Fast facts: Coupled Grinnellians
The Office of Alumni Relations and Development reports sending Valentine’s
Day postcards to all alumni/alumni couples in their system. This year, they
mailed the card to 1,335 couples, or about 15 percent of known living alums.
The card’s message? “Among all the hearts at Grinnell College, we’re
glad you found each other.”
—Information from Marcia Grosenbach, event and constituent assistant
Dates with destiny
Dating at Grinnell in the 1940s meant actually going out on dates with a boy or girl. “Dating was the big thing for us,” said Audrey Howard Swanson ‘44. “Students had dates or went steady, which was a popular way to go. We didn’t go so much in groups, as the kids do today.”
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From quaint tradition to free love
Dating in the 1960s changed radically when the dorms became co-ed in 1968. Earlier in the decade, quaint traditions were forefront in the minds of Grinnell students.
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‘Dateless under Reagan’
By the 1980s, Grinnell’s social life had left formalized courtship rituals behind and become much looser. Amy Logsdon ‘88 described how students on campus took pride in not dating. “There was a sort of perverse pride in being a ‘dating’ loser,” she said. “Like eschewing make-up, top 40 radio and the Oprah show.”
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