Class News

Mike Shapiro ‘64’s sister Deborah writes to the YAM

Tony Lavely, 1964 Class Secretary, writes:

On November 14, 2019, Deborah Shapiro, sister of our classmate Mike, who died in 2001, wrote me to see if I could connect her with other classmates in Silliman College so she could learn more about her brother. Her letter to the editor of YAM is not about Mike, per se, but it is very insightful concerning Yale's transition to coeducation.

[See Mike's In Memoriam page.]

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Yale Alumni Magazine, Letters to the Editor

November/December 2019

Yale College’s first women

I read your articles on coeducation with fascination. My father (’34) and my brother Mike (’64) were Yale alumni, so when Yale College announced in 1969 that it would accept women as freshman and transfer students, my father urged me to apply to transfer. I did not apply for a variety of reasons, not least the feeling that I would face hostility if I went to Yale. Reading the article showed me that at least the women who responded to your questions overcame the obstacles and benefited greatly from their Yale education, but also reminded me that no one should have to endure what some of these women describe.

In 1974, I came to Yale as a graduate student. I was the only woman in my ancient-history seminar, which was taught by a visiting professor from Cornell, a former track runner who liked to praise the strength of Greek warriors. In class there was a constant undercurrent of remarks about the place of women in the world of work, with an implication that women should just stay home. But I had visited the Grove Street Cemetery and noticed the family plots with the small, sad headstones of two or even three children in the same family who all died during the same week, undoubtedly from an epidemic, and realized that before the availability of modern medical treatments like antibiotics and vaccines, women needed to bear many children in order to ensure that some would survive to adulthood.

So the next time the subject of women’s work came up in the seminar, I made the point that since the population could now maintain itself with a low birth rate and the need for physical strength was no longer a factor in most jobs, there was no reason why women should not work alongside men in every job and profession. To his credit, the professor complimented me on my reasoning and stopped needling me about working. He even gave me tips about running when he saw me doing laps in the gym, though not before blowing past me on the track to prove that he could still run faster than a woman half his age.

Deborah Shapiro ’75Grd
New York, NY