The first time I ran up against the obstinacies of authority was in 1968. I was an 18 y/o sophomore at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Mary Washington, at that time, was a woman’s college in the Virginia state college system. The University of Virginia was a male school. Five satellite colleges surrounded UVA, which were only female. All of the state colleges/universities in Virginia were sexually segregated at that time.
Part of the institution of being at a female college meant that the students had to follow a certain prescribed set of rules. Some of these rules were honorable, and I wish they were still in effect in colleges today. However, that necessitates that the rules be written in the heart of the student, which is not an acceptable practice today. One is the Honor Code. Before each exam or paper was turned in, the student would write, “I have neither given nor received any aid on this test/paper”. This code was followed religiously. Professors could distribute a 3-hour exam and then leave the room. If someone was seen cheating, the observer had an obligation to turn the offender in to the honor council. The punishment for the offense could be removal from the school. The students at that time upheld the honor code. I’m not sure when it became a joke to the student population, but today honor codes seldom exist because they aren’t honored. This demonstrates the failure of our society to teach the importance of right and wrong.
Another code we had to live by at Mary Washington was the dress code. We were not allowed to wear shorts on campus unless we were en route to the gym. And then we had to wear a trench coat to cover ourselves. Pants were not allowed in the classroom at all. Winters in Virginia were pretty cold. Often the temperature got down to the single digits. Wind chill made the temperature move to below zero. So in that setting students had to walk all over campus from dormitories to classes wearing skirts. I get cold just thinking about it.
Now I was a child of the 60’s. Even though I didn’t vote for him in our mock election in middle school, I was caught up in the Kennedy mystique. One of the quotes which I had attributed for years to JFK but was actually by George Carlin that I adopted for my life was:
“Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not?
Through most of my life, I have approached problems with this philosophy. All problems can be solved if you think out of the box. So I was an “out of the box” thinker from early life.
I applied this principle to the dress code. At the time I was at Mary Washington, pants suits were fashionable. Pants suits were often more attractive than the common skirt with blouse or sweater. It appeared obvious to me that the dress code forcing us to wear skirts for “appearance” was outdated. It also created discomfort in the winter. I joined a group of young women with a plan to approach the administration with the consideration of changing the dress code to include paints suits. We were not so bold as to try to include jeans in this plan. We considered protesting the dress code by breaking it, but decided that the best route for demonstrating maturity was to use the channels of complaint available to us.
We appeared at a meeting of the administration with our complaint and recommendations. After listening to us, the committee decided to not change the dress code. During the presentation, one of the administrators posed the question:
“If you don’t like it here, why don’t you leave?”
When the decision came down that they were unwilling to consider changing the dress code, I seriously considered that statement. I evaluated my options. My high school boyfriend was at Southwest Texas State College in San Marcos, Texas. I looked at surrounding schools, and was impressed with the University of Texas at Austin. I found out that I could attend UT for less than my cost to go to the in-state school of Mary Washington College. And I still had enough to cover my flight costs to and from Austin for summer and Christmas. So I immediately applied to UT, was accepted for my junior year with all credits transferring, and moved. UT was a co-ed school and you could wear whatever you wanted to class. I also noted that I didn’t have to study as hard for grades at UT as I was having to at Mary Washington. As a pre-med major, my choice of transfer looked even better.
So my first experience with changing established rules was a bust. Or so I thought—for 40 years. In 2008 I received a letter from my sister with a reprinted article. The article was about a book written about Mary Washington College. I don’t know what led my sister to send me that article because I had never shared my Mary Washington experience with her. I can only explain it by spiritual leading. In 2008, as I was pleading guilty to a crime I never committed, I asked God “Why me?” Although He was not willing to spell it all out for me, I took this little window as an explanation from him that my path has been directed all along, leading me to where I am today.
I read the reprinted article with resolution. Although not really interested in a book about the school I left, I wanted to respect the time and effort my sister took to send it to me. As I read, I almost came out of my seat. I read the matter-of-fact line that in the fall of 1968, Mary Washington amended their dress code to allow pants to class.
So, my work in the spring of 1968 did lead to a change in the rules. I just never knew it happened. But my steps, I believe, were spiritually led. If I had stayed at Mary Washington, I would have graduated, probably gone to Medical College of Virginia for medical school, and become a very typical academic type of physician, believing all the standard teaching of conventional medicine. I would probably today, be well to do, secure, well-respected, and probably a firm believer in conventional medicine. So when I saw how close I was to following the standard path, I knew that there was a God-driven reason for the path to where I am today.
