Early Years and Growing Pains
While those running the program imagined an opening season running smoothly due to their extensive planning and discussion with leaders in industry, they could not predict the actions of the students when they arrived at Bryn Mawr, On the initial tour through campus, the newly-arrived workers hesitated as they were guided under Rockefeller Arch, named after the business magnate who had donated a not insignificant amount of money to both the College and to the Summer School. Was the education that they were to receive one mired in propaganda from the wealthiest people in the world? Could an education funded by the very people that created the working conditions that industrial workers suffered in truly help enrich their lives? Furthermore, students living in the dorms found out to their horror about the working conditions of the housekeepers, waitresses, and cooks that were employed by the college to help run the Summer School, with long hours in the sweltering summer heat. How could the School provide a world-class education for industrial workers if it relied on the abuse of labor itself?
Coalitions of students were swiftly formed, and many found their experiences negotiating in the workplace as helpful skills as they confronted professors and administrators on exactly what would go into their education and their expectations for the program. Care was taken by these newly formed student liaison committees to make sure their voices were heard, and to ensure that as adults, their education would be one of a give and take. The women workers attending the Summer School would not let their institution become complicit in the same issues that they faced in the workplace, not after risking so much to be able to attend. Student committees resembling the traditional terms’ Student Government Association became a mainstay of the Summer School until its closure.
Atop ensuring the unbiased nature of their education, the students also lobbied for the rights of the predominantly Black housekeeping staff, reducing the length of shifts to a manageable workday and ensuring that the maids would not have to sleep in attic rooms that were unlivable in the summer heat. The students of the Summer School were dedicated to ensuring that their education would in no way be a perpetuation of the systems that they themselves had suffered in. These students were willing to risk the education they had sacrificed so much to receive in order to make sure it was provided on their terms; a revolutionary program in support of transforming the labor landscape could not be enacted while remaining complicit in the systems that made it necessary. Ultimately, the efforts of the Summer School students were successful in getting their demands addressed and defining the terms of their academic experience.
Over the coming weeks, months, and years of the program, many educators would remark on the ways in which they had not realized the serious class divides between the winter-term students and the students at the Summer School. In the early years of the college and especially during the height of the Great Depression, tutors noted students keeping family members in their dorm rooms with them, not having anywhere else for them to live during the economic downturn. The School administration made an effort to provide what housing they could to displaced families, and offered what extra food they could afford on the College’s budget. In both Smith's autobiography and in interviews from faculty, educators remarked on how they were surprised again and again by the divides between traditional college students and those that attended the Summer School.
Under the purview of Hilda Smith as director, the Summer School attempted to meet student needs and concerns as they arose, addressing issues in housing, in curriculum, and in conflict among students. The Summer School was no longer a monolithic philanthropic endeavor to help underprivileged women. It instead became a site of exchange and discussion, where the students’ voices could be heard and incorporated into their own education.