


































 

 

Joe Ball Takes Up the Piano:Curriculum, Extracurricular Activities, and the 

Formation of Gender at Riverside Junior College, 1929-1941 
 

Margaret A. Nash 

University of California, Riverside 

 

Abstract 

 

This article examines gender dynamics on 

a junior college campus in southern California 

during the Great Depression. Historians have 

argued that there was a “crisis of masculinity” 

due to widespread unemployment. This article 

examines references to gender in student 

newspapers and the yearbook and concludes that 

because students were concerned with raising the 

status of their college, and because far more men 

than women students attended, the marking of 

gender differences was less acute. 

 

Male students at Riverside Junior College 

did not seem to mind too much when female 

students smoked cigarettes, formed a rifle club, or 

ran the student newspaper. But when women 

consistently trounced men in their grade points, or 

when students heard that women elsewhere ran 

the student government and wore slacks to 

campus, they drew a line. “Are we men or are we 

mice?” male students demanded in the student 

newspaper, implicitly acknowledging a process of 

defining gender ([Mueda?] 1938). The decade of 

the 1930s marks a significant period of transition 

in gender relationships in the United States. 

Women had won the right to vote just a decade 

prior, and increasing numbers of women took on 

high profile positions in business, government, 

and academe. More women and men went to 

college in the 1930s than had ever gone before 

and national media trumpeted women‟s 

engagement in education for the sake of civic 

participation (Nash and Romero 2012). At the 

same time, the nation along with much of the 

world was plunged into an economic Depression. 

During times of transition, conservative norms 

often are held on to all the more tightly, and 

particularly so in times of economic stress 

(McComb 2006). Old and new concepts of 

appropriate gender roles often exist side by side. 

Yet sharp distinctions of gender can be blunted 

when local situations make other concerns more 

prominent.  

In this article I examine gender roles 

during the 1930s on one junior college campus in 

southern California. At Riverside Junior College, 

the local context was one in which students 

wanted to be taken seriously as college students, a 

status difficult to achieve when their institution 

was named a junior college, and when they 

shared a campus with a high school. 

Approximately half of Riverside Junior College‟s 

students had graduated from that high school, 

underlining all the more their desire to distinguish 

the college from the secondary school. I argue 

that because students as a group were concerned 

with raising the status of their junior college, and 

because throughout the decade far more men than 

women students attended the college, the marking 

of gender differences was less acute here than on 

other college campuses. 

Historians have documented cultural shifts 

from the nineteenth century Victorian ideal of 

masculinity, one defined by character, honor, and 

duty, to a Modern ideal of masculinity, defined by 

personality and youthfulness and achieved by 

participation in consumer culture (Pendergast 

1997, Kimmel 2006, Mosse 1996). This Modern 

ideal of masculinity is especially visible on 

college campuses through the fraternity system 



 

15 

 

(Syrett 2009). At the same time, historians have 

written about the Depression era as a period of a 

“crisis of masculinity.” Widespread 

unemployment meant that men were no longer 

able “to prove manhood by providing for their 

families,” and many men felt “deep humiliation” 

at being “impotent patriarchs” (Kimmel 2006, 

128, 132-33). According to this view, when 

masculinity is in crisis, men work to shore up 

their sinking status by enacting more polarized 

versions of manhood, effectively defining 

themselves as men more sharply against an 

extreme construction of femininity (Hoganson 

1998). An examination of a college campus 

during this time, then, might reveal men‟s 

hostility toward women invading a space 

perceived to belong to men, or engaging in 

curricular or extracurricular activities seen as 

fitting only for men. None of this was the case at 

Riverside Junior College, where the student 

newspaper reveals men wishing for a larger 

female enrollment, and celebrating women‟s 

accomplishments on and off campus. 

To what extent, then, was there a crisis of 

masculinity among this population of students? 

Historian Judith A. Allen notes that there 

apparently were “regular crises in masculinity” 

throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth 

centuries, and asks whether masculinity is 

“doomed… to be in constant crisis” (Allen 2002, 

202). If “crises” were familiar, how did that affect 

notions of gender for students? Allen also asks 

whether “the prospects of class division and 

conflict” might modify gender relations that in 

other situations might be oppressive to women 

(Allen 2002, 202). At Riverside Junior College, 

the overarching project of improving the status of 

the college as a way to launch or sustain students‟ 

entrée into the middle class may have ameliorated 

an emphasis on shoring up extreme gender 

identities.  

There is little research on the construction 

of gender identity on college campuses during 

this period. Much of the research on masculinity 

on campuses has largely focused on fraternities, 

and none of that research focuses on the 1930s 

(Syrett 2009, Phillips, Brown and Parks 2005). 

Some research has been done on higher education 

for women, but most of it has been on issues of 

access or on institutional development, or 

examines periods before or after, but not during, 

the 1930s (Manekin 2010, Eisenmann, Higher 

Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945-

1965 2006, Gordon 1990, Solomon 1985, 

Horowitz 1984). In addition, much research has 

tended to gravitate to elite institutions–the Ivy 

League colleges, or major public and private 

research universities (Eisenmann, Reconsidering 

a Classic: Assessing the History of Women's 

Higher Education a Dozen Years after Barbara 

Solomon 1997).  

I chose to study Riverside Junior College 

in a small city in an agricultural region in 

southern California. Because junior colleges (later 

called community colleges) drew largely from the 

local population, they are more likely to reflect 

norms held by the broader community rather than 

just the collegiate culture. California classified its 

junior colleges in this decade as part of the 

secondary school system; restricted by law from 

having dormitories or fraternities and sororities, 

some of the means by which students on other 

campuses formed social groups and relationships 

and established norms of gendered behavior, were 

not available to students at the junior colleges. 

Students found other ways to establish gender 

roles, such as through competition for grades and 

limiting women‟s involvement in student 

government. Yet overall, although students 

publicly commented on gender through the pages 

of their student newspaper, campus life included 

multiple opportunities for women that were not 



 

16 

 

available at other colleges. Junior colleges, still 

relatively new types of institutions in the 1930s, 

appealed to a much larger section of the 

population than did the elite liberal arts colleges, 

and helped fill the “unprecedented demand for 

higher education . . . as a symbol of economic and 

social mobility” (Levine 1987, 21). At Riverside 

Junior College, negotiation of gender identity and 

gender roles existed in the context of a “culture of 

aspiration” for the white middle class (Levine 

1987). 

 This study is based on two primary 

archival sources: the student newspaper, The 

Arroyo, and the campus yearbook, the 

Tequesquite, during the Depression years of 

1929-1941 at Riverside Junior College (RJC). 

The newspaper reflects multiple voices and 

perspectives. Most students stayed at RJC only 

one or two years, and by the mid-1930s 

newspaper editors held their positions for only 

one quarter, so one voice never dominated, or 

could never dominate for long. The newspaper 

staff consisted of a dozen or more students each 

year and other students frequently wrote letters to 

the editor, resulting in many points of view in the 

newspaper. The editors also exchanged ideas with 

other campuses; hundreds of two- and four-year 

colleges sent reciprocal copies of newspapers all 

over the country. RJC editors ran columns 

variously called “Elsewhere,” or “Tidbits,” or 

other titles that identified snippets of news culled 

from these other sources. What those columnists 

chose to include in the paper reveals another layer 

of local interests. In all these ways, the student 

newspaper can be a proxy, albeit an imperfect 

one, for multiple perspectives on campus life. 

 The following sections detail various 

prisms through which gender dynamics appear. 

First, the institutional ambition many people held 

for raising the “junior” college to the status of a 

regular college depended on the success of all 

students. Therefore, the newspaper praised both 

women and men for their successes, which 

brought prestige to the school. However, writers 

for the student newspaper routinely made 

academic achievement a competition between 

men and women. In fact, the newspaper often 

referred to gender; the next two sections look at a 

range of ways gender came up in the paper, from 

curricular choices to student behavior, 

extracurricular activities, and student leadership. 

Finally, this paper delves into the story of the 

women‟s rifle club, the Reserve Officers Training 

Corps (R.O.T.C.), and the student peace 

movement, all of which bring to the fore a vibrant 

mix of activism and concepts of gender. 

 

Gender and Institutional Aspirations 

 Riverside Junior College, founded in 

1916, grew out of a 1907 state law that allowed 

high schools to offer the first two years of 

college-level courses. When RJC opened, 

therefore, it was housed in the same building as 

the Polytechnic High School. In 1917 the state 

legislature allowed the establishment of separate 

junior colleges in high school districts, and by 

1930 there were thirty-five junior colleges in the 

state. At Riverside, the college held classes in the 

high school building, one principal served both 

institutions, and both institutions were governed 

by the same board of directors. By 1924 RJC had 

two of its own buildings, and a third opened in 

1932. Even then, the college still shared the same 

campus with the high school; students at the two 

institutions shared the auditorium, the 

gymnasium, the grounds, and the vocationally 

oriented equipment, as well as the principal and 

Board (Jiminez and Johnson 1981, Brint and 

Karabel 1989). This arrangement was common in 

California, where 75 percent of junior colleges 

shared buildings with high schools in the 1930s 

(Brint and Karabel 1989). This association with 



 

17 

 

high schools plagued junior college students who 

wanted to use the institution as a launching point 

into an upwardly mobile life. 

 The city of Riverside, the county seat, had 

a population of almost 35,000 in 1940; 3,200 

were foreign born (of whom about 1,500 were 

Mexican), 880 were African American, 750 were 

Native American, and 220 were of Japanese 

descent (Sixteenth Census of the United States: 

1940; Population 1943). Student enrollment at 

RJC in the 1930s ranged from 544 in 1930-31 to 

817 in 1937-38, ranking in the middle in terms of 

size of California junior colleges (Jiminez and 

Johnson 1981, Enrollment Puts Riverside Tenth 

1935). Most of the RJC students were white, as 

were most of the inhabitants of Riverside, 

although there also were Hispanic, Japanese, 

Native American, and some years Filipino 

students (Rabin 1968, Transfers From North, 

South, East, and West 1934, Graduates of 

Sherman Aided 1935, Sherman Institute 

Represented By 14 Students 1939). A few foreign 

students also attended RJC during the Depression, 

coming from Columbia, Germany, Japan, 

Mexico, and the Philippines (Students From 18 

States Enrolled 1931, Students Enrolled From 

Many States; Japan Represented 1933). Initially 

tuition-free throughout the state, the legislature 

gave local boards of education the option to 

charge tuition for the junior colleges during the 

Depression. The RJC board declined, choosing 

instead to remain as accessible as possible 

(Jiminez and Johnson 1981). 

Throughout the 1930s, men students 

outnumbered women, sometimes by as wide a 

margin as two to one. Women, however, had 

higher graduation rates (Student Enrollment Sets 

New Figure 1931, Jaysee Women Graduates 

Outnumber Men 1933, Women In Minority As 

Quarter Ends 1937, Total Enrollment Under Last 

Year's 1939). Year after year the student 

newspaper pondered the question of why men so 

outnumbered women, as this disparity was unique 

to RJC and did not occur on other Southern 

California junior college campuses, or in the local 

high school from which about half of the students 

came. The reason usually posited was that RJC 

was an athletic powerhouse and therefore drew 

more men students. Men who might not otherwise 

go to college came to RJC to be part of its reign 

of “athletic supremacy” (Transfers From North, 

South, East, and West 1934, Graduates of 

Sherman Aided 1935, Jiminez and Johnson 

1981). These two factors may have played a large 

role in the formation of gender roles on the 

campus. Men‟s predominance was assured by 

virtue of their much higher enrollments, and the 

masculinity, at least of the male athletes, was 

vindicated frequently at sporting events. 

Therefore, men may have felt far less need to 

assert themselves in other ways.  

Junior colleges served multiple functions. 

They prepared students for specific vocations, and 

they provided the first two years of coursework 

for four-year colleges and universities. The latter 

function was the origin of the name, as the first 

two years of undergraduate coursework were 

“junior” to the “senior” or upperclass work. 

Junior colleges allowed students to get basic 

courses out of the way at a less expensive 

institution, and often one that was much closer to 

home. The cooperative program, in which 

students alternated getting credit for working in 

an industry with taking a term of coursework, is 

an example of the vocational aspect, and RJC was 

the first in the state to do this (Jiminez and 

Johnson 1981, Brint and Karabel 1989). In 1931-

32, for instance, coop students prepared for work 

as aircraft mechanics, forestry researchers, nurses, 

and librarians (New Success for Co-ops 1931, 

Brint and Karabel 1989).  



 

18 

 

Many students attended RJC with the 

intention of transferring to a four-year college or 

university, and many did so with great success. 

The student newspaper commented frequently on 

this goal, and reported proudly on female and 

male former RJC students who went on to greater 

glory. In the fall of 1931, nearly 60 former RJC 

students were enrolled at the University of 

California at Berkeley, and the previous spring, 

21 former RJC students had graduated from 

Berkeley. Other former RJC students had gone on 

to UCLA, Stanford, and Occidental College, their 

“splendid records” demonstrating the “excellent 

foundation” provided by RJC (State University 

Draws J. C. Grads 1931, University Head 

Compliments J.C. 1931). In 1933, 28 RJC 

students transferred to UCLA, 21 to Berkeley, 8 

to the University of Southern California, and 7 to 

the Stanford School of Nursing, along with two 

dozen others who transferred to half a dozen 

different out-of-state colleges (UCLA Claims 

Most Jaysee Transfers 1933). In 1937, 17 RJC 

graduates enrolled in Stanford (Graduates Sustain 

Creditable Record 1937). RJC apparently filled 

the function well of preparing students for four-

year colleges. 

Students knew that the moniker “junior” 

had a pejorative sound in many people‟s ears, and 

sharing a campus with the high school didn‟t 

help, so with a tinge of defensiveness they touted 

their accomplishments. “Our record stands as 

evidence of the ability of junior college graduates 

to take their places among students of higher 

institutions, with credit and even honor to 

themselves and the junior college,” noted one 

article (Our Phi Beta Record 1931, 2). When first-

year student Agnes Coleman won a national 

writing contest and a scholarship to Drake 

University in Iowa, The Arroyo reported that she 

received “congratulations from well known 

journalism instructors of leading colleges and 

universities in the east” (J.C. freshman Receives 

Journalism Scholarship 1933, 3). The newspaper 

was proud that Josephine Brown, who was the 

Arroyo business manager in 1932-33, went on to 

the University of Southern California and became 

office manager of the Daily Trojan there 

(Graduate Made Officer Manager of S.C. Trojan 

1933, 4). When a former RJC student was a 

headline speaker at the California Medical 

Association for his discovery of the link between 

heart disease and diet, the event made the front 

page of the student newspaper (Former J.C. 

Student Cited For Discovery 1938). The 

newspaper also proudly touted the 

accomplishments of artist Mine Okubo, graduate 

of RJC and Berkeley, who won a fellowship to 

study art in Italy (M. Okubo Earns Henicke 

Award 1938). Dissatisfaction with the “junior” 

nomenclature grew throughout the decade. By 

1938, Los Angeles Junior College changed its 

name to Los Angeles City College, and many 

RJC students, faculty, and administrators hoped 

to make a similar change ('Junior College' 

Criticized At Meeting Of Administrators 1938, 

Change of College Name Again Proposed 1939). 

Riverside‟s Board of Education did not approve 

the name change until June, 1945, when, with a 

huge influx of new students, RJC became 

Riverside College (Jiminez and Johnson 1981). 

The success of both female and male 

students was critical to the campaign to garner 

more respect for junior colleges. The student 

newspaper lauded former RJC students who 

succeeded, and celebrated the forensic skills of 

current female students. The newspaper regularly 

reported on accomplishments of women in the 

world, as well as those of former RJC women 

students. For instance, the newspaper noted that 

Mary E. Woolley, president of Mount Holyoke 

College, was “the only woman member” of the 

American Disarmament Commission appointed 



 

19 

 

by President Hoover (Other Colleges 1937). 

Guest speakers invited to campus included 

Marguerite Harrison, former secret service agent, 

international newspaper correspondent, and 

author (Mrs. Harrison Banquet Speaker 1937). 

The newspaper, then, touted the accomplishments 

and encouraged the success of women on and off 

campus. Yet, as we will see, when women 

outperformed men, some students expressed 

unease. Women could succeed, but when their 

success overshadowed men‟s, it raised concerns, 

at least in a tongue-in-cheek manner. 

One recurring topic that always became 

about gender was grades. Each term when the 

students who had earned spots on the Honor Roll 

were named, The Arroyo headline almost always 

commented on whether males or females had 

performed the best. The students with the highest 

grade point averages had earned their status 

through individual achievement, to be sure, but, at 

least as far as The Arroyo writers were concerned, 

those individuals also achieved on behalf of their 

gender. Many articles made clear that there was a 

contest going on, friendly or not. This was 

especially clear when the headline emphasized 

only one part of the story. “Men Head Women In 

Grade Average For Quarter,” proclaimed a 

headline in January of 1933. If one read the story, 

one would know that, in fact, a woman earned the 

highest grades, more women than men were on 

the honor roll even though the student body was 

comprised of more men than women, and men‟s 

average points were only slightly ahead of 

women‟s (Men Head Women in Grade Average 

for Quarter 1933). The following year a headline 

read “One Woman Only in Highest Six;” the 

story reported that “for the first time in many 

years,” men earned five of the top six places on 

the honor roll (Two Students Tie for Highest 

Grade Points; One Woman Only in Highest Six 

1934). In 1937, the newspaper hailed women for 

leading the list of honor roll students (Miss M. 

Babcock Gets High Honor Rating For Term; 

Women Students Lead List Of fifty-Five For Fall 

Quarter 1937). Women didn‟t just lead, they 

“dominate[d]; …“only one of the hardier sex” 

made it to the top ten of the list (Women 

Dominate Honor Roll for Fall Term 1938). This 

situation apparently raised concern, as shortly 

thereafter an editorial asked, in an article entitled 

“Are We Men, Or Are We Mice?”, whether men 

at RJC were “mentally inferior” to women 

([Mueda?] 1938). Perhaps male students were 

reassured when “Men Lead Women On Honor 

Roll” was the headline in 1940 (Men Lead 

Women On Honor Roll 1940). The tone of these 

articles was that of sincere congratulations for 

whoever was on the Honor Roll, combined with a 

dash of consternation when men had not won the 

top spots. 

 

Behavior and Curricular Choices 

 The student newspaper contained frequent 

references to gender, including appropriate or 

inappropriate gender roles. Sometimes the 

references lauded boundary pushing behaviors, 

and sometimes the references denigrated them. 

Whatever the case, the judgment constantly 

pointed out gender. “With Joe Ball registered for 

piano lessons, and Vivienne McGovern signed up 

for the boys‟ golf, it is beginning to look as 

though the college really has a big year ahead,” 

one writer commented (Campus Column 1931, 

2). The surprising news that at the University of 

Alabama “a girl has enrolled in a boxing course,” 

was followed by the equally unanticipated 

statement that at Northwestern University, “the 

men have organized a knitting class” ([untitled] 

1935, 3). “This is the star center and sparkplug” 

of a Connecticut Air Cadets football team, 

another article with photograph announced, and 

the player “answers to the name of Esther.” 



 

20 

 

Esther Burnham, a 14-year-old, went into the 

game for three minutes and helped her team win 

by blocking a punt (Girl Grid Star 1935, 7). The 

previous page in the same newspaper had a 

photograph of the only woman collegiate drum 

major in the country, Bernice Henry, at Bucknell 

University. Although the stance of the newspaper 

seemed supportive of these young women, the 

copy also reinforced conservative perspectives on 

gender. Students read, for instance, that there 

were bigger drum majors than Bernice Henry, 

“but there aren‟t any prettier” (Leads Parade 

1935, 6). In this way, as good as Henry must have 

been to earn her position, the story diminished her 

skill so that what really mattered for a girl, being 

pretty, could be emphasized. Everyone could rest 

assured that, however good she was, men were 

still bigger, thus preserving at least some 

semblance of proper order in the world. “A very 

fresh freshman indeed” was how an Arroyo staff 

writer described Marion Shepard at the University 

of Michigan who, “just to prove she could do it–

donned men‟s clothes and slipped past the guard 

at the door of the exclusive Michigan Union club, 

where no woman is ever allowed” (Other 

Colleges 1932, 4). In this instance, the writer 

hinted at approval of the moxie of Shepard, as 

well as perhaps befuddlement that a student union 

would ban women.  

RJC had no student union, and women 

and men shared use of what facilities existed. One 

shared space was the parking lot, where students 

congregated before and after classes. One 

editorialist reprimanded students for making a 

bad impression on the Riverside community for 

loitering: engaging in “plain ordinary wasting of 

time” rather than “worthwhile recreation.” In 

particular, the community might object to the 

sight “of many students, especially girls, standing 

on the parking lot smoking and „killing‟ time.” 

Bad enough for the boys to do it, this editorial 

implied, but when girls did it, it simply went 

beyond acceptable behavior. “Let us watch 

ourselves and in loyalty to our college, not create 

a situation that will do harm to it,” the writer 

pleaded (What They See As They Pass 1932, 4). 

There is a hint here of a division of opinion on 

whether women should smoke, and if they did, 

whether they should be so public about it. There 

is no evidence that any of the students heeded this 

plea, and all indications are that some women and 

men continued to convene in the parking lot, 

some of them, no doubt, continuing to smoke. 

The physical education department conducted an 

anonymous survey in 1937 in which forty percent 

of RJC women answered that they smoked. The 

student author of the newspaper article on the 

survey thought that women were underreporting, 

as “it seems almost unbelievable that sixty 

percent of the women do not smoke.” Further, 

women‟s smoking was not new behavior for 

them; the majority of smokers said they had 

begun during their first year or two of high school 

(Paxton 1937, 2). Any negative views of 

smoking, to the extent such views existed, had not 

swayed many women. Peer pressure that regarded 

smoking as inappropriate for women seemed 

minimal. 

 Slacks aroused more concern than 

smoking. The newspaper reported on women 

wearing slacks on other campuses. When women 

at the Los Angeles Junior College started wearing 

slacks, a group of five men formed an Anti-Slack 

League and wore skirts on campus and to classes 

(Elsewhere 1933). Later that spring, after an 

earthquake devastated the campus, Long Beach 

Junior College began holding classes in a nearby 

park. As a result, women students “have 

definitely adopted slacks.” The article mentioned 

women wearing slacks among other examples of 

faculty and students going to great lengths to keep 

the school operating under difficult 



 

21 

 

circumstances; it was noteworthy, and spoken in 

the tone of congratulation for willingness “to go 

through discomfort” for the sake of keeping the 

college open (Results 1933, 4). RJC yearbooks 

and newspapers do not show women in slacks, 

other than athletic apparel. Rules at the women‟s 

dormitory permitted women to wear slacks in 

their private quarters, but not in the more public 

areas of the dining and living rooms (Fraser Hall 

Rules Strictly Enforced 1939). The campus 

climate may have inhibited women from trying it, 

or wearing slacks in public might have felt to the 

women, too, like encroaching on foreign territory. 

 In spite of these attitudes about slacks, 

RJC men clearly stated their preferences for 

modern, healthy, assertive women. When asked in 

an informal around-campus interview what type 

of women they liked, RJC men emphatically 

denounced “clinging vines.” “We like good sports 

that keep up with us and occasionally beat us at 

our own games. The delicate ones are out of 

style,” men said (Men Don't Like Too Much 

Lipstick 1936, 3). Some references to modern 

womanhood poked gentle fun at “the bonny, 

bashful maid of yesteryear” who had been 

replaced by “the blatant young college woman” 

unafraid to ask “Johnny” for a date. “For lady 

date-makers no longer confine their activities to 

Leap Year,” or at least, not at RJC, they didn‟t. 

Men were warned that they would “be chased; 

you‟ll be hounded,” but in the end, maybe it was 

all for the good: “at least, you‟ll have a partner for 

whom you won‟t have to pay!” (Shy Maid Trips 

Primrose Path to Oblivion - Yes 1934, 4). After 

one dance in which women asked the men, an 

article declared, “The idea of the gals getting the 

dates isn‟t so bad at that” (Jaysee Posers 1934, 3). 

The modern age held some advantages for men, 

even if women took on unexpected roles. 

Curricular subjects did not seem terribly 

gender differentiated, for students or professors. 

The Arroyo congratulated instructor Bertha 

DuBeau for publishing a manual of bacteriology, 

with no comments on whether that was 

appropriate for a woman, just as it congratulated 

instructor Edmund C. Jaeger for publishing a 

natural history guide to California deserts (The 

Arroyo Congratulates 1931, Edmund C. Jaeger 

Completing Book 1932). Another article 

encouraged women to enter the field of 

astronomy, and announced fellowships from 

Harvard specifically for women who wanted to 

study astronomy, further noting that several of 

those fellowships in previous years had gone to 

California women (Astronomy Offers Careers to 

Women 1932). Conversely, subjects that perhaps 

“belonged” to women sometimes were offered to 

men. The Arroyo spoke of colleges “keeping 

abreast of, or a bit ahead of, the times” when it 

mentioned that Oklahoma A&M held home 

economics courses for men, instructing them in 

selection of food, clothing, and home furnishings 

(Colleges Teach Modern Courses 1932, 2). In 

1939 RJC instructors encouraged men to take 

secretarial courses, as “larger cities are calling for 

men secretaries” (Men Secretaries In Demand 

1939, 4). 

Some subjects, however, were clearly 

demarcated. When the high school that shared the 

grounds with RJC opened new night classes, The 

Arroyo let students know that “both boys and 

girls are benefited,” although not by the same 

courses; boys could take a “complete course” in 

agriculture, while girls could take a two-year 

vocational homemaking program (New Courses 

in Poly High Night School to Begin 1932, 3). Not 

an official part of the curriculum or a credit-

earning class, a Los Angeles woman who claimed 

to teach poise to Hollywood actresses offered to 

come to RJC and teach a series of lessons on 

“How To Be Charming.” Few RJC women signed 

up, however, and it is not clear that the series 



 

22 

 

actually was taught (Marie Fontayne to Offer 

Course in Charm at Request of RJC Women 

1936, 2, Hollywood Authority Begins Charm 

Course for Riverside Women 1936, 1). Women at 

RJC sometimes entered fields typically consigned 

to men, as when four women joined the printing 

class. Although the article spoke of women being 

welcome in the class, the author also invoked 

gender stereotypes by assuring readers that one of 

the women said that her experience with the stock 

cutter would prepare her for “the domestic 

weapons of later life,” meaning kitchen knives. 

The article also cited the instructor as saying there 

was no reason to worry that “the fair sex [will] 

unfairly run the linotypes,” given that men 

outnumbered women in the class by more than 

four to one. Thus, although a few women had 

entered a nontraditional course, the newspaper 

article made clear that as a profession, it was not 

for them (Four J.C. Women Following in Craft of 

Johann Gutenberg 1937, 4). 

 

Activities and Leadership 

 Some campus activities were remarkably 

egalitarian. Most notably, both men and women 

wrote and edited the student publications. 

Historian John Thelin observes that on 

coeducational campuses women were “unlikely to 

attain positions of leadership such as editor of the 

student newspaper” (Thelin 2004, 228). At RJC in 

the 1930s, however, women did take on the top 

positions for the two student publications. Of 23 

editors-in-chief of The Arroyo during this period, 

7 were women, and 10 of 12 editors-in-chief of 

the Tequesquite were women. That women took 

on such leadership on a coeducational campus is 

remarkable, but it is especially so given that men 

far outnumbered women at RJC. 

 Two additional mixed-gender activities 

throughout the 1930s were forensics, or debate, 

and the International Relations Club. When 

Southern California junior colleges held a 

speaking contest in the spring of 1933, Josephine 

Brown was chosen to represent RJC to speak on 

the topic of “the Philippine question as it affects 

the international politics of the Pacific” 

(Josephine Brown to Enter Contest In Pomona 

1933, 1). Approbation of women in this activity 

continued even after the women left RJC. The 

Arroyo proudly reported that Vivian McGovern, 

who enrolled in the University of California at 

Berkeley after leaving RJC, had made the 

forensics team there (Vivian McGovern Debates 

for U.C. 1933). The International Relations Club 

drew both male and female students, as well, and 

some years selected a woman delegate to the 

Institute of International Relations. The Institute 

was a major event, co-sponsored by UCLA and 

the University of Southern California, and widely 

attended by delegates from across the country 

(Institute Lists Noted Speakers; Josephine Brown 

to be Jaysee's Delegate at Peace Conference 

1931). Women‟s active involvement in these two 

clubs shows an implicit acceptance of women‟s 

interest in national and global politics. No article 

in The Arroyo even hinted that this might be 

inappropriate for women. Rather, many people 

assumed that national and global citizenship, with 

the attendant responsibility of being educated on 

important issues, pertained to both women and 

men. 

 Student government, however, was 

another matter. The Associated Student Body 

(ASB) largely was about the male student body. 

Women had their own group, the Associated 

Women Students (AWS), and although it did 

sponsor some events especially designed for 

women, its main purpose was “to foster school 

spirit” (Jiminez and Johnson 1981, 64). Student 

fees supported both groups, but the ASB allocated 

those fees. Each year the ASB decided budgets 

for all of the student organizations, including 



 

23 

 

drama and music clubs, athletics, and student 

publications (the newspaper and yearbook). “ASB 

officers are one of the most important factors in 

school life,” one newspaper editorialist wrote, 

urging students to vote for “officers who will 

govern the entire student body” (Assembly 

Attendance 1931, 2). Therefore, the ASB, as the 

umbrella organization, had more power than any 

of the other organizations. AWS only had women 

officers and members, but it offered benefits to 

the entire student body as well as to the larger 

community. AWS sponsored teas and dances and 

lectures, bridge parties and theater parties, and 

also conducted fundraisers for needy families in 

the community (A.W.S. Society Notes 1931, 

A.W.S. Society Notes 1931, A.W.S. to Sponsor 

'Toy Dance' Friday 1931, A.W.S. to Sponsor 

Leap Year Dance At Mission Inn Galleria 1932, 

Riverside Tag Day For Irving Children 

Tomorrow 1932, A.W.S. To Donate Money for 

Irving Benefit Fund 1933).  

Because women also were involved in 

activities beyond AWS, they were affected by the 

ASB while having limited voice in the decisions 

made by the ASB. Year after year, the ASB 

president was male. One year the Los Angeles 

Junior College newspaper published an editorial 

saying that “women should be given an equal 

chance with men to hold executive positions on 

the student body board.” The Arroyo editorial 

page concurred, saying that women had 

demonstrated their “level-headedness and their 

efficiency” in other arenas. The RJC editorialist 

congratulated the Los Angeles writer, who the 

RJC student knew to be “a boy,” for his 

willingness “to overcome the silly prejudice 

between the sexes.” Yet for this writer, “an equal 

chance” did not mean that women should be able 

to run for president. “Is there any reason why a 

woman shouldn‟t hold the position of vice 

president,” asked this editor? After all, women 

“have always been more talented socially than 

men” (Politically Speaking 1933, 4). In fact, 

when this editorial ran in 1933, women had been 

vice president at RJC for three years running, in 

1929-1931. But institutional memories are short, 

and at a two-year college the turnover in student 

population is rapid. It is revealing that a student in 

1933 felt a need to argue for the legitimacy of 

something that had, in fact, already been done 

several times over on that campus. RJC would 

have female vice presidents again in 1936 and 

1941. 

The year after the Los Angeles Junior 

College editorial on women officers, the students 

there not only gave a woman a chance to run, but 

elected her president of the student body (Woman 

Student President of Los Angeles Junior College 

1934). At RJC, though, it would be almost forty 

more years–not until 1972–before a woman 

would be student body president (Jiminez and 

Johnson 1981). All of the secretaries were female, 

and all of the treasurers were male, although 

many women served as business managers of the 

two student publications from 1929-1941. This 

again shows the very local nature of gender 

construction, that two junior colleges less than 

fifty miles away would have such different 

histories of the student body presidency. 

 

ROTC and the Rifle Club 

While women may have been preparing to 

take up “domestic weapons,” men were required 

to learn to deploy weapons of war. One of the 

most clearly gender specific courses was the 

Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) 

program. The Morrill Land Grant Act had 

required that land grant institutions provide 

military training, and many campuses made such 

training mandatory for male students. The 

gruesome and horrific realities of World War I 

changed many people‟s opinions about war. 



 

24 

 

Across the country, students vociferously 

protested the ROTC requirement, and as a result 

of student objections to compulsory military 

training in the 1920s, dozens of campuses across 

the country made ROTC voluntary (Eagan 1981). 

At RJC, as in all of California, ROTC was still 

compulsory for male students in the 1930s. One 

particular newspaper story about ROTC is 

chilling. Students were taken to nearby March 

Field air base to get a lesson in chemical warfare, 

including learning to identify different gasses by 

their odors. To impress upon students the need to 

use gas masks, they were required to run through 

small quantities of chemicals entirely 

unprotected. Students were still sick on the bus 

ride back to campus. The story in the newspaper 

made light of the incident, saying that the “field 

trip” was “enjoyed” by students who were 

inducted into the “royal order of tear gas 

smellers” (ROTC Learns Use of War Gases 1937, 

1).  

Military training was not compulsory for 

women, but some volunteered by joining the 

campus rifle club. They used ROTC facilities for 

target practice, and learned to shoot from four 

positions: standing, sitting, kneeling, and prone. 

The women in the club and their instructor, Major 

Olin Newell who also taught ROTC men, 

apparently took shooting seriously, and competed 

against rifle teams from other colleges 

(Tequesquite 1937, Tequesquite 1936). College 

women in the Midwest and West had participated 

in military training for decades. According to 

historian Andrea G. Radke-Moss, women at land 

grant universities saw men performing drills and 

petitioned for their own regiments as early as the 

1870s. The women on drill teams in the late 

nineteenth century were known as “student 

soldieresses” (Radke-Moss 2008, 223). The 

popularity of the regimental activity waned after 

the First World War, but women‟s interest in 

learning to shoot did not. In the 1920s, the 

National Rifle Association (NRA), looking for 

members and for support against anti-gun 

legislation, sponsored several hundred collegiate 

and high school rifle programs for both women 

and men which flourished nationally until the 

worst of the Depression hit (George 1992). 

RJC‟s rifle club appears to have begun in 

the 1930s and had counterparts on other 

campuses. Women students at the University of 

California at Berkeley began a rifle club in 1925 

and competed nationally. By 1934 Berkeley 

women also had teams in archery and fencing. 

Berkeley‟s rifle team, like RJC‟s, was led by a 

U.S. Army Captain who also led the male ROTC 

program (The Blue & Gold 1925, The Blue & 

Gold 1931, The Blue & Gold 1934). This 

arrangement was quite common, because 

beginning in 1922, the NRA and the Field 

Artillery units of ROTC began jointly sponsoring 

intercollegiate tournaments. At a time when most 

women‟s collegiate sports de-emphasized 

competition, rifle clubs–sponsored not by college 

athletic departments but by the U.S. Army and the 

NRA–encouraged competition. For most other 

women‟s sports in this era, athletes met for “play 

days” at which colleges mixed athletes from 

different schools on ad hoc teams (Verbrugge 

1997, Guttman 1991, Theriot 1978). Therefore, 

women who participated in rifle clubs also 

participated in a more competitive environment 

than did women who played any other sport. But 

because rifle clubs were sponsored and funded by 

the Army and the NRA, as ROTC programs 

began disappearing from college campuses, so did 

the rifle teams (George 1992). 

What meaning RJC‟s rifle club held in the 

1930s is not clear. When members of the team 

posed for a picture for the yearbook, they stared 

down their rifle barrels into the camera, some 

with small smiles on their faces. They are wearing 



 

25 

 

very short shorts and little anklets, and their knees are spread. It is a highly sexualized picture,

 
Figure 1: Rifle Team, 1936 

 

 almost as though the trade-off for being allowed 

to handle guns was to promise to look as feminine 

and demure as possible while holding a weapon. 

So while women were able to participate, their 

involvement in the rifle club may have been 

acceptable only if they didn‟t push the gender line 

too far. Men‟s training was far more involved, 

including military tactics and use of different 

types of weaponry, and was required, but some of 

the same elements and skills also were taught to 

women. A gender line was drawn, but the line 

was not absolute. 

At the same time that these women 

learned to shoot, ROTC itself came under fire. 

Students across the country had protested the 

compulsory nature of ROTC for years, and much 

of the protest came to a head in the mid-1930s. A 

few students who had refused to participate in 

ROTC due to their pacifist beliefs had been 

expelled on several campuses, most notably at 

Ohio State University. The expulsion led to wider 

protests, which eventually led to legislation in the 

U.S. Congress, the Nye-Kvale Bill, that proposed 

to end compulsory ROTC (Eagan 1981). RJC 

students were well aware of, and involved in, 

these debates. The national Committee On 

Militarism in Education sponsored an essay 

contest on “Why Congress Should Pass the Nye-

Kvale Amendment.” Open to undergraduates 

across the country, first prize went to a student at 

Columbia University, and third prize went to a 

UCLA undergraduate. But the second prize was 

won by an RJC student, Elmer Lewis. His 

winning essay was published serially in The 

Arroyo in the spring of 1936 (Elmer Lewis Hits 

Military Training 1936, Lewis Essay Takes 

Second; Militarism Attack Wins Praise In 

National Contest 1936). In his essay Lewis writes 

eloquently about his desire for peace and his 

critique of mandatory training for war on 

campuses across the country.  

RJC students did not engage in the 

marches or free speech movements that students 

at nearby UCLA, University of Southern 

California, and Los Angeles Junior College did in 

1934 and 1935. The Arroyo reported on those 



 

26 

 

marches and demonstrations, though, and on the 

UCLA administration‟s swift and repressive 

response of expelling the five student leaders. 

This, too, was a moment in which gender 

mattered. One of the five expelled students, and 

the most strident, was a young woman named 

Celeste Strack, who would go on to become a 

stalwart in the Communist Party. RJC students 

appeared to have no sympathy whatsoever for 

Communists (Cohen 1993, U.C.L.A. Ousts Five 

in Anti-Radical Drive 1934, Strike Set for 

U.C.L.A. 1934). A student editorialist wrote that 

“we can be thankful that such tendencies for 

fanatical and radical changes in government find 

small foothold on the RJC campus,” and wanted 

to “make it clear once and for all, and to all 

agitators–Communism under any name or form is 

not wanted here” ([Angelo?] 1935). The next 

month another editorialist took satisfaction in the 

“general failure” of student peace marches across 

the country, claiming that the only thing the 

marches proved was “that the majority of college 

students are still loyal to the high ideals of 

American patriotism” (Tanner 1935, 4). RJC 

clearly was not a hotbed of radical activity, a fact 

that may also reflect the middle-class hopes of 

students and the community.  

Yet not everyone participated in the anti-

Communist furor, either. One student wrote to the 

newspaper complaining about the tone of the 

“Communism is not wanted here” editorial, 

urging the student paper not to  

 

follow the example of Mr. Hearst‟s 

publications and the Los Angeles Times 

by furnishing us each week with the 

latest thing in Communist scares and 

various ill assorted examples of Red 

baiting…. The point is that we maintain 

a sane and rational attitude. Why fall in 

line with utterly asinine and un-

intelligent propaganda which American 

jingoists are endeavoring to shove down 

our throats. We are intelligent. We are, I 

hope, essentially fair minded (Ferris 

1935, 4).  

 

Students could oppose Communism and still 

support the peace movement or the abolishment 

of mandatory ROTC. These were different and 

clearly separable issues.  

Many students, both women and men, 

were vocal pacifists, and according to a survey 

cited by Elmer Lewis in his winning essay, a wide 

majority–71 per cent–of the broader Riverside 

community also opposed “compulsory training in 

the science of mass murder” (Elmer Lewis Hits 

Military Training 1936, 4). Masculinity may once 

have been linked to a militaristic Rough Rider 

image, but the savagery of the First World War 

led to widespread pacifism (Bederman 1996). 

That anti-militaristic view would be dashed 

quickly after Pearl Harbor, but for much of the 

1930s many cities and many campuses were 

home to active peace movements. Masculinity, 

then, could not continue to be defined by 

militarism. Whether women in the rifle club 

simply had an interest in learning to shoot as a 

form of exercise, or whether they were making a 

comment on ROTC, either parodying it or 

supporting it, is impossible to say. But it is the 

case that the several years that the female rifle 

club appeared in the yearbook were the same 

years that protest against compulsory military 

training was at its height, both nationally and 

locally. It might be that shooting became an 

activity that was acceptable for women at RJC 

precisely at a time when militarism was not a 

bulwark in the designation of masculinity. 

  

Conclusion 

 These articles and photographs from The 

Arroyo and the Tequesquite suggest gender roles 

in flux. RJC students seemed to accept that 



 

27 

 

women could be involved in world affairs or 

study astronomy at Harvard, and men could study 

food preparation, become secretaries, or take up 

study of the piano. Women could shoot rifles, as 

long as they countered that activity with obvious 

displays of femininity. RJC was unusual in 

having so many female editors of the newspaper 

and yearbook, and this is especially striking given 

that men outnumbered women on campus. Not all 

leadership was shared, though; women could 

occasionally be vice president of the student 

body, but never president, even though a woman 

in that role existed on another coeducational 

junior college campus not far away. Women 

could succeed in forensics or art and be celebrated 

for helping make their alma mater look good to 

outsiders. At RJC, the need to raise the status of 

the institution so that students could reach their 

middle-class aspirations depended on the success 

of everyone associated with the institution. 

Further, as part of that middle-class identity, most 

students agreed that women should be educated in 

ways that would help them carry out their civic 

responsibilities. To whatever extent there was a 

“crisis of masculinity” during the Depression, 

evidence for it at RJC is limited.  

More work needs to be done to explore 

the role of the student peace movement in 

reshaping definitions of masculinity. Militarism, a 

defining characteristic of masculinity only a 

decade or two previously, was now devalued in 

response to the grim horrors of World War I. At 

the same time, unprecedented opportunities 

opened for women in higher education, 

government, and business, further reducing the 

boundaries that previously had separated ideals of 

masculinity and femininity. What the 

repercussions were of this confluence, and 

understanding how it might have shaped students‟ 

experiences on various campuses, is ripe for 

future scholarship. 

 

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