Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby
Mary means “rebellion”. And true to her name, Mary Steichen Calderone ’25 rebelled against her life and times, with the poise and sensibility of a Vassar girl.
Born to a singer-mother and photographer-father, Calderone’s bohemian upbringing no doubt influenced her liberal perspective on life. The woman who would later be dubbed “the Grand Dame of sexual enlightenment” graduated from Vassar in 1925 with a major in Chemistry, and with the same unconventionality that would punctuate her later life, Calderone decided to pursue a career in theater instead. But by 1933 she was left with broken dreams of an unsuccessful acting career, a failed marriage and a deceased 8-year-old daughter. She plummeted into depression.
In 1934 at age 30, Calderone pushed back against her adversity and returned to her old love: science. Obtaining her M.D. degree from University of Rochester and M.P.H. from Columbia University, Calderone began her lifelong revolutionary commitment to Public Health.
Calderone joined the controversial Planned Parenthood as medical director, beginning the revolution that would lead to new perspectives and ideas on birth control, abortion and sexuality. But “handing out contraceptives was not enough” for Calderone, and in 1964, she quit Planned Parenthood and established the Sex (later Sexuality) Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).
She boldly confronted the country with brazen, brow-raising ideas on sex and sex education, proposing that sex education be taught as early as kindergarten – an idea that was especially unpopular with more conservative groups, Mothers Organized for Moral Stability (MOMS) and the MOTOREDE. And while some hailed her “the Grand Dame of Sex Education”, others called her “the leader of the SIECUS stinkpot”- despite some of her rather conservative convictions about the sex act.
Still Calderone carried on, extensively lecturing and writing, in her mission to promote sexual education “with a positive approach and moral neutrality”, until her death in 1999. Her life’s work is honored in over 12 prestigious honorary doctorates, a plethora of awards including the Elizabeth Blackwell Award for Distinguished Service to Humanity, and the critically evolved ideas on sex and sexuality we hold today.
Liberalness of thought and expression, forged in an awareness of self and society, and a commitment to (positive) radical change – this was Mary Calderone, this is Vassar.
Legally History-onic
Exhibit A: What happens when students camp out in the College Center in wait of tickets to what Acting President Joan Chenette has called “one Elle of a show.”
The ovation-worthy directorial debut of Doug Greer ’14, with Jessie Lanza ’15 as the bending-and-snapping Elle Woods, FWA’s Legally Blond: The Musical has got Vassar legally wound around its blonde-lock-twirling little finger.
But Vassar’s obsession with commitment to theater has very old roots reaching far into the mid-1800s to what were termed the Hall Plays – so named after their venue, Society Hall.
In the time of the Hall Plays, Vassar had at least a play a week! The Philaletheis Society, Vassar’s sole dramatic club, with its huge budget produced three Hall Plays and two ‘Minor Halls.’ Each House put on its own ‘one-acters.’ Each department of language staged at least one play, while English classes chose scenes from Shakespeare and classes in Dramatic Production acted at least three plays a year. By the 1950s, students dissatisfied with Philaletheis and the rigidity of Hall Play selection (#dramaworlddrama) ignited the rise of alternative organizations, spawning the birth of today’s Unbound, Idlewild, The Woodshed Theatre Ensemble, and FWA, among others. And today, surviving the Hall Plays, their frequent productions have a new venue in the Susan Shiva Stein Theater.
So this Founder’s Day weekend come appropriately accessorized to experience the fabulous fantastic-ness of a wonderful production featuring an altogether scintillating cast and production team, an impossibly perfect Paulette, an infinitely adorable Bruiser, and of course, an endlessly explosive Elle that thoroughly thrills.
Not Your Everyday Saint
Think Meryl Streep is Vassar’s sole claim to fame? Think again.
First woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and remarkable lyrical poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay attended Vassar from 1913 to 1917. Millay was always recognized for her unapologetic individuality and her superior artistic ability. She was actually offered a scholarship to attend Vassar after impressing a guest at a party with her poetic prowess! The artist thrived at Vassar, writing the winning song for the 1916 Founder’s Day and the words for her graduation’s “Baccalaureate Hymn.”
But in addition to her talents, Millay was famous for her bold escapades at Vassar. The openly bisexual literary genius’s antics included daring then President MacCracken to expel her, skipping class due to being “in pain with a poem”, and pushing the boundaries so far that she was forbidden to sing the “Baccalaureate Hymn” at her graduation – the very one she composed! She is also famed to have had quite a penchant for flinging herself out of Jewett windows in attempts at suicide – thrice. The first time, she fell into a tree that broke her fall. The second time, it was from too short a height to do much damage. And her third attempt at diving to her death…she bounced, like a ball.
Yet although the tales of Millay’s legendary leaps are most probably false, her brazen badass-ery among her other traits and achievements, unequivocally qualify her for the title Saint Superwoman.
R-Owl-ing In the Deep
Vassar’s obsession with a cappella is perhaps a product of her unusual history with the art form.
In 1942, an outbreak of polio at Vassar brought life to crippling halt. Everything, save classes, was put on an uncompromising hold lest the plague should continue to spread, and life at Vassar became but a shell of itself. It was in this darkness that the Night Owls took flight.
One night, sixteen black-clad, brave young women stole out of their dorms to meet secretly in the basement of the library. Here, they sang late into the night, practicing to eventually serenade their ailing classmates from outside their windows. Now, some 70 years later, they continue to sing. And still in black.
However, according to research by past Musical Director, Becca Rose ‘11, the title of “oldest continuing female a cappella group in the US” may not be entirely accurate – evidence suggests that other groups also lay claim to this title…and there might not have been a 1942 polio outbreak at Vassar at all!
We will never know. But we do know that as a part of Vassar’s history, the Night Owls will continue to symbolize what it means to be a Vassar girl: a woman of grace, beauty and unmatched fierceness.
VASS 101: 