By Charlie Johnson

April 24, 2007

On March 30, 2007, at the close of this year's Women's History Month, Marion Weersing was invited to a women's leadership luncheon at Presbyterian College.  Upon her arrival, she found out that there was a special reason for her invitation.

In a resolution presented at the luncheon, the Marion Hill Weersing Institute for Women in Leadership was established, honoring the work of Weersing, who, as the college's only Dean of Women, shepherded the first several years of female students at PC as the college moved to full coeducational status, and creating a mentoring program for current and future female PC students. 

Telesia Davis, PC's Dean of Student Life had been involved in discussion about a potential mentoring program in January and February, seeking to introduce the program as a part of Women's History Month. While details for the program, which is set to begin this fall, will be more fully developed over the summer, it seeks to pair female PC students with women in leadership roles on campus and in the community. Participation in the program will likely include a number of college alumnae and could also include some of PC's female professors.

In addition to one-on-one mentoring, the program will hold periodical seminars on topics such as balancing career and family, helping women to understand financial matters, and styles of leadership – a topic which would explore the early tendency of women to "mimic men" in the workplace.

Davis also hopes to involve men in the dialogue that the program will generate.

"You can't advocate for women without men in the picture," she said.

Weersing, who was, "floored," when she discovered this program was to be named after her, remembers well the days before women had established themselves as equal participants in the campus community.

Although throughout PC's history there had been a small number of female day students, including the first three graduates of the institution, it was only in the 1960s that PC discovered the need to become fully coeducational, allowing women to live on campus and participate more fully in the life of the college. In late 1963, the Board of Trustees officially voted to move to full coeducational status, starting in the next school year.

It was upon that decision that Weersing, who had been serving as director of Christian education at First Presbyterian Church in Spartanburg, came to Clinton to become the dean of women.

For the 1964-65 school year, she oversaw the placement of 21 female students in two houses in close proximity to campus and the beginning of construction of Clinton Hall, which opened in the fall of 1965, housing around 90 female students.

The incorporation of women into the campus community came along with additional changes to the campus and academic programming. In the same year that Clinton dorm was constructed, the science building and the dining hall were also being built, and as more female students arrived on campus, Belk dorm became necessary not long afterward.

Growth of the female contingent of the student body ran parallel to a proposal by the Board of Trustees that the college would seek to reach a 55 to 45 percent ratio between male and female students, which, according to Weersing, was a very adequate goal for the time.

With the continued increase in female students, Bailey dorm was eventually opened to women as well. Weersing even recalls a temporary housing situation of a set of fenced-in trailers outside of Bailey known to the students as, "Fort Apache."

While PC's facilities expanded in response to its new and increasing population, adjustments were also made to the college's academic program. The music department expanded tremendously at this time, as did the education department. While previously there had been a small program for secondary education, a new elementary education curriculum was added. New physical education courses were added, as well.

Though many of these additions were aimed towards the new female students, many of these early women at PC chose instead to major in the sciences and business, something which many on campus were unprepared for. At the time that the first women moved on-campus, there were no female professors, but over the next several years, women were added to the faculty as well.

Weersing recalls that women attending school at PC were well-loved by professors because, as a rule, they were "first-class students."  They had a much more difficult time being accepted into the social life of the college, however, than they did in succeeding at academics.

Before women arrived on campus in numbers, the Blue Stocking published editorials opposing the Board's decision.

"The fellows thought, 'The women will come in and ruin our school,'" said Weersing.

When women did arrive, they were largely ignored socially. PC men would take them on dates throughout the year, but at the time of a big dance, they would bring women down from Winthrop or Converse and ask PC women to house them, said Weersing.

PC's female students did gradually gain full acceptance. In one anecdote from the era, Weersing tells of a Greenville News reporter who came to Clinton to do a story about PC's transition to becoming coeducational. As a part of the story, she wanted to take a picture that reversed the male and female ratio of the college, which was then five to one. The reporter had no trouble finding five women to stand for the picture but had to look for a male student to be included.

Finally, in an ironic twist, the Blue Stocking editor, who had opposed the change, volunteered to be in the picture.

Despite this rather conservative approach, it was not too long before women made their mark as leaders on campus. In the first several years, women served in student government in positions such as secretary and treasurer. However, it was the 1973-74 school year – within a decade of the arrival of women – which saw the first female student body president.

Weersing's title changed from dean of women to assistant dean of student life several years after she began working at PC, when the college received pressure from outside to establish uniform housing regulations for male and female students. Having used handbooks from other colleges to create the policies for female residence halls, the college actually had more in-depth rules for these dorms than for male dorms.

As the government was putting pressure on schools to establish equality in its practices, schools, including PC, were also pressured to open their doors to African-American students. The first black student at PC was a woman who lived in Bailey dorm, where she was quickly accepted by her white peers, said Weersing.  As the number of black students increased, Weersing would count the number each year, to see how far the school had come.  She feels that acceptance was achieved the year that she stopped counting.

Several notable leaders were in those first several classes of female students.  Martha Anne Green, one of the early Clinton Hall students, became the associate dean of students following Weersing's retirement. Dr. Suzanne Smith and Meredith Holder, two additional early graduates, are both current faculty members in PC's business administration department. Leni Patterson, a 1983 graduate of the college, currently serves as the school's dean of admissions and financial aid. Outside of the immediate PC community, Edna Jacobs Banes, great-granddaughter of the college's founder and a graduate from the early 1970s, is the current dean of students at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Va.  On the national level, Joan Gray, a 1973 PC graduate, was named the moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) at the denomination's General Assembly last year.

The naming of a new mentoring program after Weersing – a decision which, according to Davis, the committee made "enthusiastically" – reflects the great impact that Weersing had in ushering in a new era of opportunity at PC. Weersing holds a great deal of hope in the ideals of the new program, saying that it embodies the "idea of service" articulated in the PC motto.

Through the Institute of Women in Leadership and so many other aspects of life at Presbyterian College, Marion Weersing's legacy will live on in the PC community for generations.

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Special thanks to Marion Weersing for providing her own wealth of history and to Telesia Davis for her information about the Marion Hill Weersing Institute for Women in Leadership.

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