Ellen Marie Barrett (1972-1975) Small but Notable Moments of Great Unity

I entered General in 1972 and except for Page and Peggy the previous year female seminarians might as well have been beings from another planet. We were older than our classmates and mostly had advanced degrees. The record-setting stratospheric balloonist Jeannette Piccard had been a consultant for NASA, Pauli Murray, who joined us the following year, was a brilliant law professor and civil rights activist as well as a poet. There were writers, teachers, a nurse, another activist who would become the first openly gay or lesbian priest, and (to our amusement) one Sister Columba Gilliss in a religious community, one ex-Sister, Sandy Michaels, and one future Sister (me) none of whom were stereotypical nuns. All strong women ranging from late twenties to seventies, older and more experienced than our male counterparts, we must have been a bit threatening to the established order. Well, we were, but not exactly a regiment of Amazons. Others have named more of us—for which my thanks!!

The faculty were more welcoming than some male students, but there were inevitable awkward moments. One line we could not cross was Fr Wright’s informal Mass class, since we were not to be priests. There were small but notable moments of great unity, as when Jeanette confronted the Rector of Trinity Church and told him it was absurd to forbid women to attend the Trinity Institute Seminarians’ Conference. Another was the Mass where all the women in attendance rose as one at the umpteenth bidding to ‘Pray, brethren, for…’ and departed in dignified silence to lunch. There were opportunities to meet women from other seminaries at General Convention and various conferences.

In retrospect many of the obstacles are amusing including what seemed an alumni obsession with separate toilets. In the first two years women who could not commute were tucked away in rooms with their own plumbing. Commuters had access to one loo by the administrative offices and one whose anteroom former charladies had annexed as their own private sanctum for gossip and tea making. They no longer made beds and cleaned rooms for the ‘young gentlemen’ but were fiercely territorial and glowered at us interlopers. By my Middle year Edson (AKA the North Porch) was allotted to the female of the species. We moved in to discover the urinals modestly boarded over by a plywood confection with an uncanny resemblance to a gradine!

All in all, despite frustrations, swearing, and occasional tears I am glad for my years at General, and especially for the amazing women who were with me.