By Kirsten Terry
Staff Writer

Where can one find the first woman to be elected to both houses of the United States Congress, the first place finisher of the 1984 Olympic Games women’s marathon, and one of Maine’s current female senators? The legacies of Margaret Chase Smith, Joan Beniot Samuelson, Olympia Snow, respectively, and approximately twenty others are honored in the Maine Women’s Hall of Fame.

On March 20, 2004 Judith Magyar Isaacson, an alumna and former dean at Bates College will be inducted into this distinguished collection of women. Isaacson was a member of the Bates administration from 1969-77. She began her career here as the dean of women, while the campus was still deeply divided by gender. As a dean she counseled both sexes academically and sat as chair of extracurricular activities, but she also took care of student conduct issues concerning women.

Although the College has always been co-educational, during this time women were still faced with far more restrictions than men. The inequality was obvious in the student handbook from the first school year Isaacson worked at Bates; two pages of rules applied to men, while there were eight pages for women.

Isaacson could see that many of the codes of conduct at Bates were outdated, and quickly became an advocate for women’s rights at the school. She had children of her own in college at that point, and from their experiences she found that, comparatively, the policies at Bates were very different. “Young, 18-year old women had far more freedoms at home than at Bates,” explained Isaacson.

For example, before arriving at school, parents of female students were given permission slips. This allowed them to mandate the activities their daughters were able to participate in, such as overnight outing club trips or other off-campus excursions. The form also enabled a parent to decide his or her child’s curfew. Isaacson recalled that this was frustrating for most female students because, “if a girl wanted to do something with her roommate or friend, it often wouldn’t work because their parents differed on what they were allowed to do.”

“I made it a point to talk to parents about this during the first Parent’s Weekend,” said Isaacson. She was curious as to what criteria they had used to decide what their daughters could and could not do at Bates. Isaacson found that most had simply approved of a few of the restrictions for fear of appearing too lenient. The parental permission policy was soon eliminated.

Isaacson resolved other important complaints from students. One concerned the issue of parietals. Previously, men and women did not have permission to enter dorms of the opposite sex, but she changed campus-housing rules to allow visitations. Another problem surrounded sports. “I fought pretty hard for women to have athletic privileges,” she said. In 1969 women had only two athletic clubs - fencing and cheerleading - and they were required to participate in one of them, while men faced no such guidelines. Only two years after Isaacson’s arrival, women could choose from over a half dozen activities.

After the College completely merged together men and women in 1974, Isaacson became Dean of Students. She left Bates in 1977 and became a member of the Bowdoin College Board of Overseers from 1984 to 1996. She has also traveled around Maine and the country giving speeches for human rights. Isaacson was a recipient of the Hargraves Preservation of Freedom Prize, which was established by Bowdoin to stimulate appreciation of Constitutional rights and freedoms. In 1990, the University of Illinois Press published her book Seed of Sarah: Memoirs of a Survivor.

Seed of Sarah details Isaacson’s experiences during the Holocaust. She grew up in Kaposvar, Hungary and was taken to the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz-Birkenau and Hessisch Lichtenau in 1944 at the age of 19. The book has been one of the bestselling biographies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and has been translated into German and Hungarian.

Isaacson will be a part of the 15th annual induction ceremony for the Hall of Fame. “The selection is a year round process,” explained chair of the Hall Sally Ann Parks. Bates College nominated Isaacson for the honor last summer, and recently had the pleasure of informing her of the judge’s decision to award her the honor. “I was totally surprised,” said Isaacson, “I never, never expected that. It was very generous.”

Isaacson meets and exceeds the three requirements for induction into the Maine Women’s Hall of Fame, located in the library at the University of Maine in Augusta. Her achievements have had a statewide impact, have significantly improved the lives of women in Maine, and have enduring value for women.






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