A Bold Adventure

From its earliest days, TCU has been a place for women to pursue opportunity.

By TCU Magazine

November 8^th, 2023

by Tracy Sterling Bristol

The university’s first official name, AddRan Male and Female College, was a deliberate choice by the founders.

In History of Texas Christian University: A College of the Cattle Frontier, former TCU dean Colby Hall wrote, “The ‘male and female’ expression was a sign of progress, for practically all of the older colleges were for men or women separately. To admit both sexes was a bold adventure.”

Not only was AddRan one of the first coeducational institutions west of the Mississippi River, it was the first in Texas to require the same set of coursework for men and women.

A woman — Ida Van Zandt Jarvis — penned the university’s charter in 1890. That same year, about 14 percent of women in Texas held jobs, 90 percent of them in agriculture, domestic service or teaching. Single women left rural towns for bigger Texas cities, taking jobs as dressmakers, retail clerks and office workers. In 1895, female teachers in Texas outnumbered males for the first time.

In 1891, TCU’s valedictorian and salutatorian were both women.

From the university’s beginning, women have excelled academically, taken leadership positions, competed on sports teams and created their own ways of belonging and enjoying the college experience.

Decades before sororities existed on campus, women formed social clubs in the Jarvis Hall dormitory with names like the Apollonians, the Childress Club and the K.N.C. Club. Amusing cryptic acronyms were popular; the S.I.N.S. were shown laughing around a ukulele-playing coed in the 1910 yearbook. A 1917 Skiff article reported: “The S. I. N. S. spent Wednesday night with ‘Slang’ and ‘Levity’ in room 228, Jarvis Hall. Chief diversions were delving into Truth and a 10-pound box of candy.”

All of this happened before women had the right to vote.

Ida Van Zandt Jarvis penned the university’s charter in 1890. Courtesy of Disciples of Christ Historical Society

Lallah “Cobby” de Stivers was TCU’s first female yell leader. A music educator and staunch supporter of women’s clubs, she spent most of her life working to help other women succeed. 1920 Horned Frog Yearbook

First Wave of Change

During TCU’s first five decades, another important social progression was taking place: women’s suffrage. In the late 1800s, American women organized, marched and petitioned for the right to vote — a bitter fight that raged for decades. Between 1878, when the 19th Amendment was introduced in Congress, and Aug. 18, 1920, when it was ratified, suffragists worked tirelessly for the rights of women.

The fight for equal voting rights took place in homes and on campuses, among partners and peers. The 1912 Horned Frog yearbook featured a student-drawn cartoon of a harried young man pushing a pram, with a second child and a basket of groceries under his arm. The caption: “Possible fate of the senior who marries a Suffragette.”

The TCU administration appeared supportive of women during the 1920s.

“Dr. Cockrell Believes That Women of Texas Want to Vote” stated the subhead of a 1920 Skiff article reminding TCU women to wield their new political power. It quotes the progressive TCU president following the passage of the 19th Amendment:

“There are two organizations in Texas,” he said, “that are saying that the women of Texas do not want the vote, and are trying in this way to discourage the women until the time for paying poll taxes is past. Let us show these organizations that the women of Texas do want the vote, and can use it wisely when they get it.”

One of the women listening to Cockrell in the chapel that day was a gregarious student leader who looked forward to taking part in a changing world.

Lallah “Cobby” de Stivers, class of 1919, of Celina, Texas, was an English major who earned a master’s in 1920. TCU’s first female yell leader, de Stivers also contributed stories and photos to the Horned Frog yearbook, worked as assistant editor of the Skiff and was voted “Best All Around Girl.”

Her master’s thesis, “The Changing Status of Woman and Her Attitude Toward Permanent Interests,” suggests de Stivers was destined for a remarkable life. She became director of music education in the Waco public school system. During World War II, she joined the Women’s Army Corps, working as a regional recruiter until leaving the service as a major in 1955.

A popular speaker at professional women’s clubs, de Stivers later earned a master’s degree in counseling and became supervisor of counseling at the Texas Employment Commission. She retired in 1969 at age 70 but continued donating time and money to women’s clubs and music programs in Central Texas, earning the nickname Musical Godmother from a local paper.

The fact that women’s clubs were dear to de Stivers demonstrates how 20th-century women needed to organize themselves socially to steer changes. In 1940, most Texas public libraries owed their founding to women’s clubs.

Courtesy of TCU Library Special Collections

Midcentury Modernizing

America’s entry into World War II ushered in an era of working women, often in jobs vacated by men fighting overseas. And while many lost their jobs when men returned home, some women were empowered by their new accomplishments and their saved earnings, since there was little to buy during the war. By 1950, 30 percent of the American workforce was female, despite publications like Collier’s and Ladies’ Home Journal calling work outside the home and activism a threat to family life.

Changing societal norms would take time. The 1947 Horned Frog featured a section called “For Men Only,” which highlighted a campus cover girl contest, complete with body measurements and phone numbers of the finalists. The same yearbook showcased campus intramurals in which men swam, boxed and wrestled while the women competed in a bathing beauty contest. A Horned Frog from a few years later featured a high-heeled calendar girl posing in graduation regalia opened to reveal a one-piece swimsuit underneath.

Women studying at TCU in the 1950s were required to wear skirts and dresses on campus. One 1951 graduate remembers wearing blue jeans under a huge skirt to go rollerskating. Women living on campus had to sign out of their residence halls — supervised by a housemother — to go on dates and agree to adhere to a strict curfew that did not apply to their male counterparts.

When the Greek system became official at TCU in 1955, sorority women smiled for yearbook photos wearing identical outfits and matching strings of pearls; conformity was a virtue.

But around the state, things were starting to shift. In 1954, Texas women gained the right to serve on juries, primarily through the efforts of the Texas League of Women Voters. In the years following World War II, Protestant women could become ordained ministers in the Methodist and United Church of Christ denominations. The ordination of women in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) started in the late 1800s.

Vada Felder MDiv ’54 was the first Black woman to earn an advanced degree from TCU through the Brite College of the Bible. The story of how she invited Martin Luther King Jr. to Fort Worth to speak in 1959 — his only visit to Texas — is immortalized on a historical marker downtown.

Felder organized and taught at a Christian leadership school in Fort Worth and held leadership positions on numerous community boards and organizations. A popular speaker, prolific writer and dedicated public servant, she was the first Black woman to be sworn in as a juror in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas and the first Black person to serve on a Tarrant County grand jury.

Felder broke many barriers in the early 1950s, but it would be nearly a decade before Black women would come to TCU as undergraduates.

In 1954, Vada Felder became the first Black woman to earn an advanced degree from TCU.

Hear Them Roar

In 1967, a second wave of feminism grew out of the civil rights and peace movements in America. Aretha Franklin’s hit “Respect” blared from radios. Racial unrest roiled in major cities during what became known as the Long, Hot Summer. And the Summer of Love brought young people to San Francisco as an entire generation cast a more critical eye on existing social norms.

When feminist author Gloria Steinem spoke at TCU in 1971, dorm curfews were still being debated and challenged. Steinem recommended that the university create a women’s studies program. Four years later, the Sociology of Sex Roles course was offered to students. It would be 1994 before TCU’s Women’s Studies was officially a program, evolving to Women & Gender Studies in 2014.

In March 1971, the U.S. Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment, granting legal equality and prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex. (The ERA has not been ratified.) In fall 1973, TCU’s Army ROTC program opened its doors to six women joining the ranks of cadets. Just four years later, Air Force ROTC cadet Gayle Remaly ’78 became the first woman to achieve the rank of cadet colonel, assuming the role of commander to more than 100 TCU cadets. That same year, nearly one-third of all cadets were women, a proportion that is much the same today.

“The military draft was coming to an end, giving the armed forces motivation to create an equal-opportunity workforce. By 1970, ROTC programs on college campuses across the country began recruiting women,” said Kara Dixon Vuic, the LCpl. Benjamin W. Schmidt Professor of War, Conflict and Society in 20th-Century America.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 opened new doors for women in collegiate sports, but creating fair playing fields for TCU women came with growing pains, sometimes taking years. In November 1973, the Skiff reported that swimmer Jan Boldt ’78 became the Southwest Conference’s first woman to qualify to compete at the varsity level. But while the NCAA allowed women to swim varsity, the conference did not.

The Air Force ROTC program at TCU allowed women to join for the first time in 1973, and by 1977, one-third of cadets were women. Courtesy of TCU Library Special Collections

Fast Forward

Today, 6 out of 10 undergraduates at TCU are women.

In 2020, for the first time in 107 years, all the elected leadership positions in TCU’s Student Government Association went to women: student body president Paige Shiring ’21, vice president Liliana Ogden ’22, treasurer Gabby Douthitt ’22 and student House of Representatives speaker Vivian Noyd ’21. Then-doctoral candidate Leslie Ekpe ’23 PhD became the first Black president of the Graduate Student Senate; she was featured in Forbes for “leading student governments with intention.”

The all-female leadership represented a step forward in TCU’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, but Ogden said the moment had arrived a bit late in the school’s history.

“Considering it has been 107 years and this is the first time it has been an all-female board of student body officers is insane,” Ogden told TCU360. “It is really exciting for us.”