Pembroke College Department of Physical Education records (OF.1OA.1ZP)

Biographical / Historical

The Pembroke College Department of Physical Education was established in the fall of 1897 as the Department of Physical Culture in the Women's College. In 1904, it became the Department of Physical Training. The name changed again in 1912 to the Department of Hygiene and Physical Education. The department was located in Sayles Gymnasium after the building's dedication in 1907. In 1956 the department assumed its final name, the Department of Physical Education, until 1971 when it merged with the men's Department of Physical Education. The merger of men's and women's physical education and athletics was not complete, however, until 1973-74 when they had a single budget, administration, and faculty. Although it was known as the Department of Physical Education and Recreation in the 1960s, it is not clear that that was ever its official name. In 1892, the second year women were allowed to take Brown University's final examinations, women were required to exercise with dumb bells and Indian clubs and "in Swedish movements", and first year students had to take a course in hygiene. The exercise requirements reflect the growth of the new field of physical education; men were also required to exercise and hygiene was part of a required course for both sexes (at first physiology, later biology). By the mid-19l0s, however, women's requirements grew into a four-year program that cultivated fitness and femininity whereas the men's dwindled to two years, and then only one year, of exercise. It was not until 1957 that the chair of the department, Bessie Rudd, excused seniors without too many prior cuts from physical education their final year. In 1963, the requirement dropped to one year to match the men's. In 1970, the physical education requirement was eliminated for both sexes. Although hygiene was initially part of an introductory biology course and was also taught through the short-lived Household Economics department, by 1912, as its name proclaims, hygiene was an integral part of the department's work. A "freshman course" that included instruction in hygiene began before 1910. Hygiene included not only care for one's body through proper grooming, but also nutrition, information about diseases, and posture and other training appropriate for "proper" young women. Both parts of the department's mission (hygiene and physical education) required close connections to campus medical and health staff, from the days of the Medical Examiner through the emergence of the Division of University Health.

Although the Department of Physical Education was not the rubric under which competitive undergraduate women's sports developed, its staff facilitated student-run efforts to organize some A sports. (Although the work of the Athletic and Recreation Association, a student organization, is - evident throughout these files, for its own records, see the Pembroke College Athletic and Recreation Association records (OF-lQ-Alzp) at Brown University)

Although competition was carefully regulated so as to keep Pembroke women within the bounds of femininity, there was inter-class and even intercollegiate competition. The attempts to restrain competition may have been what produced intercollegiate "telegraphic meets" in bowling, archery, etc.; rather than compete directly, students sent their scores to be measured against the results from competing schools.

Some intercollegiate competition appears to have emerged from individual physical education courses, for example the Basketball course (see series II: Basketball). In addition to sports, the department was the locus of dance on campus until the late 1960s. The department offered dance courses and sponsored student performances and exhibitions by outside groups. May Day and Sophomore Masque productions were aided by department faculty.

For further historical information, see see Cindy Himes' "From Equity to Equality: Women's Athletics at Brown", in Polly Welts Kaufman's The Search for Equity: Women at Brown University, 1891-1991.