University Women by Sara Z. MacDonald

Author:Sara Z. MacDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Esther Clark and Lillian Chase in their residence room in 1914, from Bessie Lockhart’s snapshot album of her undergraduate days at Acadia. Lockhart’s photographs reveal how central the residences were to women’s sense of belonging on campus, showing them studying, but also laughing over the “much hated” bloomers for gym, gathering for late-night feeds, and dressing up for theatricals and parties.

Women attending the university were dissatisfied with the poor quality of the residential, social, and athletic space available to them in comparison both to the men and to the students attending the ladies’ college. As the university expanded, the board made the commitment to provide a separate residence for undergraduate women that would be distinct from the Acadia Ladies’ Seminary. In 1909, the College Women’s Residence was opened, nicknamed the Crow’s Nest by the students, with Acadia’s first woman graduate, Clara Belle Marshall Raymond, serving as matron. After her graduation in 1884, Raymond had taught at the seminary; now widowed, she moved with her family into the women’s residence, and her daughter Mary enrolled as a student at Acadia.43 By early 1914, this building had become overcrowded, and the university announced that in future rooms would be reserved for students only in their first and second years.44 The suggestion that seniors would live off campus struck at the heart of the students’ new esprit de corps at the Crow’s Nest. “It will just mean that we will miss half the college life,” Esther Clark, a second-year student, wrote to her father in 1914. “The most of our good times and much of the good we get … comes from being able to get together for a good long chat, able to discuss what is going on, able to share our joys, our experiences of all kinds.”45

After receiving urgent appeals from women students, the Acadia board approved the immediate construction of a larger building with a dining room and space for social activities. The new College Women’s Residence opened late in 1914, with Raymond continuing on as matron.46 “Back to wonderful new residence,” Bessie Lockhart wrote in her photo album, next to her snapshot of the smiling women lined up at the front door.47 From the beginning, the women’s residence became known as Tully Tavern, a nickname bestowed during the first winter by the men students. Among the undergraduates, a “Tully” was the unit of measurement used in their system of evaluation for women – 1,000 Tullies was the highest award possible. With the same aplomb they had shown at the Crow’s Nest, the women students immediately appropriated the name for themselves, making up an irreverent yell:

Tullyphone, Tullygraph, Tully Tavern we

Uniform, Unison, Universal fee

Levity, Laughter, Late Lights and Larks

Let ‘em come, let ‘em go, we’re not here for marks

Yah! Tully Tavern!48

The residence soon was expanded with the addition of a west wing, and in 1926, renamed Whitman Hall.49

Women at Acadia took on greater prominence as the men enlisted for service. The president, George B. Cutten, worried that the war was producing

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