Tuesday, May 27, 1975
The first class coeducational class graduates from Providence College
“And Commencement Day.
“Standing for endless hours while the class order was arranged … finding who your partner was … getting those hoods on right … walking through the pathway past the library and in back of Aquinas to the stares of thousands of eyes … sweltering heat … the powerful music … soda cans passed up and down the rows not to drink, heaven forbid, but to press upon hot foreheads! … sunburns … sunburns in the shape of a small triangle on your breastbone just where the neckline of the gowns ended … diploma-less books … the spontaneous cheers when the first ‘she’ finally graduated … the ever-droning speakers … a witty Father Peterson … a guest from Firestone and no female speaker … and Bishop Gelineau reminding Father Peterson that as long as ‘your bishop says there will be no rain, there will be no rain; have commencement in the Grotto and skip Alumni Gym …’ Finlandia strains filled the air. Some of us took off our caps and the sea of black robes moved out … alumni.”
Ana Margarita cabrera ’75 and ann frank ’75 in the veritas yearbook
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The speaker was Richard A. Riley ’41, ’69Hon., president and chief executive officer of Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. His talk, “Soul’s Journey,” concerned the future of America and its free enterprise system. Quoting from Ulysses, he urged graduates “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Honorary degrees were awarded to two women — Dorothy Maynor Rooks, concert soprano and executive director of the Harlem School for the Arts, and Mildred F. Jefferson, M.D., Boston surgeon and right-to-life advocate — but no woman spoke from the stage.
Also receiving honorary degrees were Clarence C. Walton, the first lay president of The Catholic University of America; Clarence H. Gifford, board chair of Rhode Island Hospital Trust National Bank; and Michael A. Monti, president of the Rhode Island Bar Association.
The Class of 1975 included 239 women and 477 men, according to the Office of Institutional Research. It didn’t take long for that balance to shift. The Class of 1983, which began studies in September 1979, was the first in which women outnumbered men, 459-432. It’s been the same ever since, with women now making up about 54 percent of the student body.
Commencement took place at the War Memorial Grotto, built in 1948 to honor the 69 alumni who died fighting in World War II. In 1990, the façade was reduced in scale to one third of its original size, and in 2001, the new St. Dominic Chapel opened on the site.
The Class of 1975 commencement was the last to be held on campus for 46 years. In 1976, the event moved indoors to the Providence Civic Center, later known as the Dunkin’ Donuts Center and now the Amica Mutual Pavilion. In May 2021, an outdoor commencement was held at Hendricken Field on campus due to the pandemic.
Despite worries about rain, the morning was sunny — and humid. The temperature reached a high of 83 degrees.
Dances (along with a picnic, a boat ride, an awards ceremony, a Baccalaureate Mass, and Parents’ Night) took place in the days before commencement. The top Billboard hit was Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Shining Star.”
Providence College will never be the same. Now fully coed, the school will never have to prepare itself for another onslaught like the one ‘when the girls come.’ No other woman student of this college will ever have to question her standing, or debate her right to be a fully accepted part of the Providence College community, as did the women of the Class of 1975.
patricia slonina vieira ’75 in the veritas yearbook
