Analysis of W&L's
student newspaper
(1960-2013)

When we think of how students' attitudes toward women might come through, one of the first places that might come to mind is the student paper. Washington and Lee's independent newspaper, the Ring-tum Phi, has been published since 1897 with only a brief hiatus during World War II. Throughout time, the Phi has built itself a reputation of being impartial and objective; however, that impartiality and objectivity might not have necessarily reflected today's gendered language principles. Therefore, by looking at how language, and specifically the ways of referring to women evolved in the Ring-tum Phi, we can understand what students' explicit and implicit attitudes toward women were, and how they might have changed.

On the graph below we can see the relative frequencies of each gendered noun used to refer to women across the corpus, for each 5-year time interval between 1960 and 2013 (with the interval 2005-2013 containing 3 extra years and upon the assumption that those years won't really affect the significance of the results). One of the first things that we can see from the graph is that the usage of any female-related noun was pretty minimal before the 1980s, when Washington and Lee first started actively discussing coeducation. Up until some time in the 1970s, the usage of the word "girl" was highest compared to all others. Some time between 1975 and 1980, it evened out with the word "women", and then the usage of "women" drastically spiked until it reached something like a plateau in the early 1990s, with some fluctuations and a mild rise again in the early 2000s. The spike of "women" can be easily explained with the heated discussion of coeducation around 1985: women became more relevant and more recognized by the university's students, faculty, alumni, and administration. The plateau later can potentially be explained through the idea that once Washington and Lee "converted" to coeducation, women settled into the university community and began appearing more or less consistently in campus coverage.

What we see on the graph doesn't directly align with my original theory that more outdated words such as "lady/ladies" and "female/females" will be used more in the years prior to coeducation than, say, "woman/women." However, we can observe that occurrence with the usage of "girl" and "girls", which is higher in frequency that both "woman" and "women" between 1960 and 1970. This is interesting, especially given that admitting women had been studied twice between 1969 and 1975, and might serve to show that there is a difference between discussing women within the context of coeducation and outside of that context. "Girl" and "girls" also spiked in the early 2000s, following a similar pattern as "women." This could be a result of the establishment of most sororities, which happened around that time. The Women's Studies program was also established in the early 2000s.

Below is another visualization from Voyant, which shows us exactly how many times each women-referring noun has been used in the entire corpus of Ring-tum Phi issues, as well as the trend line of the relative frequencies for each term in each document of the corpus. The orange points on the trend line represent the extreme values for each word's frequency: the lowest, the highest, as well as the value for the years 2005-2013. None of the words find their peaks in the 1980s, as might have been expected due to coeducation becoming a pressing subject. "Woman" and "lady" peak in the first half of the 1990s. "Women", "girl", "girls", "female" and "ladies" all peak in the early 2000s. The trend line, however, is not really representative of the exact frequency of usage of each word, but does show fluctuations.

One more useful visualization that may help us understand the usage of various female-related nouns in the Phi is this bubble line plot below. This plot visualizes the frequency and repetition of each term's use in the corpus. Each document in the corpus is represented as a horizontal line and divided into segments of equal lengths. Each term is represented as a bubble, the size of the bubble indicating its frequency in the corresponding segment of text. The larger the bubble's radius, the more frequently the term occurs. From this graph, we can see once again that "girl" and "girls" were used more often than any other female-referring nouns in the 60s. However, in the 70s, things started to shift around. In the 80s, we see that most of the references to women are concentrated in the middle of the century, exactly around the time the coeducation decision was made.

A question that naturally comes up is about the difference between the use of female-related and male-related nouns for the same timespan. How were men discussed in comparison to women, and vice versa? The graph below is the same as the first one we looked at; however, it shows the relative frequency of male-related nouns across the Ring-tum Phi corpus: "man", "men", "boy", "boys", "male", and "males." The visualization also has the trend lines for the female-referring nouns overlaid over the original graph, to show where they stand in comparison to those for male-referring nouns.

Already at first glance, the trend lines in this visualization look very different: there are no steep slopes for any of the terms, unlike what we saw with the word "women." The frequency for each term appears to be relatively consistent across the corpus. Still, there are a couple of interesting observations that can be made. To begin with, the use of the words "man" and "men" prevails over the use of any other male-related noun. If we follow the same logic that was applied to better understand female gendered language, it seems that, in referring to men, the Ring-tum Phi has mostly used masculinity-affirming words, rather than ones suggesting lack of maturity such as "boy" and its plural version. In addition, "man" has been used more often than "men": the exact opposite of what we observed with "woman" and "women." If we look closely enough, we can also see that the relative frequencies on the y axis of both graphs are different: the ones for male-referring nouns reach a value of over 0.0030, twice as much as the ones for female-referring nouns. All of that seems to point to an overarching patriarchal sentiment overpowering the rhetoric of the Phi. However, we do see a slight decline in the usage of both "man" and "men" in the beginning of the 1980s, which perfectly coincides with the rise of coeducation discussions and the spike of the use of "women."

In order to take a closer glimpse of the way women were talked about in the Ring-tum Phi, beyond just the gendered noun count, we can look at specific snippets from each time period. To the left is a snippet from the Phi's November 11, 1960 issue, containing a piece called "A Modest Proposal", written by American writer and humorist Max Shulman. In the 60s, Shulman syndicated a humor column, "On Campus", to over 350 collegiate newspapers, writing about thought-provoking subjects. In "A Modest Proposal", which the Phi published in their November 11, 1960 issue, Shulman ambivalently addresses the issue of coeducation and suggests that women should be allowed to go to college and do college things such as join a sorority, but not allowed to actually attend class and learn. Shulman says he loves women, "the sight and sound of them, the cut of their jibs, their beauty and grace, their cunning little spitcurls, their sleek dimples, their middy blouses, their aura and effluvium." But his sarcastic attitude conveys something typical for that period of time: the mention of women as something not quite essential to higher education, a presence at formal events that is there for men to enjoy, or an entity that is simply there to keep men company. This example helps contextualize the narrative that was established around women in the 60s and 70s, and the fact that words such as "girl" and "girls" were used to refer to women more than other nouns, such as simply "women."

In this next snippet, from January 13, 1970, a Ring-tum Phi writer discusses "Coeducation Week", an event organized by the Washington and Lee Contact Committee back then, which invited 120 girls from surrounding colleges to stay at Washington and Lee for a week and experience the campus. In his article titled "'Contact' sponsors feminine invasion", the writer states that the university's "ancient masculine atmosphere will be broken by the sound of feminine conversation and the sight of mini-skirts" and consistently refers to women as "girls" all throughout his article. He expresses his apprehension that coeducation might become a permanent feature of the Lexington campus, which is a sentiment also discussed in another article on Coeducation Week from the same Phi issue titled "Coeducation: a week now, a reality in the future?" In the 70s, attitudes toward women started to shift; however, we still see a lot of questioning of their place in a college campus, reflected in the words that were used to refer to them.

When Washington and Lee began actively discussing the possibility of coeducation in the early 1980s, a widespread reaction was generated among students, faculty, alumni, and members of the administration. The Ring-tum Phi began vigorously covering the topic and serving as a platform for students especially to share their views. Below are two snippets from the Phi's coeducation coverage - one from May 6 of 1983 and one from October 11 of that same year. In "Coed considered", then-staff writer Nelson Patterson shares the pros and cons that then-president John D. Wilson saw in coeducation. Patterson concludes by saying that "as a scholar sincerely interested in the welfare of a fine academic university, a businessman wary of the declining numbers of college-bound students, and an egalitarian with a keen sensitivity to the potential contribution of women in the intellectual realm, Wilson favors coeducation." This is a good example of the shifting rhetoric of the 80s: women were no longer seen as merely decorative, but as individuals able to contribute to the intellectual realm of the institution, at least by some people.

The other article, "Controversy over coed could damage W&L", from the October 11, 1983 issue of the Phi, presents a rather neutral argument about coeducation and simply discusses how the polarized debate may be destructive for the university. The writer, Scott Mason, says that "a substantial percentage of faculty and staff are in favor of coeducation, while the majority of students are against it." This is important, since the Ring-tum Phi is an independent student newspaper; therefore, the language used within it would be mostly reflective of students' implicit biases.

As already briefly mentioned earlier, the usage of the word "women" reached something like a plateau in the early 1990s and established itself in the language of the Ring-tum Phi. The same can be said for women at Washington and Lee. The first undergraduate class containing women had already graduated from the university by the early 90s. However, with more rights and accomplishments for women, also came more issues such as sexual assault and misconduct. The snippet to the left contains an article about the number of sexual assault cases on campus, published in the Phi's October 4, 1990 issue.

"The walls didn't crumble and there were no protests, despite feminist and writer Susan Faludi's presence on campus last week. I was sure that someone would have had a 'We still don't want girls at W&L unless they are for entertainment purposes only' sign somewhere in the audience." This is how an article from the Ring-tum Phi's April 24th, 2000, issue starts, written (supposedly) by Heather McDonald '01. You can read the full article on the snippet to the right. In the article, the author discusses her takeaways from Susan Faludi's speech, and reasons through her own definition of what it means to be a feminist. She also reminds us that it had then been 15 years since Washington and Lee had gone co-ed. Though 15 years had passed, women at the university were still facing discrimination and animosity. However, they were now active participants in campus life, could express themselves and speak up on various topics such as the Feminist Movement. "Without the Feminist Movement, 40% of the W&L population wouldn't be here. That 40% worked just as hard as the other 60% that is here for the W&L experience," the author says at the end of the article.

Another remarkable thing that happened in the early 2000s is the establishment of the Women's Studies program, which is nowadays a popular specialization among students. The snippet to the left contains an article from the Ring-tum Phi, from then-writer Katie Howell, about the establishment of the program. This was a huge step for women in terms of solifying their presence on Washington and Lee's campus, and definitely generated more conversation, which by itself might have contributed to the peak in use of the word "women" in the early 2000s.

Conclusion

From the analysis of the Ring-tum Phi, we can see that for a really long time, even after being admitted to Washington and Lee, women were not taken seriously. Words that are considered sexist and diminishing such as “lady” and “girl” were used more prominently before the 70s; in the 70s, things started to shift a little when it came to how women were talked about. The use of the word "women" drastically spiked in the 80s, prior to the coeducation decision being made. Still, women continued to face bashing and sexist remarks, even as they started becoming more active within the campus community: joining sororities and starting clubs. Overall, male nouns were still used about twice as much as female nouns all throughout the newspaper.