The yearbook documenting the school year that Meryl Streep studied at Dartmouth College features, among other things, plenty of snapshots of frat boys playing with dogs. What’s missing from its 400-some pages are any photos of Streep, any mention of the woman who would go on to become one of the most revered actresses of all time, any evidence at all that she and about 75 other women had spent the year at the all-male school.
That’s just how it was.
“It was a male culture,” said Kathy Duff Rines, who studied at Dartmouth during the 1970-71 school year, the same year as Streep, as part of an exchange program designed to let the school test the co-ed waters as it faced increasing pressure to admit female students. “We were invisible.”
And thus they remained, as far as Dartmouth was concerned, for more than 40 years, until one graduate decided it was time to set things right.
Now embraced by the school, Rines, who lives in Etna, is telling the story of the long-forgotten women. Early Daughters of Dartmouth: Blazing the Trail to Coeducation 1969-1972, produced by Rines and directed by Boston area filmmaker Bill Aydelott, a 1972 Dartmouth graduate, premieres Friday at 4 p.m. in Filene Auditorium, in Moore Hall. Admission is free.
Narrated by Connie Britton, a 1989 Dartmouth graduate and star of several hit TV shows, the 55-minute film features interviews with a few dozen of the women who participated in the exchange program during the four-year runup to the school’s formal acceptance of female students (the first women to matriculate at Dartmouth arrived in Hanover in the fall of 1972), as well as with a few early female faculty and administrators and people who pushed to get the women some overdue recognition.
In the trailer for the film, the women give glowing accounts of their time at the school. But Rines said the filmmakers also tried to capture the tension between the pride and passion the women felt in being at Dartmouth and the chilly and sometimes hostile reception they encountered there.
The exchange program was devised in 1968, as Princeton and Yale prepared to enroll their first co-ed classes and Dartmouth faced pressure to do the same. During its first year it brought in 10 women, primarily to the theater program, which was always in need of female actors to fill roles. About 75 women, mostly from the Seven Sisters schools, came to Hanover for each of the following two years, and their numbers doubled for the 1971-72 school year.
Rines, who grew up in Detroit, came to Dartmouth from Smith College in 1970, in her senior year as an art history major.
She remembers that the competition to get in was stiff. So many women applied that the school conducted double interviews. The student who interviewed alongside her was better dressed and better qualified, but Rines, wearing blue jeans and no make-up, made the cut.
“I think they thought I was a better fit for the rough and tumble atmosphere,” she said.
On campus, Rines simply went about her business, enduring the stares and comments. One day she was walking across the green when a freshman approached her. She thought he was welcoming her to campus, but instead he blurted: “Why are you ruining my school?”
Such incidents were isolated, though, Rines said. Nor did any of the women she spoke with make any claims of sexual aggression or harassment.
In fact, many of the men welcomed the women.
“They were my friends, and they were my colleagues,” said Arthur Fergenson, who was in the first class that accepted women. “In the theater program, we were used to having women around, and it was nice to have these women around.”
Alice Reno Malone, who was in the exchange program for two years and is in the film, even got into a fraternity. She said her reception at the college ranged from warm to frigid.
But regardless of how they were received, after they left, they were promptly forgotten. For more than 40 years, no one made an effort to research or document the era. It was as if it never happened.
Then in 2006, the class of 1969, led by Fergenson, a Maryland lawyer, “adopted” the 10 women who had studied with them, following a Dartmouth tradition that allows classes to extend honorary class memberships to people with whom they have special ties. When subsequent classes didn’t follow suit, he pestered them until they did.
“They were erased from the history of Dartmouth. It galled me,” said Fergenson, who shares his story in the film.
After years of pushing both the alumni and the school to recognize the women, Fergenson got one staff member to advocate for the cause. Finally, in 2015, the classes of 1969-1972 all agreed to adopt any of the exchange women who want to become honorary alumni. Meanwhile, the school assigned a member of the alumni department and some student interns to research the women and add them to its records.
Malone, who lives in Virginia, helped track down many of the women. “I felt it was my job. I felt Dartmouth needed to acknowledge them,” she said. “I had women burst into tears when I called them.”
As the women reconnected, Rines, a retired financial analyst who had moved to Etna following her husband’s death and was doing pro bono work for arts organizations, felt a growing urge to tell their story. She contacted Aydelott, with whom she’d collaborated decades ago while working for the United Way, and he agreed to direct the film.
Streep, who did get some recognition from the school in 1981 when she was awarded an honorary degree, was not available to appear in the film.
To secure funding, Rines reached out to each of the classes that had played reluctant host to the exchange program women. And this time, she wasn’t brushed aside. She raised more than $11,000.
Joan Rachlin, who was featured in the film, said it took a person like Rines to finally reveal an important chapter in Dartmouth’s history. “Without her vision, determination, energy, patience, humor, and deep roots in Hanover, the film would never have been made,” Rachlin, who lives in Massachusetts, wrote in an email.
Making the film has energized the women and allowed them to reclaim a little piece of their past, Rines said. And though the film probes an old wound, the mood is surprisingly good-humored.
“The film is really funny because women tell all these funny anecdotes,” Rines said. “It’s a fun, entertaining film. It’s not this serious historical narrative.”
Early Daughters of Dartmouth will screen in Filene Auditorium on Friday at 4 p.m., as part of Dartmouth College’s Homecoming events. Admission is free and no tickets are needed. The event is open to the public.
What’s scarier than Joker, weirder than The Addams Family and more dramatic than Downton Abbey?
If you answered “my home movies,” you need to get to Dartmouth’s Baker-Berry Library on Oct. 19 for Upper Valley Home Movie Day. The annual event, co-sponsored by several film and arts organizations, gives members of the community a chance to share their movies, particularly those shot in older formats that are now difficult to screen.
From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Baker-Berry Library, home filmmakers can attend a media clinic, where they can view their movies on screen and learn about how best to care for films in different formats. Then, from 4 to 6 p.m., there will be a special archival screening of rare historic home movies preserved by the Dartmouth Library and local amateur film enthusiasts.
To reserve a time to view your movies, contact Rich Fedorchak at 802-785-4118 or rfedorchak50@gmail.com.
Sarah Earle can be reached at searle@vnews.com or 603-727-3268.