2. The original plan included a “female department,” under the supervision of a lady, where “instruction in the useful branches taught in the best female seminaries” could be obtained; the circular setting forth the plan also says: “The higher classes of the female department will also be permitted to enjoy the privileges of such professorships in the teachers’, collegiate and theological departments as shall best suit their sex and prospective employment.”
3. This “female department” contemplated a separate building, and separate classes in which women should pursue merely academic studies. But this department was never formed, according to the original plan, because at first poverty prevented the erection of a separate school building; and because, in the beginning, there were only high school classes, into which, for economy and convenience, young men and women were together admitted with no thought whatever of their ultimately entering collegiate classes together.
4. In lieu of the anticipated “female department,” a “ladies’ course,” was provided and maintained until 1875. This course demanded no Greek and but two years of Latin, and, according to its present president, required only “a year more time than is devoted to study in the best female seminaries.”
5. Separate classes were organized for ladies in essay-writing until the commencement of the junior year, when they were admitted to the regular college class; their work was still limited to writing and reading, none of the ladies having any practice in speaking.
6. At the present time the “literary course,” under the department of philosophy and arts, takes the place of the former “ladies’ course.”
7. In 1837, four ladies, having prepared themselves to enter the freshman class of the collegiate department, were admitted on their own petition; since then ladies have been received into all the college classes excepting those of the theological department, which has never been open to ladies as regular members, though at one time two ladies “attended all the exercises of this department through a three years’ course, and were entered upon the annual catalogue as resident graduates pursuing the ‘theological course.’” So long as the “ladies’ course” continued, the apparent expectation of the college was that a majority of ladies would take that course. The influence of the college was apparently exerted in that direction, and with such effect that the number of ladies graduating from the “ladies’ course” was, to the number graduating from the “college course,” nearly as five to one.
8. That the present “literary course” in the department of philosophy and arts is practically the same as the original “ladies’ course,” will be seen by comparing the lists of subjects upon which candidates for entrance into each must be examined, and also by considering the scheme of study followed in the “literary course,” as presented in the catalogue, for 1888–89. This view is further sustained by the fact that in 1888–89, 175 ladies and 3 gentlemen were registered in this course.
9. The latest catalogue states that: “Young women in all the departments of study are under the supervision of the principal of the ladies’ department and the care of the ladies’ board. They are required to be in their rooms after eight o’clock in the evening during the spring and summer months, and after half past seven during the fall and winter months.
“Every young woman is required to present, once in two weeks, a written report of her observance and her failure in the observance of the regulations of the department, signed by the matron of the family in which she boards.”
The catalogue in another connection says: “In addition to lectures announced in the course of study, practical lectures on general habits, methods of study, and other important subjects, are delivered once in two weeks to the young women by the principal of the ladies’ department, and to the young men of the preparatory schools (the italics are my own), by the principals of these schools.”