Ford Foundation Studies Wellesley Extra Curricular Activities Life

Wellesley girls, a usually easy going group given more to worry over sign outs than studies last year started keeping exceptionally close track of exactly how they spent their time. Each day for six weeks they carefully went up to a little chart and to tailed up how many hours they spent studying, sleeping, and attending classes. They noted how much time they had spent working at jobs, how much time they had spent on exercise. Then they handed in the little charts, and the Ford Foundation for the Advancement of Education picked up the sheets and started tabulating a study of extracurricular activities at Wellesley.

Last week, the first results of the report were released to Wellesley under graduates.

"Without undue optimism we can say that this study has been heartening," a member of a faculty committee on the study said. "The report gives an overall impression of an alive, alert, loyal body of students who on the whole are finding outlets for their energies and interests. There appears to be no strong undercurrent of apathy or frustration."

Improvement

"But we can improve ourselves. The situation is not one calling or revolution, but rather one that demands ingenuity."

The Ford Foundation charts went out to both alumna of the classes of '49 and '51 and undergraduates, as the pollsters attempted to find out how much the Wellesley outlook had changed after graduation. Over 90 percent of the student body completed the report, while 65 percent of the alumni turned in charts.

The report was primarily concerned with the reasons girls go out extracurricular activities; in what importance they are held, and what changes would come over extracurricular life if a girl could go through school again.

"The present Wellesley student wants to meet many sorts of people easily, to deal with them cordially and justly and to make friends with them, to communicate with them effectively, and to enjoy the whole process. After her graduation she shifts her emphasis only a little. She put fun and enjoyment' a little higher on the scale of values than before. Perhaps she become more practical in the work day world; perhaps she has learned the conditions for democratic action in college were so taken for granted as to be overlooked by many and undervalued by more."

The problem of extracurricular life at Wellesley, "if it can be called a problem" is one of seeing if there are ways in which the "extracurricular life can be given sharper direction to provide maximum values and satisfaction for more students."

The students did complain about their early freshman orientation procedures--about half asked that they be repeated in the freshman and sophomore year. At the same time they called for better activities over the weekend. The student questionnaire offered a list of suggestions--and the highest response went to "really good place to dance informally," either Friday or Saturday nights. The girls also asked for more weekend concerts, more rooms with phonographs and good records, and more movies on campus.

The report ends with a defense of the liberal arts college for girls. "We believe that more academic work of a valuable sort can be accomplished by a majority of the students, in such a college than in a coeducational college and without loss of association with men--that is if the location is right."

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the whole study was the student response. Most such studies usually bring apathetic results at girls schools, according to pollsters. But at Wellesley it was different.

"It really surprised me," one junior said. "Every girl I knew really kept an honest day to day record. I suppose that's because we were all anxious to see what we did with our time."

"But here's one thing that bothers me. I kept a record of everything I did every day and I never came near 24 hours. And neither did anyone else. I can't understand where that time went."