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The 's Long And Rich History

Decent Essays

Traditions have always played a large role in Sweet Briar College’s long and rich history, it’s a part of what makes the college so unique. These traditions do not appear today in the same forms as those in the past. The pressures of external and internal forces have changed them. Some of the most extensive changes have come from strife at Sweet Briar during the Vietnam war and integration of the college. A recent paper written in 2007 but Alaina McKee argues that a change in the nature of traditions happened in the early 1940’s but research I have conducted suggests otherwise.

McCandless argues that even up until the late 1930’s southern women were held to strict standards including restrictions on attire, outings, and even males. She calls this standard the pedestal. After analyzing scores of editions of The Briar Patch from the 1930’s up through the mid 1970’s it is clear that a change was happening; beginning with the mid-to-late 1960’s that moved away from this pedestal she describes. McCandless discusses the importance of traditions in all-women’s colleges in both the North and the South; but also recognizes that southern women’s colleges held onto these ideologies longer than their northern counterparts. May Day is just one example of an important tradition that was held closer to the heart of the women in the south. While northern colleges were making way for new ideas colleges in the south still clung to the ideas of the past. For example, when May Day

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