Beron Arons 1 Interview with Elissa Lynne Beron Arons, class of 1966 Interviewer: Miriam Dale Pichey, class of 1972 Date: May 18, 1992 Location: West Newton, Massachusetts Interview transcribed by: Daniel Putnam, class of 2015 Miriam Dale Pichey: This is an interview with Elissa Lynne Beron, now Arons, on May 18, 1992. She is class of 66, and we are in West Newton, Massachusetts. Why don t you start off by telling us a little bit about your family and your background? Elissa Lynne Beron: Yeah, that s what I was going to do. I grew up in Atlantic City. Both of my parents were first generation American born. Both of their families had been Russian Jewish immigrants in the early part of the century. My father had gone to college, had worked his way through college and then law school. My mother, as typical of her generation, her father felt that one shouldn t educate women. And so she went to a two- year business school, though she was very bright and capable. You know it was a waste to educate a woman who was going to marry and have children. So during my growing up years, although she had worked as a bookkeeper briefly, once she had children she stayed home and was a homemaker. She did volunteer activities, was a very energetic, very capable woman in a number of spheres. And I took many of my traits and talents from her. My father was a very successful businessman in his community, and it was just assumed that my older brother and I would go to college. We were both very good in school and both quite motivated. And my brother, who was three years ahead of me in school, went to Princeton. And so that s when I was getting my first exposure to what college possibilities there were in the world. I went to a summer camp for many summers, and one of the things they did at this overnight camp in New Hampshire and one of the things they did is they took us on a college tour in New England, the summer we were I don t know, I guess fifteen or something. So I first set foot on the Ivy League campuses, and I was just blown away by this whole other world. I had gone to Atlantic City high school, which was a big, urban, suburban high school, very mixed ethnically and economically. I don t know what percentage of the kids from my high school went to college maybe a third, maybe more than that, maybe up to fifty percent. But anyway, most of the kids went within the New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York realm. I loved New England from my camp experience, so seeing the New England college campuses certainly sold me. PICHEY: Did you visit Brown at that time? BERON: At that time, yep. We visited Tufts, Wellesley, Radcliffe, Pembroke so that was my first exposure to Pembroke, I had never heard of it from Atlantic City High School certainly and I loved all these places. What then happened is that I was a very good student, and it was suggested to me that I skip my senior year in high school. And there were only a few colleges who accepted applicants from their junior year in high school I guess it was called junior year admission.
Beron Arons 2 PICHEY: Early admission? BERON: Junior year admissions, I guess. Anyway, you essentially would apply as though you were a senior and skip your senior year in high school. So I applied to Goucher, Jackson which was Tufts Wellesley, Radcliffe, and Pembroke. And uh let s see if I can even remember what happened Oh, Wellesley, it turns out I was interested in Biology I thought Wellesley had only Zoology and Botany, or something like that, and so I eliminated that. I can t it s so funny, it s very hard to remember where I got in. I know I got into Goucher. I got waitlisted at Radcliffe. I don t remember whether I got into Jackson or not. And I got into Pembroke, and I was thrilled to go to Pembroke. It turned out, ironically, that there was another girl from my high school applying as a junior the same exact year I applied. It was very unusual. She also came to Pembroke. We hadn t known each other very well. She was a very shy, quiet girl, very studious. Anyway, we both went to Pembroke and both did quite well there, both loved it. So one of the things that was interesting about it was that when I first went, the Dean of Admissions, I guess, warned my parents that it might be a greater adjustment for me than for people who had gone through senior year, and not to expect too much academically from me. I don t know what kinds of experiences they had had before that. But I was ecstatic about getting to college. I really felt that the high school arena and the cultural arena of Atlantic City was confining to me. My parents had exposed us to a lot of things [5:00]. We knew about, you know, classical music and things like that, and we were just ready for a larger world. My high school was one where it just wasn t cool to be smart, and so I had to play the very typical game of, you know, not letting on how much I actually enjoyed my schoolwork I mean, it was clear I got very good grades, but you had to pretend that it wasn t as enjoyable or as important as it actually was to me. So it was a relief to get to college, where I felt I could really just dig in and enjoy, and other people seemed to be doing a lot of the same, although there were certainly people who were fooling around and not working hard. I think one of the interesting things between the dichotomy between Pembroke and Brown then, because cause at that point we were still around 225 women per year, and around 550 or 600 men. So there was this numbers gap, and the feeling on campus was, in that era, that it was harder to get into Pembroke than it was to get into Brown, and that the girls were smarter than the guys, and so to some extent there was this same gender issue that still existed. That it was assumed that the girls got better grades, the girls had better notes, you borrowed notes I just ran into somebody at my 25 th reunion that said, You had the best biology notes! I always knew I could borrow your notes and get everything I needed from biology class! However, it was still just much more acceptable to be intellectually excited about what you were studying, and so I just sort of leapt in with all four feet and enjoyed the academic atmosphere. It was also fascinating to just be with kids from other parts of the country, kids who had very different backgrounds than my own. Even though I was in a fairly mixed high school, the mixture was such that the kids who were like me were still very much like me. And this was just a much broader
Beron Arons 3 spectrum, which was very interesting for me. My roommate my first year was from West Virginia, and she was really not a hillbilly, that s an exaggeration but her values and her style were so different from my own. We managed to get along, partly because if I went to bed at a reasonable hour, she would stay in the closet and study because there was a light in the closet. PICHEY: What dorm were you in? BERON: We were in East Andrews. PICHEY: Oh, so was I! BERON: I loved it. And I was across the hall from oh God, all these funny little things that I did. I was tall and thin, I wasn t particularly beautiful, but I was tall and thin, so I wore clothes well. And I dressed well. And I made it to the Mademoiselle contest; I don t even remember what it s called anymore. It was, you know, a contest for the well- dressed college girls, the best- dressed college girls. They had a contest on each of the campuses, then finalists would get in the magazine. And I was one of the finalists, which was totally exciting. And I lived across the hall from the young woman who actually won and was all over the pages of the next year s college issue. It must have been Mademoiselle. That was quite exciting. The things one remembers You know, the dress dinners and the sherry hours PICHEY: What was it like when you first arrived on campus? What was your first week? BERON: Well I remember bringing the trunks of things up, and I remember all the guys being very eager to help unpack us. And this was very, you know, there was going to be this whole new social arena for me. I had always been tall, and so not particularly popular. Too tall, too smart, too flat chested. So there was this whole new world opening up, where guys might be interested in me even if I was smart. So it was kind of fun being looked over in that way, because the guys I d gone to high school with were people I d known all my life. And they were boring and they weren t interested in me. So it was just this whole world opening for me, I can t tell you I was just extremely enthusiastic and excited. I remember liking the classes, liking the teachers I was just, you know, almost like a farm kid. PICHEY: Did they have any special programs to welcome you? BERON: Oh yes! Well we had the Dean s reception, to which we were supposed to wear white gloves and hats. I know I didn t own a hat, but I think I probably brought white gloves because I was told to. And I remember a sort of garden tea party kind of thing. Most of that is actually quite blurry. We had our junior councilors, which was wonderful because I remember meeting in the lounges in the evenings, and they talked about dorm rules and social life, and it was just a much more concrete, intimate description.
Beron Arons 4 PICHEY: Did you have a Big Sister? BERON: I probably did. I don t remember I don t remember who that was. It was amazing to me, looking over the things that I ve kept from undergraduate years the newspapers and clippings it was amazing how many things I d forgotten [10:00]. Social kinds of things that I participated in, extracurricular stuff that I did, which I didn t even recall until I saw my picture in the paper or whatever. That was interesting to me. I think that s sort of typical of my memory. I tend to remember the concrete academic stuff more. PICHEY: What kinds of well, we want to talk about your academic record, but also about your social activities. BERON: Well I guess freshman year I just sort of did mostly academic stuff. I remember, you know, the football games going in high heels and cocktail dresses, getting my first black cocktail dress to go away to college. And I can t imagine sitting at a football game now in a dress and stockings and heels, and then going to the fraternity parties afterwards and out to dinner and stuff. But you know, that s the way you did it. And things like you didn t go out if you didn t have a date on Saturday night. A bunch of girls just didn t go out, and you stayed in the dorm, or you went out of town or something. All these things that feel archaic now felt archaic felt within a couple of years of that. It was the end of an era, really, I think when we were there. PICHEY: Did that continue through from 62 to 66? What kinds of changes did you see between 62 and 66? BERON: Well there was just more agitation. I think when I came in, there was this presumption that this is the way it is. By the time I left, there was agitation about it: it must change, it s unrealistic you know, the dorm hours. I was actually admiring of girls who would flagrantly flaunt this stuff, and find ways around it, and weren t apologetic. PICHEY: Tell us about the dorm hours. What were they and how did they operate? BERON: Okay, well just reading my booklet here, which I saved from freshman year. PICHEY: What is that called? BERON: It s called Inklings. It was September 1962. PICHEY: And who is it put out by? BERON: It s probably put out by the Pembroke Social Organization Freshman
Beron Arons 5 Handbook it s called. The Inklings staff was a separate publication staff. And it was sort of all the aspects there s Barnaby Keeney on the first page and a photograph of Rosemary Pierrel on the second page and it had the calendar and it had just all these aspects of social life: organizations, things about academics, but mostly about student life and student activities. Oh, it was Glamour magazine, I saw a thing here just now it was Glamour not Mademoiselle that had the college girls. You know, meals and how to dress for your meals. All right, here we are. It says, quote, Dormitory rules are quite liberal. Although all freshmen must be in the dorms by ten, each girl has a specified number of lates each month during the first semester, one third of the number of days you were at college. Sunday through Friday nights, a student taking a late may stay out till 12:30 a.m. and on Saturdays until 1:30 a.m. Overnights are counted as lates. This curfew is extended on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights for seniors and all students when special events are planned. Well that just feels archaic now, it s really quite humorous. And you know, we abided by it, and there was this great scene on the Andrews terrace every night at curfew, with the huge clock looking at you and everybody kissing their dates goodnight, you know, and the door closing behind. And you just sort of accepted that that s the way it had to be. You know, and the telephone was down the hall. PICHEY: What about visiting hours? BERON: Visiting hours, you know: Sunday afternoon, three feet on the floor and the door open. PICHEY: Same time, but three feet on the floor? BERON: Three feet on the floor means that if somebody looked in your room, you and the guy who were there, there had to be three feet on the floor so somebody could have a leg crossed, but in other words no one could be horizontal on the bed together, and the door had to be open. I think it was from two to four or something like that, two hours. PICHEY: And those were the only times that men were allowed in the dorms? BERON: Yeah, upstairs in the doors, absolutely. PICHEY: Did they have visiting hours downstairs in the lounges? BERON: Yeah, now that s going to be vaguer. But yeah, guys could come and let s see, yes down in the lounges I think the guys could be down there, I don t know, maybe till eight or nine at night, I just don t remember. PICHEY: They used to page us, I remember. If it was a girl it was one thing, if it was a boy you had a caller.
Beron Arons 6 BERON: Right, that s exactly right. You have a caller, that s exactly oh that s so funny. Yes, you have a caller. So then you would go downstairs and see who it was. But you know, we just sort of accepted it. For me actually, as a freshman I didn t have a whole lot of dating experience. I had one serious boyfriend in high school. I was actually relieved to have rules that I could rely on to get me out of sticky situations that I did not know how to get myself out of [15:00]. And in fact, as a first semester freshman it was terrific until I sort of learned how do you turn dates down, how do you get out of uncomfortable situations I was grateful for the rules because I just didn t have much experience at handling unknown guys and unknown situations. So it wasn t such a terrible thing in the beginning for me. You know, I was going to study and do my homework in proper order anyway, so it wasn t a matter of getting me in to do my homework, it was a matter of having a way to get out of social situations that I didn t like or was uncomfortable with. So that wasn t such a bad thing. PICHEY: What other kinds of restrictions or obligations were there that might not exist today? BERON: Well, we had a dress for dinner. We always had to wear skirts to the dining room for dinner. But two nights a week, I think it was Sunday and Wednesday night, were Dress Dinner, which means you had to wear stockings and heels with your skirts, no knee socks and no tied shoes. And they invited professors to dinner. There was sherry hour in the lounge and then the professors would sit at the tables with us and talk. And then there was demitasse in the lounge afterward. And that was nice. Again, getting to meet professors informally was interesting. The discussions were fun. I remember taking an exam, and I placed out of freshman comp, which was terrific, so I got to go into a Comparative Literature seminar on the Nature of Tragedy, which was just a fantastic course. And you know, there were maybe twelve or fifteen of us in the course, so that was just a great academic experience, and I was grateful to get out of English Comp. I was grateful for some extra help I d gotten in high school, which taught me how to write decently. I went into college thinking I was a Biology major because I love the life sciences. So I took Biology in the beginning, and I took Math was it my first year? I took Biology and English I actually don t remember all my courses. I must have taken Math my first year. And by the end of freshman year, I realized that if I wanted to be a Biology major it meant I would spend my life dealing with test tubes and graduate school. And I knew it was people I liked, so I figured well maybe it must be medicine that I m interested in. So I changed my major to English Literature and was pre- med, so that I could take as much I loved English Literature and Art History. And so I just took my pre- med courses as electives. One lab course a semester, which was very reasonable. And loved the literature major, and loved all my art history courses. Let s see, Oh I know what I did I didn t want to waste I hadn t taken Chemistry in college because I skipped senior year. And I didn t want to waste time at Brown taking Chemistry, which I thought would be kind of boring, so I went to summer school after my first year of college, at Harvard, and I took a year of chemistry there
Beron Arons 7 to get it out of the way. And then I took Organic second year, which was hard but I actually liked it a lot. PICHEY: So you spent your summers in Massachusetts, in Boston? BERON: That first summer. I wasn t from here, remember, I was from New Jersey. But I spent that first summer at Harvard summer school, which was another great scene. That was really fun. Then I took Organic. And then, at the end of my sophomore year, after taking Organic, and all my friends were Humanities majors, and I was the only taking all these labs I thought to myself, Do I really want to do this? Do I really know what I m getting into? So I got myself a job in a surgical lab at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia that summer. Just to see, did I really want to go to medical school or was this silly. And it turns out, it was really funny, the surgeon who ran this it was a kidney transplant lab. It was in the early stages of research into kidney transplants, and we were doing dog surgery. And my parents had actually told the surgeon to work me to death because they really wanted to discourage me from what I was doing. But they wouldn t tell me that directly. They never would have said that. They were very proud of my accomplishments. And of course, here I was assisting in surgery and doing all the blood chemistries I was ecstatic. It was one of the most exciting summers I ve ever spent, and it confirmed that I really did want to go to medical school. Although I still had no real inkling of what I was getting into. Let s see, it seems like I ve gone off on the academic route a little bit PICHEY: Well that s okay! So that was your junior year? BERON: That was the summer after sophomore year [20:00]. And that just confirmed, yes I did want to go to medical school. So let s see, what d you have to do? You have to take Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, I had already taken Biology freshman year. You had to take Physics! I put Physics off till senior year because I was really scared that that was going to be hard, and I didn t want it to ruin my grades for applying to medical school, so I left that one till senior year. So maybe I didn t have a science junior year, cause I d taken Chemistry in summer school. My friends all thought it was a little odd, but they just sort of accepted it. There were not that many pre- meds pre med women in those days. And in fact, when it came time. [Tape paused then resumed] BERON: Oh anyway, there were very few women pre- med students then. And I remember this so clearly, when it was time to apply now I m jumping ahead of myself a little bit senior year in college, they had absolutely no track record for the women. And so what they told us their advice to us was apply to as many medical schools as you can afford to, because we had no idea where you can get in. It was a really interesting experience because my grades were terrific, my board scores were terrific, and it was clear that I was a good candidate, but the experience of applying
Beron Arons 8 then when they limited the acceptances to strictly ten percent was just a very interesting time in terms of the interviews, in terms of what people could ask you because you were a female applicant. You know, what people expected you to be like. And it was interesting. PICHEY: What were their expectations? BERON: Well, you know, for example my parents were dying for me to go to University of Pennsylvania because it was close to home. And I interviewed at Penn It wasn t an interview! The guy just talked to me about the medical school. He asked me barely anything about myself, and I then got a rejection notice. And my parents knew somebody whom they could ask, Would you please find out what this is about? Because there just wasn t a good reason for it. And the word came back, which was the interviewer took one look at me and said, She s never going to finish medical school. Because I was dressed nicely and I had a nice appearance. And so they turned me down. And you know, that was not a particularly unusual thing to take place in those days. At Harvard, if you re a woman you were interviewed by two different people. If you were a man you were interviewed by one. And inevitably, people ask you how are you going to manage raising a family? and all those kinds of questions. At Cornell no I guess it was at Columbia at Columbia I was asked, what if I didn t get in? Which I hadn t actually considered, this was interesting the naïve confidence of youth. He said to me, Well what happens if you don t get in? And I hadn t thought about this, I hadn t prepared myself for various interview questions, and I said, Well, maybe I ll go into the Peace Corps. Or maybe I ll go to graduate school in English, because I, in fact, was loving my English Literature. But clearly that was not the right answer! That meant I wasn t a dedicated enough PICHEY: Scientist. BERON: Scientist! Or physician. I got my rejection letter from Columbia within a week of that interview. You know, I slowly learned the tricks of the trade. After my interview at Yale, the guy who interviewed me turned to the young woman medical student who was doing research with him at the time, and he said to her, How s a young woman who looks like that going to run a syphilis clinic? And she turned to him and said, she doesn t have to run a syphilis clinic! But, you know, nobody knew quite how to deal with some of these issues then. And nobody was holding anybody accountable for what they were thinking and saying and how they were dealing with it. At all. It was really a free- for- all. PICHEY: Yeah, these days there d be a lot of lawsuits. BERON: Absolutely. Absolutely. So we were strictly ten percent I m getting ahead of my story. But anyway, it was just a small group of us applying. PICHEY: So you knew pretty much all the women in pre- med in your class?
Beron Arons 9 BERON: Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. In fact, one of them ended up at Yale Medical School with me. Anne Weissman. We hadn t been particularly friendly. She was, I think, more of a science major than I. You know, I always took this stance you know, it was from the early days in my high school, where it was important to pretend that school wasn t so important to you I took this stance of not being a nerd even though I secretly was. You know, of caring about my appearance, of caring about social life and other kinds of things I was interested in artistic things. I did a variety of extracurricular activities, which I can talk about [25:00]. But it s interesting because I think I sort of distanced myself from the students who were more obviously science majors. PICHEY: Right. Now I think that there were a lot of Penny Pembroker, Penny Lollipop and Penny there were all these various Pennies, do you remember anything about that? BERON: No, I don t. It sounds familiar but I just don t remember. PICHEY: Right. I know that that was before my time, but BERON: Yeah. No, I think it was before my time too. PICHEY: Yeah, okay. Well, forget that then. Tell us about some of your extracurricular activities. BERON: Well, I d always liked to draw, so I did some cartooning for the Pembroke Record. Its fun looking back over them because they feel very time- bound, you know? Well, maybe some of them aren t, as I m thinking about it. Father- Daughter stuff, Mother- Daughter.I mean we had a Father- Daughter weekend, a Mother- Daughter weekend. Actually when my kids saw that they said, Gee, that s a nice idea! Why did that go out? You know, that feels like an antiquated notion. You know, cartoons about drunkenness at Spring Weekend, I don t know how much that s changed. It was all pretty light- hearted and demure, I think, the cartooning. I ran for president of the class one year. I had no recollection I obviously didn t win! [laughter] But I saw the article in the newspaper. PICHEY: What about the Record? How many people were on the staff, and how often did it come out? BERON: Every week. It came out once a week. I can t tell you how many people were on the staff. It was a small, dedicated group. There were some people who really wrote with great speed and facility, and there were some I wrote only a few articles. I wasn t, sort of, the inner circle. This is a great actually I saved this Brown Daily Herald. This was from the Spring Riots in 1963, when the guys walked up through the bus tunnel from downtown. And panty raids, and invaded the dorms. There were riots at Yale, too, on the front page, I m not sure what was going on
Beron Arons 10 PICHEY: What was the cause of the riots? BERON: It was just Spring Riots! It s frolicking. Nothing. PICHEY: Oh. Not political. BERON: That s right, it was not a political protest! That s what s so funny. PICHEY: It was just youth letting off steam? BERON: Yes, absolutely! And that s the difference because shortly thereafter the rioting and demonstrating had some purpose. So this feels like the fifties in a way, that kind of thing taking place. Oh that s right, the other thing I did I did some acting. I m looking here at a playbill. I did some acting. PICHEY: So what kinds of productions were you in? BERON: I was in Production Workshop, and that s student written dramas. These were some one act plays. So it was minor stuff, but it was really fun. Actually, it was fun, I was in one with Kathryn Fuller, who s now head of the what is it, one of the biggest international environmental group the World Wildlife Fund! Yeah! She was in the play with me. I have little, you know, banquet invitations, schedules for Father- Daughter weekend, it s just all very nostalgic, you know. A Hootinany! A Hootinany was a folk sing! I couldn t even remember that name until I saw it in the newspaper. And we had themes. PICHEY: And where did they have that kind of thing? BERON: That was actually on the Pembroke Campus, I think. Where was it held it was Theodore Bikel, Jack Linkletter, Marlene Sanders, 1963 Journeymen, Clancy Brothers, South County Singers. You know, it was the real time of folk singing. And I m not sure exactly where it was, but it was big. It was campus wide, and everybody was very excited. Norman Thomas discusses U.S. radicalism and socialism he came to campus, he was already an old man by then. PICHEY: Did you go to that? BERON: I don t remember that. I probably wouldn t have. I was not somebody particularly concerned with political movements, it s interesting. I was interested in things that were more literary or artistic, not political at all. It s interesting, I look back and I m comfortable with how apolitical I was. How naïve and apolitical I was. As I got into medical school and things became more and more upsetting about Vietnam, I participated in some protests.
Beron Arons 11 PICHEY: But were there any protests on... [30:00] You were, for example, at Pembroke during the height of the civil rights movement. Did that have any impact on campus? BERON: Yes, there were absolutely there were student demonstrations. I mean it s that kind of thing that I look back on and I think, Where in the world was I? Where was my head? You know, I was busy getting good grades and being active on campus. But I was not a participant in political movements in the wider world, and sort of the more important stuff. And there s something I think I m left with some discomfort about my lack of participation. I m sort of sorry that I was so focused on getting good grades and doing just everything right. PICHEY: Do you recall there being any demonstrations on campus? BERON: Yeah, there were demonstrations on campus. I remember kids marching down to the State House in Providence. PICHEY: Were there blacks attending the school? BERON: Yes in fact, there was a kid from my high school, actually. It s amazing, thinking of Atlantic City High School sending this many kids. There were one black young man who eventually taught at Brown, Barry Beckham, was from my high school. There was a very small I guess we had two Black women in our class, Dorothy Fonda, and Paula Williams. I m trying to think if there were any others. But I had this terrible sense of how isolated and lonely they must feel, how different they must feel, how hard I mean, I felt slightly different because I was Jewish, and it was such a predominantly WASP institution. And I imagined how hard it must have been for them. How lonely and disconcerting. I didn t know either of them well at all. But certainly the Blacks were a great, great minority then. You know, again and they held together. I remember Barry and a few black guys that he was friendly with. Again, it was the beginning of all that stuff stirring up and changing. It was the tail end of the 50s. It was just starting to open up with all the civil rights stuff. PICHEY: Were there any other kinds of student movements on campus? For example, the curriculum reform? BERON: That came right at the end. The New Curriculum came right after, Chuck Bast [?] was involved with that. You just said something that set off another memory I can t remember what it was. We created the first women s college ice hockey team. I was a senior, and we made all the papers because it didn t exist anywhere! Again, it s so funny to think of now. A bunch of us got together I don t even know how it happened, but a couple of the underclassmen, a couple of sophomores and juniors, had come from high schools in New England and had played ice hockey all their lives, and they wanted to play. So we said all right. And I had done figure skating all my life. I d never played hockey, but I was born with skating in circles. So a bunch of us got together I don t know how many of us,
Beron Arons 12 enough to form a small team. We got ice time at something like 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning. It was the only time they would give us ice time. And one of the guys from the Brown hockey team coached us. And we became the Pembroke Pandas. We got ourselves named. We had no uniforms or anything when we first played I guess we wore cast- off stuff from the guys. We made the Providence Journal with photographs. We found a team of wives of one of the professional Massachusetts teams, and we played them. We took a bus up here once, and I guess up to Boston once, and Walpole. And they came down to our place once. We didn t do particularly well, but it was very exciting, and it was the beginning of what became absolutely a terrific ice hockey team. You know, eventually, with full uniforms and full ice time and everything else. But it was fun my friends, again, thought I was totally nuts, to get up at this ungodly hour in the morning and go ice- skating every day. It was very exciting! And what s a joke is that some of us actually played in our figure skates because that s all we had. It s so funny to think of it now. We didn t play particularly rough. I got checked my picture was in the paper because I got checked into the boards and got a mild head injury. So there was a big picture of me in the Providence Journal. It was very exciting at the time. PICHEY: How did boys react to female athletes? BERON: Well, there wasn t a lot there wasn t the kind of support and appreciation, I think, that there is now. It was this mixture of things. Girls could play field hockey, and you could admire their prowess. There wasn t support. I mean, people didn t stand in line to watch the girls play anything [35:00]. There was some PICHEY: But they didn t avoid you? BERON: No, no. But again, it would have been something I would have avoided. I wasn t a jock. Yes, I played ice hockey, it s because I loved to skate and skated well. I m not particularly a jock at heart. I just like to stay fit. It was fun! I was impressed with some of the girls who were really good hockey players. I mean, they really knew how to do it. I just felt of myself as a joker out there on the ice. When we started, there was a lot of humor about it the guys came to watch just to see this because it was sort of a strange spectacle. But it was good- natured. It wasn t a tough time. Certainly, the feeling about the Phys. Ed. department was that the Phys. Ed. teachers were of a certain type you know, we had posture pictures when we came in freshman week. PICHEY: Why don t you describe what those were? BERON: Oh, my God. They were this very crazy thing where you strip to the waist, and a picture of you was taken of you by the Phys. Ed. department to see what your posture was. And if your posture wasn t good enough, you had to take a Corrective Posture course for your Gym during freshman year! And you sort of had to pass
Beron Arons 13 your posture pictures. And we all had concerns that it was really there was something uncomfortable about this whole thing. PICHEY: Perverse? BERON: Yeah, yeah. I think the feeling was that the gym teachers probably were homosexual. It was just a type of person that became a Phys. Ed. teacher at college. And it was just known, it was just sort of you just felt it. But there was just sort of a whole type of culture around Phys. Ed. and the feeling was that they promoted this, and it was this very uncomfortable thing. And of course the terror! Everybody lived in terror that the guys were going to get a hold of the Posture Pictures, and there was always this terrible threat. I don t know how long they continued the Posture Pictures business; did they have it when you were there? When I entered in 1968, they still did it. But I think within a couple years after that they by the time the campus was up in arms about the war, and curriculum reform, and everything else, I think that Posture Pictures sort of went by the wayside. BERON: Yeah, I think that it was one of the last remnants of Pembroke as sort of a Finishing School for fine young ladies. PICHEY: They taught us a whole series of exercises that you could do, supposedly, to eliminate cramps, and how to set a table correctly, and a lot of other things. BERON: Oh gee, I don t remember that. Isn t that funny, I must have totally repressed it. I don t remember that. I remember one of the things that was great was I took horseback riding for Gym one semester. I forget we had to take a lot of Gym. And I remember one semester I did that. That was fantastic I got off campus and out into the countryside. That was just terrific. PICHEY: Where did you ride? BERON: I don t remember. It was a farm somewhere nearby. Nice horses. And I remember some of the girls I rode with clearly had a lot more riding experience in high school. [doorbell rings and dog barks, tape paused then resumed] PICHEY: Talking about sports and you were talking about horseback riding were there any other Gym programs that you particularly enjoyed or were found unusual? BERON: Hmn, nothing that I remember particularly. PICHEY: I took fencing, which I enjoyed.
Beron Arons 14 BERON: Yeah, yeah. That s right. I don t know whether I actually took fencing. I remember I had learned to fence at camp in the summer. I don t remember whether or not I took it at Pembroke. But I remember that we were required to take Gym many semesters. I don t remember how many, but maybe even six. It was a lot of Gym. PICHEY: What about the Deans and others who ran Pembroke College itself? Do you have any recollection of them? BERON: Well, Dean Tomkins Gretchen Tomkins just that she had a lovely sense of humor and a warmth about her. I remember liking her. I was somebody who didn t get into trouble, so I didn t get to see the other side of things. PICHEY: Were you on the Dean s list? BERON: I m sure I was. Yeah, I m sure I was. I don t remember anything specific about that, I don t remember. PICHEY: Who were your favorite teachers, do you remember? Or favorite classes, do you have any that particularly stand out? BERON: Oh God, certain Art History courses it s funny, I still have my notes in a big box in the basement. I love taking good notes in classes. It s interesting, I took well the seminar on Tragedy was Mr. Montero, who was a junior faculty member; he was not a full professor at the time [40:00]. It was a fantastic seminar. We read, you know, Greek Epics. I may be confusing, I think I m confusing two different seminars one on the Tragedy and one on the Epic. And John Shroeder in English was a great, dramatic professor, but he just wanted you to parrot back his notions about literature. And so, in the end, that was not a particularly intellectually edifying experience. Because that was an easy kind of course to get an A in; you just had to take notes and memorize them. And that s dumb. Kapstein and Romanticism was wonderful. Barbara Lewalski, my only woman professor. I mean, that s what s so dramatic when you go back to campus now there s so many women scholars there! Barbara Lewalski taught 17 th - and 18 th - century literature. She was terrific! And it was just such an unusual experience to have a woman. My most gender- dysphoric experience, I d say, in the classroom, was an Economics course I took. I m somebody who was bound not to understand or like Economics anyway. We had a black, Caribbean man I don t know what his rank was, you know, in scholarly levels. But what was abhorrent was, first of all, he didn t lecture, he just read from the Samuelson textbook. Second of all, he arranged the class there were about five women in the class and he had all the men sit up front, and he had the five women sit in the back row. And he took attendance. Remember we had limited cuts, we could only cut three times a semester or we d fail a course. PICHEY: Was that in all classes?
Beron Arons 15 BERON: Yes, all classes. Limited cuts to three. He sat the women, and he counted female heads. He knew the men by name, and he counted female heads. It was disgusting. I mean, again it s the kind of thing you think about now, and you think, How could anyone get away with that kind of outrageous behavior! He was awful. I hated that course. That was my most hated course in all of Brown. I mean, there was not a redeeming thing about it! He was a terrible teacher, the subject was appalling, and his behavior was, you know, out of the dark ages. But certain Art History courses were fantastic. PICHEY: Were there any female graduate students? BERON: Maybe I don t know. Oh yeah let s see, I had one section leader in English Literature who was a woman. God, it s really hard to even come up with anybody else. There had to be some, but again it was really sparse. Greek History of Architecture course the Intellectual History of the United States was McLoughlin, I was afraid of that course. I figured, Oh, my God, that s so much heavy reading, I ll never get a good grade again. I was just geared to making sure I had good grades for medical schools, which again I feel sort of bad about, looking back. So I waited til senior year, and I took that course I guess I audited it, so I didn t have to worry about the grade getting. That s why that whole business of being able to take things pass/fail was such a great idea. Because that was such a thrilling course, I loved it. No, I must have taken it for a grade because I remember writing a paper that I spent weeks and weeks on, looking at primary sources down in the Providence State House Library or something. No, I guess I did take that for a grade; I just took it one semester. No no other were there any other women instructors? I can t think of any. Phys. Ed., the administration, Barbara Lewalski. I think that s it. And, you know, we just accepted that. We just took it for granted that s the way it was. It s terrific to go down there now. PICHEY: Well, some people would say more needs to be done yet! BERON: Yes! Oh, that may be true, but the dramatic difference between what it s there now and what it was like there then is just astounding. PICHEY: Now, did you date very much when you were? BERON: Yeah! Um, yeah. I went out, went to fraternity parties, you know. What a ridiculous scene, fraternity parties. PICHEY: What was that like? BERON: Well, a lot of loud music, a lot of beer. I hated beer! I always hated the taste of beer, and everybody trying to get as drunk as they could. PICHEY: Did they rush the freshmen?
Beron Arons 16 BERON: Yeah. PICHEY: Explain what that was like? BERON: Well, yes. There was this book, this Blueprint, which was the pictures of all the freshmen coming in. And, you know, the guys would look everyone over. PICHEY: Nicknamed? BERON: The pig book! Of course. I guess I just assumed everybody knows that. And then the upperclassmen would come the guys would get to school freshman week to just look over the girls and invite you that s right, you got invited to the fraternity houses freshman week. Yeah, and you got invited so they could look you over [45:00]. And check you out. And so in the beginning it was very exciting, being asked out by upperclassmen. So I dated some, and then I eventually by spring broke up with my home boyfriend. [tape pauses then resumes] BERON: Yeah, I broke up with my boyfriend from home because I realized that there was a wider world out there that I wanted to experience. And so I think I had a fairly average kind of social life. I was not particularly a social butterfly, but I went out some. I guess sophomore year I went with a guy for a few months, a football player in the jock fraternity I don t even remember the name of it now. It may come back to me. PICHEY: Beta? BERON: No, it wasn t Beta. Actually, no that wasn t a jock house. Beta was sort of, I think of Beta as sort of decadent wealthy, decadent drunks, but I may be wrong. Isn t that funny, maybe it was D Phi. I can t remember actually, but it was the jock house. And then junior year I dated some people. I guess I dated a guy that was a year younger, and that extended into my senior year. A variety of things. PICHEY: What was sex like on campus around 62 to 66? BERON: Well, you know, people didn t talk openly about it. I remember going into one of my friend s rooms and seeing her birth control pills. Actually, there had been a great story about that. First there was this whole issue about not being able to get birth control easily. Some of the girls [End of Part 1] PICHEY: We interviewed Elissa Lynne Beron Arons on May 18, 1992
Beron Arons 17 BERON: All right, so it was hard to get birth control. It was difficult to get abortions. People were coming up to Boston to get illegal abortions. PICHEY: Do you know where they would go? BERON: I don t. But, you know, there were PICHEY: How did you know? BERON: You just knew. People talked about it, and you knew somebody was sort of away for a few days, or You just knew. You knew through someone s roommate the grapevine would go out that so- and- so had just had an abortion. PICHEY: Did women ever get septics? BERON: I didn t know anybody who got into real trouble with it. One girl, in my class, had to drop out of school because she got pregnant, and the guy who got her pregnant her boyfriend at Brown was in ROTC, and ROTC guys were not allowed to get married. And it was this horrendous thing. She came from a very prominent New England family, and they had to get dispensation from the Pentagon for him to marry her. It was this whole big thing because then they had to live off campus, and of course none of the Pembrokers lived off campus. They would not let her walk down the hill at graduation time because she was about eight months pregnant. Other girls, when they got pregnant and or married in whatever order they did dropped out. People just didn t finish school because of pregnancies or marriages. It just wasn t done. Anyway, back to things like birth control and sex. It just wasn t as openly talked about as it is now. You know, you d see somebody s birth control pills, you d hear how she got them PICHEY: How did she get them? BERON: She this is a great story! She was home in New York over Christmas vacation, she looked up in the yellow pages the name of a gynecologist. She went in, and he said, Oh, Miss X! When I saw your name, I took out your mother s folder! Out of all the gynecologists in New York, she picked her mother s gynecologist isn t that wonderful? Needless to day, he d said he d be discrete, but There were very funny stories like that. There was a gynecologist right near campus I do not remember his name, but I know somebody who went to him when she missed her period after having her first sexual encounters. And he gave her an injection you know, after a sort of a slight moral scolding he gave her an injection which he said if she were pregnant, I forget what the story was, but she was supposed to get her period she would get withdrawal bleeding if she were pregnant. And it turns out she wasn t pregnant, she was just scared to death. But, you know, nothing was straightforward about how to get yourself taken care of, how to get information. It was just a lot of sneaking around, and hoping, and people not being very honest about things.
Beron Arons 18 PICHEY: I just wasn t that type to just BERON: Girlfriends. People didn t talk openly about their sexual encounters. They just didn t. I m sure there were some groups who were doing that, but we were not. PICHEY: Do you know where people had sex? There wasn t much privacy. BERON: Well, oh in the fraternity houses. Upstairs, in the guys rooms. People would sneak upstairs, that s for sure. And some of the guys had cars. And I m sure some people went to motel rooms and didn t tell the truth. And some guys had apartments off campus. So there were some possibilities they were restricted, but they were possibilities. I m sure that people got inventive, as they do in those situations. I m trying to think about other aspects of it. It was sort of a big deal, when somebody started sleeping with your boyfriend. It was taken seriously, it was kind of a grave and serious matter, at least among the girls PICHEY: Was it the first step to marriage? BERON: Not necessarily, but it was a serious relationship, you know? At least among my friends, people would go with somebody for a while, and they were sleeping with them, and there was just the sense that it was a serious relationship. But not necessarily leading to marriage. I don t think that was a presumption. The other thing I find myself thinking about now the other thing, of course, was marijuana, which was starting to be used. In my experience there, only kids who really had access to it were the kids who were into acting. And even though I had done some Production Workshop stuff, I was not in the inner acting group. I was not, you know these were kids who were sort of a little bit more bohemian. And it was just known that they had pot, and they smoked pot. I m trying to remember I think I had the opportunity [5:00]. I think I smoked pot once or twice during my undergraduate years. But again, it wasn t rampant it was exciting, it was a little unusual, it was hard to get a hold of. I mean, everybody could get beer and alcohol. But pot was more unusual, and it just was not as widespread as it then became. You know, I think I said to you before the tape went on that there were some girls who there was a rule that you were not allowed to stay in a motel anywhere within X miles of Providence, I forgot what it was. And there were a bunch of terrific, honor student- type girls head of the Pembroke Social Organization, etc., head of the, I don t know, Student Government and a bunch of them stayed in a motel somewhere outside of Providence on a weekend. And they were found out, and they were all I don t know what the proper word is but they were suspended for a year. They had to leave campus for a year and graduate a year late. There was a lot of anger about the way that was dealt with, that it was just ridiculous. Because they had been honest about where they were, and people were furious about it. But a couple of them, I think, were Chattertocks, people who are always very upstanding members of the community and representative of a great Pembroke tradition.
Beron Arons 19 While I was an undergraduate, Kennedy was killed. And, as everybody else, I remember I was going to or from an English class. And there were some kids, I guess, carrying transistor radios. Or somebody had just heard about it. And it felt like the opening line of a joke, you know? You re just walking on a college campus, and somebody, Did you hear the President s been shot? And so you figure, Okay, what s the punch line? And then people started confirming that, in fact, it wasn t a joke. That it really happened. And It was just awful it was just awful. Actually, that s right, the other thing that was before that was the Bay of Pigs. People calling home, wondering whether we should all go home. Everybody was worrying, what was going to happen? Was there going to be a real confrontation? Would there be a war? People were making plans to go home. Some kids left campus. I remember calling my parents and staying at school. PICHEY: So during the Bay of Pigs some people left campus? BERON: Yeah, I think so. But I know we were all very jittery. Yeah, people were really worried it was going to blow up. The whole thing was going to blow up. PICHEY: So, it sounds like you had quite a busy life, with the combination of the strong academic interests, and starting the Pembroke Pandas, and doing some acting and cartooning. Are there any other things you should tell us about your years at Pembroke? Do you have any lasting friendships that came out of it? BERON: Yeah, I stayed in touch with about three women closely, predominantly. It s interesting, it s fascinating because we stay in touch by mail! We write letters! It s such an unheard of thing we write letters. We rarely call each other on the phone. We just write letters, and I cherish those letters. It s so interesting, and it really is unusual. I have absolutely wonderful memories of Pembroke. I think it was a terrific educational and social experience for me. If I have any regrets about it, it s that maybe I should have partied a little more. My kids certainly tell me I should have [laughter]. That I was so concerned about getting good grades and getting into medical school, but I probably studied too much. I remember junior or senior year, my boyfriend, who was a year younger, played on the lacrosse team. And he couldn t understand he was kind of hurt that I didn t go stand on the sidelines and cheer. And yeah, I just wasn t that type to just, you know, be a little loopy for a sports team. It just wasn t my thing. But I also realize, as I look back, that I probably spent a good chunk of my weekend studying! I mean, I just did my work like a good girl. PICHEY: Sounds like you were grind! BERON: I know, it really does. It s amazing to think about. A couple things I remember: some people played Bridge. I remember we used to get puzzles terrible jigsaw puzzles, thousand piece jigsaw puzzles during final exam week. And when we took study breaks we d do them. And it was crazy because it s addictive behavior. Once you re into it, you can t stop [10:00]. And I remember the