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T R A DIT I O N S
Dean for a Day
58 PUR D U E A LUMNUS
TOP: JACKIE (BUCHSBAUM)
McCallum (LA’56), Judy (Haig) Mengel (LA’56), and Carolyn (Kellum)
Godfrey (LA’56) served as deans for
one day in 1955.
BOTTOM: HELEN BARR,
assistant dean, Doris Seward,
acting dean of women, and Cecelia
Zissis (LA’49, MS EDU’53), assistant
dean, walked to their classes during
the Dean for a Day program.
PU R DUE A LUMN I A SSO CIATIO N (2 )
In the 1950s and ’60s, the Associated Women
Students — an activity group encompassing all of
Purdue’s women students — held an annual event
known as Dean for a Day, during which students
would switch places with the dean of women and
her assistant deans. The deans would attend classes,
and the students would fulfill the deans’ duties —
joining in meetings, conducting freshman interviews,
appearing at events, and entertaining visitors. The
day before the exchange of responsibilities, the
deans accompanied the students to their classes to
learn the ropes.
Students would campaign for the opportunity, and
the campus would elect a few women to take part in
the dean swap. Jackie (Buchsbaum) McCallum (LA’56)
was chosen to serve as the second assistant dean in
1955 and ran with the slogan, “Vote Jacky, By Quacky.”
During her tenure, she took on the duties of assistant
dean Helen Barr.
“It was an honor to be elected, I suppose, but all
I could think of was that I would miss four classes,
including a test which I wanted to postpone anyway,”
McCallum wrote at the time. “Before the big day
actually arrived, the other newly elected deans and I
got together to appear in a pep rally and to perform
other decanal tasks. We began to practice in our
mirrors those facial expression we deemed appropriate to our offices — stern glances with eyebrows
squeezed together … straightforward looks of innate
intelligence and superiority. And with this self-discipline, we convinced ourselves that if anyone who
wasn’t acquainted with the facts entered the dean’s
office on our Friday, we would surely be mistaken for
the real thing.”
McCallum spent the morning interviewing first-year
students to uncover any difficulties they encountered
in the first few months of school; meeting with staff
from the dean of men’s office; and attending a Veterans Day convocation. Afterward, the bona fide deans
invited the interim deans to lunch, and McCallum
and her cohort were amazed by the role reversal.
“They actually treated us to our meals, pulled out our
chairs, took our coats, did all the other little things we
would normally have expected to do for them,” she
wrote. “After lunch, each of us went to the home of her
respective dean and saw how the ‘other half’ lives. I
was reluctant to go back to the office, but since I was a
working woman, I had obligations to fulfill.”
At the end of her shift, McCallum was presented
with a brass Buddha statue as a memento. “Its sedate,
knowing countenance serves as a daily reminder of
my original notion concerning the essential nature
of deans of women,” she wrote. “No longer are deans
brass idols with no life. And no longer am I merely a
college student with naive notions.” —MARY MONICAL