User:Olee123/Parietal Rules at Radcliffe College

Parietal rules refer to a campus’s set of regulations regarding dormitory room visits between members of the opposite sex. The first use of this term “parietal,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, comes from the 1837 Harvard College handbook. Parietal rules existed throughout United States college campus, mainly before the 1970s, and were present at both Radcliffe and Harvard until 1969, at which point the university ended the rules and instituted co-residency in 1972.

Background
Harvard’s parietal rules outlined residential guidelines and etiquette for room orderliness, as well as prohibited men from hosting unescorted female guests in dormitories and clubhouses. Students were to obtain special permission to receive female guests, and women could only be hosted between 1pm and 7pm. Radcliffe’s parietal rules were similar to those of Harvard, with men not being permitted in female dormitories during certain hours, and parietal hours needed to be approved by a majority of the dormitory. Some recommendations suggested that women not bring men into dormitories beyond the first floor sitting rooms, but the Radcliffe Redbook permitted male guests. While men were required to be signed in and out by their hostesses, there did not exist the same level of attention to unattended male guests as with unescorted female guests. Radcliffe women were afforded different rights than Harvard men in other areas – women were not allowed access to Lamont Library until 1967, and were not invited to join Harvard seniors in Commencement procession until 1970. Though Radcliffe began awarding women degrees in 1963, it was not fully integrated with Harvard until 1999.

Similar Rules at Other Colleges
Parietal Rules enjoyed a long history at other all-female institutions, as well as all-male institutions and coed institutions, up until around the 1960s and 70’s. During this time period, parietal rules were closely related to ideas of in loco parentis, or the idea that the college should act as a guiding parental and restrictive force upon students during the college years. By 1962, the students of Vassar College, an all female school, began defying the informal ‘open door policy’ espoused by their college. At Columbia, an all-male school until 1983, men were only allowed female guests between 2pm and 5pm on alternating Sundays. The history of Luther College, similarly, includes a section on parietal rules: “At Luther College the faculty had the responsibility for the rules of student life, so the consideration of parietal rules was a large part of the agenda of faculty meetings in the 1960’s”. In the end, all responsibilities for student life were removed from the College Bylaws. At Cornell, regulations were relaxed for junior and senior women starting in 1966. “We don’t ask what they do and what they don’t do” said the assistant dean for residence halls. In 1968, students at the University of Georgia fomented an overnight sit-in, demanding later curfew hours and the ability for undergraduate women to drink over the age of 21 on campus. However, regardless of the enrollment status of the university, parietal rules often did not disappear until full coed enrollment appeared on campuses. In the present day, certain religiously-affiliated campuses, including Notre Dame (Catholic) and BYU (Mormon) retain ‘visiting hours’ systems, which stipulate guidelines about when students of the opposite sex can visit each other's rooms. While they ostensibly apply to both genders equally, these can be seen as a modern iteration of parietal rules on campus.

Beginning
It is unclear exactly when parietal rules were imposed, or if there was a time at Harvard or Radcliffe before they existed, but one of the earliest records of these rules is from the Annual Report of the President of Harvard University to the Overseers for the academic year of 1825-1826, which references Parietal Board meetings attended by faculty members. In 1891, when the administration of Harvard College was undergoing many changes, the Office of the Regent at Harvard was given the additional responsibility of being chairman of the Parietal Board. The earliest archived copy of Harvard’s parietal regulations dates from 1940, and includes strict guidelines regarding when women can visit and specifies that a student must request permission from a tutor or House Master (in the case of upperclassmen) or a proctor or Dean (in the case of freshmen) to have a female visitor and they must be chaperoned. In 1952, the rules were rewritten by the House Masters to be slightly more lenient and give male and female students the opportunity to “enjoy each other’s company, in a quiet, private place”. Radcliffe’s President reports don’t reference parietal rules or a parietal board, likely because the rules were determined and enforced within the residential house system; each dormitory’s hours would be registered with and overseen by the Radcliffe Government Association and the House Heads rather than the administration. Surviving records of Radcliffe’s parietal rules date from the early 1960s, when in some ways they were actually less strict than Harvard’s rules, including in that they didn’t require a chaperone or permission to have a guest, and the hours during which they could entertain a guest were more lenient. However, in 1963, controversy about the parietal rules rocked Harvard and Radcliffe, leading to some recommendations for stricter regulations.

1963 Controversy
In 1963, rowdy parties after football games caused Boston newspapers to write headlines about “sex orgies” at Harvard. This led Harvard Deans Monro and Watson to speak out against a “loose moral situation” at Harvard, discussing concerns about the laxness of the parietal rules themselves as well as of their enforcement and proposing an overhaul of the rules. This led to a divide at Harvard and Radcliffe, including within the student body. Many students were upset by what they saw as moral policing, which they felt was inappropriate on the university’s part and would never be accepted if it were instead framed as controlling students’ religious or political beliefs. However, Dean Monro15 and his supporters argued that freedom of sexual intercourse is not legally protected in the same way as freedom of religious or freedom of speech, and should be restricted because “unrestricted sexual behavior has always led, and still leads, to undesirable consequences for society and for the individuals involved”. In response, those against stricter parietal rules argued that responsible sexual activity is not the same as “unrestricted sexual behavior”, and that Dean Monro’s views were offensive and lacking in nuance. In the end, parietal rules were made slightly stricter and their enforcement was rejuvenated, even in the face of increasing frustration from students, which would continue to escalate over the course of the 1960s.

Sexual Assault at Radcliffe
Parietal rules were thought to be instrumental in decreasing raucous party behavior, public scandal, and relatedly, instances of sexual assault. However, sexual assault was prevalent at Radcliffe, though unrecognized as such, despite the existence of parietal regulations. There were few on campus resources for coping with sexual assault, so speaking with the police was often women’s only option, and peers tended to discourage against doing so. As campus awareness of sexual assault grew in the 1970s, and as women integrated more fully into the Houses, student support groups and feminist organizations became more prominent.

Discontinuation of Parietal Rules
Changes in the enforcement of parietal rules were motivated in large part by the larger context of the sexual revolution. Around the United States, a variety of arguments were made for the discontinuation of parietal regulations. At Radcliffe, students argued that the parietal regulations imposed a structure designed to “check up on their social lives,” with one student remarking that the restrictions were “just like high school." Harvard men made similar arguments. In 1952, Robert Marsh, Ed.D. ’51 wrote to the Alumni Bulletin of Harvard Magazine that “If a man is old enough to be an officer in the armed forces and die in Korea, he is old enough to be left alone with a girl after dark. ” In conservative Kansas, a student responsibility movement opposed parietal rules on the basis that women students should be treated like adults. In contrast, arguments in favor of parietal rules at Harvard and Radcliffe centered on the necessity of the school administration asserting authority over its students’ moral lives and character. Throughout the 1960s, parietal rules were enforced in the Harvard and Radcliffe dormitories. However, enforcement of the regulations was breaking down toward the late 1960s. A 1969 poll by the Radcliffe Union of Students illustrated that 95 percent of Radcliffe women supported co-residential dorms. In the spring of 1970, 150 Harvard men and 150 Radcliffe women agreed to switch dormitories in the colleges’ first experiment in co-ed housing. With the institution of full co-residency of all of the dormitories at both Harvard and Radcliffe in 1972, parietal rules became obsolete.

Legacy
A continued legacy of parietal regulations, after the integration of housing, has been the Harvard administration’s resistance to providing access to gender-neutral suites within dormitories. This policy continued until 2014 when mixed-gender rooming became accessible in all of the Harvard Houses.