Bright Epoch: Women and Coeducation in the American West

8. Challenging Political Separation: Women's Rights Activism at Land-Grant Colleges and Universities

8 Challenging Political Separation Women’s Rights Activism at Land-Grant Colleges and Universities All I ask for woman is that the opening sentence of the declaration [sic] of Independence be made broad enough to include her. alma benedict, lincoln [ne] daily journal, June 15, 1888 On November 12, 1916, Bernice Forest, a student at Oregon Agricultural College, recorded in her diary that she had voted for Charles Evan Hughes in the presidential election. When Pres. Woodrow Wilson beat Hughes, Forest expressed a tempered disappointment: “Maybe my choice was ill advised,” she said. However, she had thoughtful reasons for voting against Wilson, believing “any kind of a change ought to be better than these hard times with everything we eat and wear soaring so high we can’t get them.”1 Forest’s single ballot, cast on Tuesday, November 7, 1916, represented a culmination of almost fifty years of feminine political action at western landgrant colleges. Forest was a beneficiary of the legacy of political activism practiced by land-grant students since the 1860s, and she had what most women before her did not have—the right to political franchise. In the midst of a post–Civil War movement to secure political, social, and legal rights for women, land-grant students actively contributed to the progress of women’s rights, especially suffrage. From the earliest years of land-grant education, students discussed, debated, wrote, protested, and argued about feminist activism. Women students challenged gender separation on a political level of suffrage and other women’s rights. This land-grant culture of feminist reform and political inclusion successfully contributed to a larger national culture of gender reforms. Women’s rights activism after the Civil War achieved new heights,especially 252 challenging political separation | 253 as feminist leaders sought advancements for women in legal rights,property rights,and woman suffrage.2 The 1870s growth of the woman suffrage movement accompanied the growth of women’s higher education in America. When leaders of the National Woman Suffrage Association failed to see the passage of a federal equal suffrage amendment after the Civil War,they took their battle to the individual states,where much potential for success lay in the western United States.3 Women land-grant students contributed a necessary energy and momentum for the women’s rights movement in the West. Coeducational land-grants are significant for an examination of women’s rights feminist activism, for a few important reasons. First, the mixed-gender environment of land-grant colleges showed how men and women in a small campus community could work together for a cause. Because women and men were educated together, political activism on behalf of women went beyond the “women-only” distinction of eastern and urban women’s clubs and organizations. Further, through campus elections, women students often achieved elected positions of leadership, although some historians have shown how women students more often were elected to “second-in-command ” positions to men rather than full leadership roles. Still, with males and females running for editorial and class positions, students observed the successful workings of a relatively progressive democracy on a small scale. Historians have correlated women’s educational progress with their access to political rights. However, only a few have examined the impact of women students on women’s activism, and most of that emphasis has been on eastern women’s colleges.4 Scholars have ignored the impact of western women college students on the culture of feminist political activism. Finally, land-grants proved excellent climates for the promotion of feminine activism because of what women already did as students. Journalism, literary debating, and leadership on newspaper staffs and in literary societies gave women students the experience to further expand their political realm. Women’s rights flourished in coeducational environments that already favored the progress of women in higher education,journalism,military activity , and physical culture. Women students had opportunities for public performance and oration in many venues,including literary exhibitions and commencement exercises.Susan A.Glenn has examined the impact of women ’s public performance on their new roles as activists in the late nineteenth century.Regarding the growing phenomenon of women “making spectacles 254 | challenging political separation of themselves”through theater and other types of exhibitions,Glenn argued that “on stage and off, turn-of-the-century women were increasingly drawing attention to themselves, asserting their rights to education, to political participation,to employment...