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For Roses, Too

Arrival On Campus

   The fervor and excitement of the first day of students arriving was not a phenomenon limited to the traditional undergraduate school. If anything, the excitement was more tangible as the Summer School students arrived, unsure of what they were facing in the summer ahead. Students took trains and cars from across the entirety of the continental United States, alongside several students who traveled by boat to arrive from Europe. Undergraduate assistants were quick to arrive at the train station to carry trunks and bags, treating the arriving students not as strangers, but as guests. Students were often much less burdened with luggage than their winter-term counterparts, with furniture and decorations already in the dorm rooms, often left behind by winter term students who hoped to make the space as comfortable as possible for the arriving students.

   Upon reaching campus, students were given their room assignments and could meet their roommate. Students were intentionally separated from friends they had made prior to their acceptance to the School, instead usually being housed with girls either in their own industry but from different cities, or vice versa. Union members were always housed with other union members, and non-union members were housed together in the same way. Over the course of the Summer, efforts were made to find a common ground among these groups and others, with a student once concerned about the insularity of the program remarking, “sitting down for breakfast in the Summer School made me realize I am the next door neighbor to the rest of the world.”¹

   Students could not yet settle in however, as they had to take extensive entrance exams and select their courses for the summer. Students were tested on English proficiency, literacy, and their background knowledge of Economics, weighing this information alongside the information provided on their applications to decide in which classes students would be best placed. Students regularly asked to take extra elective courses beyond the one they were allowed, hoping to cram as much education into their time on campus as possible. Soon however, students found that the traditional course load was plenty enough work, and were assured that extra courses could be taken if the student returned for a second summer. Students, placed in small ‘Units’ of approximately 20 women each, learned under 3 professors and undergraduate tutors, and found a home among their cohort, eating their first meals on campus alongside them, and sharing their lived experiences. As opposed to how housing was organized, these Units were divided based on academic proficiency—with the exception of a single unit made up of women who worked as leaders in the labor movement, who received advanced Economics lessons—and this allowed for students to learn alongside those with other points of view, talking and debating with individuals that they would soon learn they held much in common with.

¹ Smith, Women Workers at the Bryn Mawr Summer School, 131.

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Denbigh Hall
Path on the Bryn Mawr College Campus
1923 Bryn Mawr Summer School Application Form This application form was used by recruiters across the country to field applicants for the Summer School program. Admissions committees were interested not only in the academic work that students had completed, but also their labor efforts and relationship to unions or other organized groups. The information from these applications would help to find students who were the best fit for the school, as well as assisting to place them in classes that best suited their needs.