Towson - Fall 2010

different attitude. “She told me, ‘Your pregnancy is unsightly and you should not subject your classmates and teachers to this,’” Garten recalls.

But Garten never experienced any hostility from peers or professors. “Students and instructors were nice and supportive,” she says. The school year progressed without incident and the shock of being excluded from graduation “happened suddenly at the end,” she notes. Her husband, Herbert Garten, a law student who was in the military reserves, came down from his post in Pennsylvania to plead her case. “But we hit a brick wall,” she says.

Garten and her mother later picked up her diploma, “which was tossed across the desk to me,” she says. “But I didn’t dwell on any of it.”

Her first of five children was soon born. Her husband became a lawyer and Garten would eventually run a jewelry store, Heirloom Jewels, for some 35 years in three different locations around Baltimore. She never became a teacher.

When she recalls Towson, it is with fondness. In fact, she and her husband have raised money for the university and donated antiques to furnish its historic Auburn House.

During one of those recent fundraising meetings, her youngest son, Maury Garten, brought the infamous letter to President Caret’s attention.

And soon an old wrong was made right when the former TU student stood on stage at graduation. ■

Ginny Cook is the editor of Towson.

(Opposite page) On stage at the College of Education’s Commencement in May, Susan Garten receives a standing ovation from the 2010 graduates. (Right) Susan Garten at home and in a 1951 yearbook photo.

We’ve Come a Long Way

In 1951, most drivers still used their hands to signal a left or a right turn—automatic turn signals were an option in cars.

In 1951, a woman’s place was in the home. And a pregnant woman had no place on a graduation stage.

The letter Susan Garten ‘51 received in 1951 makes it clear that a mother-to-be was not welcome at commencement ceremonies. Yet a search of the archives at Towson University failed to unearth any specific policies that prohibited women from participating in graduation if pregnant, or against pregnant students in general.

Librarians and others speculate that perhaps any damning correspondence or policies were purged from the official papers of former presidents or deans, or that procedures were implied—those who lived during the era knew what was expected. After all, discrimination against pregnant and married women had existed for decades and was not unique to Towson.

It wasn’t until 1931 that the Maryland State Board of Education ruled “marriage alone is not sufficient cause for the dismissal of a woman teacher,” according to a Dec. 22, 1931 story in the Baltimore Sun.

Yet even in 1938, Clarinda Har-
riss, TU professor of English, reports
that her mother, Margery Harriss ’ 29,
“pregnant with me, was thrown out
of her public-school teaching job.”
As late as 1974, the Supreme Court
ruled (Geduldig v. Aiello) that
discrimination on the basis of

TU made positive history in the arena of women’s rights by opening a student daycare center in 1972— only the second university daycare center in the country that catered to children of college students.

pregnancy in the workplace did not violate the Constitution. In fact, it would take four more years (1978) until an amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act gave pregnant women insurance benefits, job and seniority protection, and other rights on the job.

Despite banning a pregnant woman from graduating in 1951, TU eventually made positive history in the arena of women’s rights and students with children. In 1972, the TU Student Day Care Center opened with eight children in Newell Hall and at the time was only the second university day care center in the country that catered to children of college students.

Now in a free-standing building on Auburn Drive, the center continues its 38-year tradition of quality care and on-site support for students, faculty, staff and the community.