Former Dean of Women Reflects on a Different Time for Female Students
by Malissa Kash
THE POST
Margaret Deppen openly admits she seems to "use up the days too fast" since she retired. But her 14 years as OU's dean of women went by just as quickly.
Deppen served as assistant dean of women before was promoted to dean in 1952; she stayed on the job until the position was terminated 1966. During those years men and women had separate deans to handle residential, judicial and student-life matters.
Even today, Deppen is proud of a mentor program she started between upperclass and freshmen women.
"We gave people responsibilities, and they accepted and introduced some great programs in the residence halls," she said.
Being dean of women was a "pleasant job," she said, in a time when women were empowering themselves and embracing new-found liberties.
A landmark change took place during Deppen's reign: the first residence hall in which women had their own keys and could pass as they wished. It was called Treudley Hall.
She said female students and their parents accepted this new policy - especially because many women had been caught sneaking in the residence halls after staying out all night.
These daring young women had to face a judiciary panel on which Deppen sat. But men weren't off the hook - they faced the same sanctions.
"We felt she shouldn't be the only one to suffer," Deppen said of giving equal punishment for equal crime.
A secure living
Deppen grew up in Fort Wayne, Ind., in the '20s and '30s, when parents didn't worry about their children playing outside or walking to school. "It was a secure living," she said.
She has fond memories of her close-knit family - especially of playing with her younger brother and reading with their father. Her brother was only a year younger, so she didn't have much of an advantage in bossing him around.
"I would say I told him what to do until he got stronger than I did," she said.
She was close enough to her aunt's house that she could stop every day after school to get something to eat.
Deppen's relationship with her grandmother also was very special. "We were good friends," she said, and after her grandmother moved to San Francisco, she visited her a month at a time.
Deppen went to a Catholic school until 8th grade, when she had the choice of attending a two-year high school or a four-year high school. She chose the four-year, all-female St. Augustine's Academy, because she knew she wanted to attend college, although it wasn't so common for women.
She is thankful for all opportunities she has had, but she doesn't seem to view herself as a blueprint for the new feminist woman who emerged shortly after World War II.
One aspect of her life she's most proud of is being one of only three in her high school class to attend college.
"I never thought I'd be able to go," she said of her education in business and Spanish at St. Mary's of Woods in Terre Haute, Ind.
"Getting an education has helped me do everything else I've done in my life."
'Years of sunshine'
Emerging from college during the Depression, Deppen didn't find much of a market for her degrees, so she found a job as a secretary for Lincoln Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.
During World War II, Deppen did volunteer work for the United Service Organization at a club for servicemen in Brazil. Navy and Air Force men from the war would stop over on their way to North Africa and Europe; it was Deppen's job to plan dances to entertain them.
She described her time there as "two years of sunshine." But she regrets not being able to learn the language, because she was surrounded with people who spoke English.
Deppen also found some cross-cultural gender differences. She and the other USO volunteers would try to get Brazilian women to attend the dances so the servicemen would have women to dance with, but Brazilian culture dictated a girl had to be accompanied by her father or brother.
"Some wouldn't let their daughter's come," she said.
On the home front
Two years later she returned to the home front without a job. She spent two years at a college as a resident assistant and later spent a year in Korea for the Red Cross. Then she heard about the assistant dean position at OU.
Once her position as dean was terminated, Deppen handled student activities before retiring. And after retirement, she organized the Athens Friends of International Students Coffee Hour until last year.
Now her days that seem to go by too quickly are filled by being a friend of the Kennedy Museum, volunteering with Christ the King church, helping international students, reading, playing bridge - and making all the opportunities given to her available for others.