“OU Is Not Your Mother: Demonstrating for Student Rights at Ohio University in 1969,” an evening featuring the photographs and memories of Ohio University and Post alumni Ken Steinhoff and Carol Towarnicky is
Thursday, Oct. 24, at 6 p.m. in Porter 108.
The talk is sponsored by the Ohio University History Association.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ohio University students participated in demonstrations against the war in Vietnam that sometimes included teargas, violence, and the presence of the Ohio National Guard on campus. Ultimately, the killings at Kent State in Ohio and Jackson State College in Mississippi in May 1970 changed everything.
But while women students participated in these demonstrations, their own dress and movements were strictly circumscribed by university rules. In particular, a set of curfews for women limited their use of the library late at night, prevented them from fully participating in student government or simply going out for a cup of coffee with a friend. The rules seem ludicrous now, but these so-called “women’s hours” were no joke: violating them could imperil one’s college career.
It was all part of the widely accepted doctrine of in loco parentis, the notion that universities should act in place of parents—but only for women, because females were deemed not quite adult or able to make their own decisions.
So it was not surprising that only a few women dared to attempt leadership roles or do “men’s jobs.” This was before the title Ms., when a woman was defined typically by her relationship (or lack of one) to a man and—not surprisingly—before women had the right to choose abortion.
In 1969, women and men students demanded that the university treat women as grownups. They engaged in “civil disobedience,” staying out past their curfews and demonstrated at a meeting of the Ohio U Board of Trustees. They weren’t immediately successful but they started to think about things differently and that was the beginning of one of the most far-reaching societal changes in our lifetimes.
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