the important events of the time together. “I remember dinner the night that John F. Kennedy was assassinated,” said Linda Strobel Ericson ’65. “The dining room was full, yet deadly quiet. We were in a collective state of shock.” Others remembered huddling around the TV a few years later, horrified at incumbent President Richard Nixon’s victory over Senator George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election.

Male students transform the nature of the dorm

Coeducation brought a sea of change in Jewett’s dorm culture. Betsy Angevine’s ’72 freshman class was the last to eat in the dorms. She cited refusals to perform dorm duties as one cause for the construction of the All College Dining Center (ACDC). “The guys killed after-dinner coffee time because they stole the demitasse stuff and…the good furniture,” said Angevine.

Rowdiness became a part of the dorm’s atmosphere as Jewett residents began to throw large keg parties. Larry Neilson ’75, recalled that at one party, a student “swung from one of the dining hall chandeliers until it pulled out of the ceiling and dropped her on the floor. They are awful spiky things from the ’50s, you know, so we were horrified thinking she’d been impaled, but no, she bounded up from the floor and continued dancing without missing a beat.” People continued climbing out onto the roof and the fire escape, and ’70s drug culture invaded Jewett with force.

Neilson vividly remembers a group of Jewett residents known as the Quaalude Kings. “They were a bunch of shifty low-life guys…whose drug of choice was ’ludes combined with alcohol,” said Neilson. They incurred such large dorm damage bills that Jewett couldn’t actually sponsor parties.

One of the Quaalude Kings, a neighbor of Neilson’s, supposedly set up a bar in his room where he sold food, beer, and wine. Most of the customers turned up around 1 a.m. when the popular “Pizza Towne” closed, “and he was open ’til the last customer staggered out” Neilson said. The student bartender was never formally reprimanded, but fell so behind with his work that he had to take a semester’s worth of incompletes and stay an extra year.

Many features of present Jewett life are legacies of the ’90s. The coed bathrooms were instated during the 1990-1991 school year, and the Bi-Dormal Formal began in the late ’90s.

While dorm spirit suffered with the opening of ACDC in the 1970s, it was partially regained with the emergence of Internet culture (Jewett was first Internet-ready in 1989). Jewett pride always remained high, even as the building was falling apart. Nick Ciapetta ’01 said that “Jewett was always the best dorm on campus, even in its dumpy, pre-renovation state.” Indeed, some were upset with the renovation—comparing it to going to a childhood home only to find a Marriot in its place.

But Jewett ties are binding. There are some Vassar families with three generations of Jewett residents, and the dorm legacy has served some as a life-saving connection. Keteku wrote that “a couple of decades [after graduation], I was sitting in my office at the American Embassy in Ghana, when in came an American student. He was desperate: He had lost his student I.D., and needed an authoritative letter verifying that he was a student, so that he could get discount airfares or something. He had been bounced around to half a dozen embassy offices and was at the end of his rope. Hmm, how was I going to make sure he was genuine? I started my interrogation:
‘What college do you go to?’—Vassar. (I did my best poker face.)
‘What dorm are you in?’–Jewett.
‘What room are you in?’ (He started looking at me funny.)—312.
‘What's the view from your window?’—Well, it's right over the front door, with a great view down the quad.
‘OK, I'll write the letter for you. I was in 313 Jewett.’