Doris Crozier
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Before Kenyon
Doris Crozier earned her BA from Trinity College and MA in Anthropology at New York University. She then served as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Western Connecticut College. She also served as assistant to the President of Chatham College.
Association with Kenyon
Crozier was the first and only Dean of Women from 1969-1972. As Dean of the Coordinate College, she hoped that it would develop it’s own traditions separate from Kenyon. She helped add women faculty and administration to the Kenyon community. Doris Crozier, along with members of Kenyon Administration, was hesitant about the idea of making Kenyon immediately co-educational. Crozier felt that while the Coordinate College should remain separate, the regulations would remain the same as those of Kenyon.
The Coordinate College consisted of four dorms and one dining room. Crozier resigned when Kenyon decided to become fully co-educational. In 1981 she received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Kenyon.
Remembering Doris
Students were very fond of her.
“Within a week or ten days she knew every one of us by name and no matter how busy she was or no matter what she as doing if you were walking along Middle Path or you saw her in one of the buildings or whatever, she’d always stop to talk to you and see how you were doing.”
-Michelle Marion VonVoris K‘69
The Crozier Center for Women was established in 1985 and named in her honor.
In Her Own Words
“I personally always felt that coordination was a transitional step at Kenyon, that coeducation would have to come about. I feel it would have been more chaotic here if we'd jumped right into a coeducational situation. For a while the women's rules, established in the Coordinate Council, were more lenient than the men's regarding such things as parietals. The Coordinate Council provided women the medium for growth. My feeling was that the women would have been engulfed by men's organizations. My idea was to establish identity for the women. They seemed so willing to let themselves be subordinated by the men. I think the women established their identity by proving individual excellence. The men gradually began to accept them. The move to coeducation was not prompted by any single event, but instead emerged as an inevitable fact. The Coordinate College died a natural death.”
-Doris Crozier, 1979 interview
