By Nancy A. Olson
My journey to Windham College began with an F in eleventh grade English, my favorite subject since I first learned to read. Because I didn’t like the teacher, I decided I would show her by not doing any work. At the age of seventeen, I had a very fuzzy understanding of how actions relate to consequences, so I was surprised and outraged when I received my final report card of the year and had to go to summer school. Furthermore, I didn’t realize that I would be applying to college with an F in my purported major. My high school guidance counselor showed no interest in helping me, and my parents weren’t sure how to help. Seeing no other option, I applied to the colleges where all the other girls in my Virginia high school were applying—to women’s colleges in Virginia.
In those days, if you were accepted, you received what was known as “the fat letter,” an actual letter stuffed with forms to fill out. If you were rejected, you received “the thin letter.” I applied to five colleges. I received five thin letters.
As you can imagine, my parents were frantic. They wanted me to go to college, and they were willing (bless them) to scrounge up the money to pay for it. I wanted to go to college—I have always liked school. My fate seemed sealed, however. I decided I wouldn’t go to college. In desperation, my father asked me, “Nancy, if you could go to college anywhere in the United States, where would you want to go?”
I wanted out of Virginia, to go back North. I have no other reason for what I said next: “Oh, Dad, I don’t know—Vermont!”
My mother read four daily newspapers, and one weekly, “The National Observer,” where shortly after my comment, she saw an ad that read as follows: “We’re building a college in Putney, Vermont, where the misfit fits,” the text wrapped around a photo of the Edward Durell Stone-designed campus as envisioned. Unbeknownst to me, my parents sent for the college catalogue.
I say as a joke, but it’s not far from the truth, that the acceptance letter arrived with the catalog. I filled out the application, mailed it in, and was accepted. I was thrilled.
As my mother drove my dad and me in our Volkswagen bus into Putney that day in early September 1965, I was filled with anxious anticipation. The college campuses I had visited in Virginia had existed for decades, their staid brick buildings and manicured green quads redolent of quiet wealth and gentility. I wondered what the Windham College campus would look like.
Soon enough, I found out. After stopping at the administration building on Main Street (it burned down in 1966, I believe was the year), we drove up the hill, turned right onto River Road, then immediately left on a road that led to an oozy grey-clay parking area backed by an extensive grey clay bank, much construction equipment, and two dorms, Aiken (named for Sen. George Aiken) and Frost (named for the poet Robert Frost), perched on the hillside. Freshmen girls were assigned to Aiken in September 1965. I lived on the first floor, first door to the left in the north wing. Our dorm mother was Frances Flaherty Rohr, daughter of Robert Joseph Flaherty, the documentary filmmaker, although I didn’t know that at the time, nor would it have meant anything to me then. Our freshman class, numbering about 500, was the largest class admitted up to this point. Since young men continued to be drafted to fight in Vietnam, college deferments were eagerly sought.
The first two weeks of my freshman year, it rained and rained. The parking lot became a morass of thick grey muck. I had forgotten my shoe caddy containing all my shoes. The only pair I had were the sandals I was wearing on the trip up to Putney. After two days of navigating the ooze in my sandals, I cadged a ride from an upperclassman and bought a pair of sneakers at Sam’s Army-Navy in Brattleboro.
My sophomore year girls were assigned to the third dorm to be built, Hendricks, named for Flora Hendricks, the wife of the Windham College founder and first president, Walter Hendricks. The buildings were well built and pleasant enough to live in.
Students who weren’t assigned to the dorms lived in town in houses which I was told were owned by Mr. Hendricks. All our classes took place in buildings in town, which I was told he also owned. The cafeteria, classrooms, and the infirmary were located in the building called Currier Hall at that time, now called the Dr. Laura Plantz House, apartments owned by Windham & Windsor Housing Trust, on Old Depot Road. There was no sidewalk along Route 5, and no bus service, either public or provided by the college. Freshmen weren’t allowed to have cars on campus. We walked a lot or hitched rides with upper classmen.
I loved my two years at Windham College. The zeitgeist of the place mirrored the social ferment of the time. Every student had a story of how he or she had arrived at Windham. Some, like me, had erratic high school records. The courses I liked I aced; those I didn’t, I squeaked through. Of the transfer students, some had flunked out of their first, second, or sometimes third college. A not insignificant number had started out in prestigious colleges and universities but had been “asked to leave” due to disciplinary infractions: missing curfew, drinking, smoking weed, having an unpermitted “guest” in the room. Windham College offered sanctuary to a host of oppositional-defiant types.
My professors were excellent. As I understood it, they, also, were searching for more freedom, other than the publish-or-perish treadmill of the prestigious colleges where they had been teaching. They were persuaded to take part in this experiment on the hill.
After two years, I transferred to Georgia State University in Atlanta, from which I graduated in 1970 with a B. A. in English. In retrospect, I don’t regret the two very different experiences: a small, private liberal arts college in Vermont; an urban university of, at that time, 17,000 students, in Georgia.
When I started my adult life in 1972, I came back to Putney. The physical beauty of the place, the sense of freedom, of independence, of community, of life on a manageable scale—all were irresistible. I continue to marvel at my good luck in finding Windham College when I did. That F in English has served me well.