The Deans' Bible. Angie Klink
psychiatrist Anna Fels wrote of the two emotional engines of ambition: the mastery of chosen skills and the essential recognition of that mastery by others. In The Good Girls Revolt by Lynn Povich, Fels is quoted as saying that women are “subtly discouraged from pursing their goals by a pervasive lack of recognition for their accomplishments.” For centuries, women have feared that seeking recognition will open them up for ridicule about how they live their lives, with attacks on most anything, including their popularity, femininity, and motherhood.
Povich states in her book, “But recognition in all its forms—admiration from peers, mentoring, institutional rewards, and societal approval—is something that makes us better at what we do.” Fels explained that without it, “people get demoralized and ambitions erode.” Thus, on college campuses, women’s honor societies were and are crucial to foster female ambition and success.
Mortar Board was the first national organization honoring senior college women. It began with a chance meeting of two women from separate societies wearing identical pins. In the fall of 1915 on the campus of the University of Chicago, a member of the Ohio State University honor society, called Mortar Board, met a member of the Pi Sigma Chi honor society from Swarthmore College. Both women wore lapel pins in the shape of a mortarboard, the tasseled academic cap with a square, flat top worn at graduation ceremonies. The women remarked of their identical pins and realized each represented a different honor society for women with similar ideals and traditions. The main difference between the two honor societies was the name.
Three years later, a founding meeting for the Mortar Board National College Senior Honor Society took place at Syracuse University. Female representatives at the meeting were from Cornell University, the University of Michigan, the Ohio State University, and Swarthmore College. Representatives from Syracuse University also were in attendance, but this university did not choose to join the national organization when it later became Mortar Board.
Years later, Barbara Cook, who would become a Purdue University dean of students, gave her theory on why Mortar Board came to be: “My guess is that women in the early twentieth century were not taken very seriously as scholars or as leaders. In 1916, women were not yet allowed to vote. So perhaps Mortar Board originated from a feeling of being excluded and isolated as women in higher education.”
Many of the traditions established for Mortar Board were taken from the original Ohio State Chapter, including the name, their initiation rituals, and the pin in the shape of a mortarboard with the insignia of three Greek letters—ΠΣΑ (Pi Sigma Alpha)—meaning service, scholarship, and leadership. Barbara Cook said:
Service as a concept has always been familiar and appropriate to the feminine domain, but surely there was something adventuresome about suggesting to college women in 1916 that scholarship and leadership were achievable qualities for women.
Although the collegiate fashion of the day was that of secret societies bathed in mysticism and meeting by the hoot of an owl at midnight, there is no evidence that Mortar Board was ever intended to be anything but open and available to both public and academic scrutiny.
With Carolyn Shoemaker’s impetus, the thirty-sixth chapter of Mortar Board was chartered at Purdue University in November 1926. Carolyn became an honorary member. That year 631 women were enrolled out of the approximately 3,500 students. A russet suede commemorative scrapbook with leather ties at the binding and a metal Purdue medallion affixed to the center of its cover contains the original handwritten petition for a charter. The mellow gold pages are filled with particulars and photographs about the University. Under the lovely handwritten words “Purdue Facts,” the text eloquently states the mantra of the land-grand institution: “Purdue’s sole cause for existence is service to the people of the state, not only in the training of young people here on the campus, but in the carrying of information out to residents of the state unable to come to the institution for its advantages.”
The scrapbook contains black and white photographs of each “active” and a listing of her activities. Each woman smiles from under her Roaring Twenties hat and drop-waist dress.
The group would provide scholarships to many women who would otherwise be unable to obtain a college education. The money for the scholarships was raised through Mortar Board-sponsored events, such as the “coed bid dance” and the Gingham Gallop held each spring. In subsequent years, each succeeding Purdue dean of women and dean of students would be a member and advisor to Mortar Board.
Today, the national headquarters for Mortar Board is located in Columbus, Ohio, as an affiliate of Ohio State University. In 2014, Mortar Board’s third executive director is Jane Hamblin, a Purdue University graduate who formerly worked in Purdue’s Office of the Dean of Students.
At the encouragement of the men’s athletic booster group, the Gimlet Club, the Purdue Mortar Board organized a junior and senior women’s athletic booster club called the Gold Peppers. Adorning their heads, the Gold Pepper women wore gold felt beanies called “pots.” The Gold Peppers served as Purdue’s pep club. They attended football and basketball games where they sold candy and led the crowds in cheers
In the early years, a newly elected pledge wore a black pot, one gold and one black bobby sock, and a black and gold armband. She carried a cigar box filled with candy and, dangling from a ribbon, a real green pepper gilded in gold leaf. The pledge carried the pepper for days, and often it would rot. After the pledge became a full-fledged active member of the group, she turned her beanie inside out and displayed the celebrated gold side that was decorated with an image of a pepper.
In the stands and on the bleachers the audience was “peppered” with gold pots. After World War II, the women organized veterans’ dances known as “Pepper Shakers.”
In the 1960s, the Gold Peppers celebrated the end of their yearly activities with a “Smarty Party” to honor high-achieving sophomore women and award an annual scholarship to one of those entering graduate school. The Gold Peppers disbanded in the 1970s. Women and society had changed. Wearing a gold pot was outmoded, and by then, the term had taken on a new meaning in the slang prevalent on college campuses.
SARAH ELY WAS A MEMBER of the Community House Association in Lafayette, where Carolyn was active. Sarah married her boss, Thomas Duncan, who founded the Duncan Electrical Manufacturing Company in 1901 in Lafayette. Duncan Electric produced electrical meters that were used in homes and businesses around the world. Thomas Duncan was an inventor and industrialist who held 150 patents. He traveled to Europe and took a safari tour of Africa in 1922. Upon his return, he wanted to entertain his wide circle of friends with his movies and a lecture about his adventures. He engaged the entire first floor of the Community House for his travelogue, but he found it too small. It was then that he decided to make provisions in his will for the creation of “an adequate hall” for the people of Lafayette. When he died in 1929, Duncan left money to the Community House Association to construct a new building where the Victorian house once stood.
A new two-story, redbrick Georgian colonial with stone trim and a slate roof was constructed in 1931. The structure boasted walnut panel walls, marble floors, a balcony overlooking a ballroom, richly decorated meeting rooms, a tearoom, and live-in hostess quarters. As stipulated in Duncan’s will, a board of thirty women was to be elected to manage the facility. The regal building still graces Ferry Street, where citizens hold wedding receptions, piano recitals, quilt shows, concerts, art shows, club meetings, and teas. Duncan provided the money for the hall, but it had been Carolyn who originally energized the idea of a community hall back in 1914 through her speech, “Civic Needs.”
On March 1, 1933, Carolyn was scheduled to speak at Duncan Hall to the educational and social group called the Twentieth Century Club, but she failed to show. Members of the club attempted to locate her, calling her office and her home in Varsity Apartments, located a block from the Purdue Memorial Union. Unable to contact Carolyn, club members became alarmed, for she seldom missed a meeting in which she provided the program reviewing the latest current literature. The club contacted the office of Purdue’s President Edward C. Elliott and spoke with Helen Hand, Elliott’s secretary. Helen checked the University calendar