The terms “light side” and “dark side” are intertwined into geographical, cultural, and social aspects of Hamilton’s modern day life. The two sides of campus, divided by College Hill Road, once were distinctly divided into an all men’s Hamilton College and an all-women’s Kirkland College. Before the two colleges merged in 1978, they embodied two unique academic environments.
According to the Kirkland Archive website, placing Kirkland on Hamilton’s hill was originally designed to mimic the Claremont system: a group of Southern California undergraduate and graduate schools created in the 1920s. Although the schools would have separate names, administrations, faculty, dormitories and dining halls, they would share a library, infirmary, student center and chapel. There was also curriculum overlap, as students could take classes at each school.
The Kirkland Archive also notes that as much as Kirkland was valued for its humanities and performing arts courses, it was primarily built to house female partners for Hamilton men. While devising their plans for Kirkland, The Long Range Planning Committee described how “A women’s college would strengthen Hamilton where it is weakest — a proper social environment.” Additionally, the Archive describes that in September of 1964, an advisory group further described one of the College’s goals: “To educate a wife able to share fully the experience of an educated husband in such a way that she grows with him while inspiring her children.”
Valerie Tomaselli K’77 spoke about her decision to attend Kirkland, “I was looking for a school that had a theater program and a dance program. I didn’t want it to be a conservatory. I wanted it to be a liberal arts. There were not a lot of choices.”
Kirkland’s unconventional nature served as a point of intrigue for prospective students. Judy Gray K’78 said, “I loved the application that asked us essays that were not like anywhere else. One was ‘The nuclear family is obsolete. Comment.’” She added, “I had an option to be interviewed by an alum, off campus in French.” Despite needing to resort to English in the interview, the unique opportunity to interview in another language left her excited about Kirkland.
When students got accepted into Kirkland, they received an envelope with a Gothic “Yes!” on the back indicating their acceptance. To Gray, her acceptance letter embodied how Kirkland did “things in a way with you at the center of it as a student, and all of that was the dealmaker for me.” This experimental nature seeped into Kirkland orientation. Gray said, “[At freshman orientation], we were given a plant for our rooms and a copy of Our Bodies Ourselves.”
Gray talked about how Kirkland was pitched to her as a place that was intertwined with Hamilton. She said, “It’s the best of both worlds. It’s traditional, like you’re used to. And there’s a school where they do things a little bit differently.”
Judy Crown K’74 commented on the two colleges’ complementary nature, “What I really liked about Kirkland was that sort of yin and yang. I considered it really a co-ed experience. There would be stereotypes on either side; there were these radical women who do pottery and serious guys who are investment bankers. I was just like a middle liberal arts person, you know, enjoying both sides of it.”
Susan Skerritt K’77 described the benefits of the separate but related two colleges. She described the camaraderie of Kirkland’s all-women environment and said, “I was surrounded by these incredibly strong women and that was enormously important for me as an 18 year old.” At the same time, the opportunity to take classes at Hamilton helped prepare Skerritt “to be successful in the banking world. I talked before about being the only woman in an economics class. That too was incredibly valuable to prepare me for what it felt like to be sitting at a conference table. And being the only female voice in the room, I think it was tremendously valuable.”
Even within the Kirkland campus itself, students self-identified as “more Hamilton” or “more Kirkland.” Others felt like they did not even need the Hamilton side to get a multi-faceted liberal arts experience: “From my point of view, social divisions existed even within the Kirkland student body. There were more free flowing, liberty loving women. And there were more straight-laced economics studying women. We peacefully coexisted,” mentioned Tomaselli.
Many women expressed hesitation about attending Kirkland due to its experimental nature: “If I had been older and was looking at being one of the first women to go to Kirkland College, I doubt I would’ve gone because the buildings weren’t finished. There were no rules about anything. Everything was in an unfinished state,” mentioned Penny Watras Dana K’78. There were also challenges that accompanied such an open-ended education. “The problem with Kirkland seminars is they could just let the students run wild. They could monopolize the conversation when I’d rather hear from the professor,” remarked Crown.
Gray described the upsides of the unique academic environment. She said, “My classes were much smaller at Kirkland. They were very intimate. The art of the possible was always suggested whether I was taking history of science or Social Psychology.” She further described parts of the Kirkland academic experience, as taking classes “in what we call the womb room. It was circular. And I think now they’ve put bolted down seats in it. But we used to sit on the carpet.”
Additionally, Kirkland helped lay the foundation for the interdisciplinary study and thought that Hamilton prides itself on today. Gray said that Kirkland was always, “bringing in poets and community lecturers or friends of our professors to talk to us [and] playing music, while you’re [also] learning about the Charles Manson murders.” She remembered how the Kirkland education was, “really incredibly innovative. Ralph Lieberman, who taught art history at Kirkland, would have everybody build a gothic arch in his classes in the springtime, and every year see that arch get bigger and bigger.”
Despite the creative nature of Kirkland academics, Kirkland students remained multifaceted in and outside of the classroom. Watras Dana described how, “Kirkland was about empowering women to do what they wanted. That does not mean that everybody has to fit into the silo of being a creative, artistic, raging feminist stereotype. I wanted to go to law school and I wanted to work on Wall Street, and I wanted to play in the men’s world and beat them at it.”
Hamilton student George Nehme ’79 said that he saw his Kirkland counterparts simply as fellow students. He said, “I think they were just women looking to get an education and start establishing their own career. I never sort of thought about them. I didn’t think of them as, ‘Oh, they’re here just to find a husband.’ I never had that impression of them.”
Kirkland interviewees noted that not all Hamilton men shared Nehme’s attitude. Valerie Jones K’79 described one incident where a Hamilton student presumed her sexuality, religion, and hometown because she was attending Kirkland. “I am 5’8 blond, blue eyed from Maine. I remember walking from the Kirkland side to the Hamilton side with a male student. He said ‘What’s your name?’ I said ‘Valerie.’ He says ‘So, you’re Jewish.” I said ‘No, I am a Catholic.’ And he said ‘No, you must be a lesbian Jew from New York because you are at Kirkland.”
As Kirkland developed a culture and traditions of its own, resources began to deplete. Watras Dana suggested that the merger was more about finances than it was about unity of the two schools. She said, “Subtly, something was afoot with the finances of Kirkland. You could see the meetings that were often held in the red pit for the campaign for the second decade of Kirkland were becoming more frequent. There were quiet rumblings from time to time,” she remarked. “If Hamilton had to keep supporting Kirkland, it could have potentially risked Hamilton,” Watras Dana added.
In 1978, Hamilton and Kirkland merged into one college, Hamilton College. According to Crown, “The merger was a necessary, maybe inevitable, decision. It couldn’t stand on its own. How is it gonna get the money? It didn’t have any rich alumni yet. We were all just starting out. We weren’t investment bankers.” Jones also commented on the merger’s lack of finances, noting that “If we want to change it, then we got to deal with the money. And if we can’t deal with the money, then all the protests in the world, they’re not going to change. It’s an economic reality.”
Researching the merger, Diego Inzunza ’25 co-authored An Everlasting Spirit: How Intersectional Experiences Shape Student and Faculty Understanding of Kirkland College’s Legacy. Inunza found in his interviews that Kirkland students worried that their brutalist architecture and experiential seminars would get lost in the preppy, pre-professional ways of Hamilton College. They believed that “absorption” was a more fitting description of what was happening than “merger,” so the dark side became a valuable counter-space, rooted in resistance.
Nehme also noted that when the two colleges merged, Hamilton took precedence over Kirkland. “Hamilton’s personality and corporate culture remained very dominant in the wake of the merger. Hamilton had private societies and fraternity houses. There was no such a social structure for the women,” remarked Nehme.
Some Kirkland students refused to graduate with a Hamilton degree, while others opted for one. Watras Dana shared, “My mother said at the time I should take a semester off and then go back and get a Hamilton diploma. I was kind of shocked.” Jones had a different perspective. She said, “When I graduated, I was able to get a Kirkland degree. I chose to get a Hamilton degree. I’m a pragmatist. I figured 20 years later, when I was looking for a job, I’d have a better chance with a college that still existed [than] a college that nobody had heard of.”
Kirkland students varied with their level of involvement in response to the merger. Skerritt said, “I worked with a Hamilton alumnus who was a friend of my parents and we co-wrote a letter about the benefits of having dedicated education for men and dedicated education for women on a single Hill.”
By comparison, Jones addressed how not everyone could involve themselves in resistance to the merger. She said, “When you’re working and going through college, I was pretty focused on myself. I’m sure there are other people who are much less sleep deprived and paying [more] attention than I was, but I just didn’t always have the luxury.”
Many Hamilton-Kirkland students were less upset about the merger itself than how it was handled. “There was very little transparency about what was happening,” reflected Skerrit. Nehme said, “At the very least it would have made a lot of sense for the Kirkland women to have been involved in a series of meetings, to help them understand what all the issues were. It was so secretive [that] I think it shocked the women to their core.”
He also described how Hamilton delayed embracing Kirkland’s artistic tradition until years later. By prioritizing Hamilton over Kirkland, “a lot of the Kirkland women felt that they didn’t have a place at the Hamilton table,” described Watras Dana. Gray further noted that Martin Carovano, who Martin’s Way is named after, was the president of Hamilton at the time of the merger. “He was sort of the face of this brutal merger, and to call the bridge, of all things, Martin’s way, was particularly upsetting to a lot of Kirkland women,” exemplified Gray.
In 2009, Kirkland alumni voiced reservations with how Hamilton was allocating Kirkland’s endowment. “I’ll freely confess to having concerns about how the money was spent,” Watras Dana mentioned. “But now the endowment money is helping to pay off student loans for women through graduation. If you can graduate loan-free, I think that’s a really big win for you and for Kirkland’s legacy,” she added.
In addition to Kirkland funds, Kirkland’s legacy remains relevant on campus today, particularly at the hands of student publications and bands. Georgia Brown ’25 remarked, “[When I think of Kirkland], I think about my band Yonic Youth that honors [the] legacy in carving out a space for women in a space that’s so dominated by men (music).”
In 1976, a Kirkland student Jo Pitkin ’78 became the editor of Red Weather, formerly known as Dessert at the Plaza. Pitkin inspired students across all disciplines to get involved and share their work in the magazine. Her bold artistic and administrative choices survived the merger, and Red Weather still operates on campus today. Caitlin Moehrle ’24, editor of prose, explained how Red Weather maintains its blind submission policy so that writers feel empowered to submit their most personal or dystopian work. To Moehrle, the spirit of creativity on Kirkland’s campus is still alive in Red Weather today.
In 2022, Hamilton alumni Abigail Moone ’23 restarted the Green Apple publication, taking after the Kirkland symbol of an apple. As a feminist publication that encourages members to write and make art together, Moone described that Green Apple is dedicated to “honest self-expression without censure… through all creative means.”
Many Hamilton students today exemplify both Hamilton and Kirkland cultures within their academic and extracurricular pursuits. Summer McClintic ’24 is a varsity athlete, computer science major, musician and artist. In an interview, she said, “I like doing math and other STEM related things, but I would get bored of just doing stem. I need other things to balance out my plate so I also enjoy playing viola in the orchestra and taking art classes.” Kirkland’s legacy also lives on in the open curriculum. “As a [current] Hamilton student, you are responsible for putting your education together. It is not as incredibly structured as it once was,” Skerritt noted.
Although aspects of Kirkland still infiltrate modern Hamilton life, its history and influence remain unknown to some students. When asked what she knew about Kirkland, Margo Wilder ’27 first thought about the Kirkland dorm. She said, “Unfortunately I know very little of Kirkland other than that I think it’s sub-free and I’ve heard it has nice lofts.” Once the question was clarified to be about Kirkland College, she hesitatingly answered that Kirkland was the “all women’s college that kind of joined Hamilton in the 70s I think?”
Some students still think of Hamilton’s divided light side and dark side as a reflection of the original division between Kirkland and Hamilton. Dark side, known as the side of campus with McEwen and KJ, constitutes Kirkland’s old campus. “When I think light side, I think golden hour on pretty stone buildings and also athletics. When I think dark side I think [of] the architecture, and also way more queer. I think rugby. I think artsy. I think alt,” remarked Brown ’25. As Zach Yasinov ’26 notes, “[light side and dark side is a] divide that too many people think about and try to fit their personalities around.”
According to alumni, the terms dark side and light side only emerged after the merger. Nehme said, “We didn’t have the phrase light side, dark side in my time, but I think what happened is the dark side really became derogatory. A slap to Kirkland and Kirkland’s history in existence for those who really didn’t give a damn about Kirkland.”
Still, some current Hamilton students think positively about Kirkland’s impact on their Hamilton experience. Sae Gleba ’24 said, “I think Kirkland College maintains a lasting sense of nostalgia for many students at Hamilton. Many of us have heard stories and rumors from the Kirkland days, which in some way mirror our modern experience, but in many ways don’t.” She said that to this day, “Kirkland maintains its relevance through cultural vestiges and emblems.”
