For Roses, Too

Conclusion

    The founders of the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry set out to create the program as an experiment that had never been undertaken before. How could Bryn Mawr serve students that otherwise would never set foot on campus? How could the College’s resources support efforts to educate industrial workers? What would it mean for women working in factories to experience eight weeks of residential education? In attempting to answer these questions, the School left an impact not only on the movement as a whole, but also on every passionate student that passed under Pembroke Arch during the program’s seventeen seasons. Year after year, the School adapted to changing current events by answering the hard questions brought up by the community. No two summer sessions were the same, as professors centered discussions on individual student experience, current events, and applicable material as teaching tools.

    No one can deny that values imagined at the School’s founding evolved exponentially over the next two decades. To say that the Summer School was simply a way to educate women workers in industry is an understatement. Educators at the Bryn Mawr Summer School provided an experience that not only prepared students for their work in their field, but also instilled a sense of purpose and confidence that was unmatched. Students rose up as leaders in their industries with a renewed sense of self, but also were able to hold tightly to the memories and bonds they formed during their time on campus. Teachings centered on lived experience and informed viewpoints shaped the careers of those who passed through the program, redefining for them what schooling could be. Education no longer meant an unsurpassable barrier of entry to institutions like Bryn Mawr, but instead became an accessible and driving force, creating a space where students of any background were welcome to share what they were passionate about. 

    Ultimately, the School’s ever-shifting nature led to the end of its time on Bryn Mawr’s campus. Alongside concerns of funding during the Great Depression, the College’s administration was growing increasingly anxious over the ways in which political unrest and divisive viewpoints were making themselves known during the School’s sessions. While the School was a haven for free thinking and debate among groups in the labor movement, concerns of a communist or socialist agenda being spread by the instructors could not be avoided. Compelled by negative publicity and threats of pulled funding, the College deemed it in the best interest to disassociate the Summer School from Bryn Mawr College’s public image. Taking up residence at the site of Hilda Worthington Smith’s family home in New York, the program, now named the Hudson Shore Labor School, ran over the course of the full year rather than only teaching classes during a summer term. While no longer burdened by the need to maintain the image of the institution at which it was housed like at Bryn Mawr, the School still suffered the growing pains of losing the resources that the College provided. 

    No one can deny that, no matter what shape the School took, the students who were welcomed into the program were taking part in an experiment that affected not only their day to day lives, but the fabric of America as a whole. 

    To this day, students at Bryn Mawr still triumphantly sing the iconic refrain “Give us bread, but give us roses, too” in celebration, just as the women of the Bryn Mawr Summer School had sung a century before us. It is vital that we do not forget the meaning it held for the students who sang this—in darkened dorm common rooms after long days of classes, in the greens of campus after hours of stargazing, in classrooms after sharing the horrors and joys that they experienced in their factories—that at Bryn Mawr they strove not just to live on bread and survive day to day, but to thrive, to embrace the roses on campus, too.
 

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