SC017 Shimer College Student Handbooks

The Shimer student handbook collection spans from 1941-2014, and the rules and regulations included in these handbooks reflect the changing of the times. The handbooks from 1941-1949, distributed by the Student-Faculty Council, are the strictest in the collection. In the 1940s, Shimer was still a girls’ finishing school, known then as Frances Shimer College. Although Frances Shimer College was an educational institution, it also had the intention of training its students to be proper young women. As such, student behavior was highly controlled, with strict curfews and regulations on students’ manners and how they should dress.

By the 1976-1977 handbook, outside the bulk dates of the collection, Shimer’s rules and regulations had become more liberal. This showed in its authorship, with the handbook now being written by a more diverse collective of students, faculty, and administrators. Now coeducational, Shimer’s rules no longer reflected its past as a girls’ finishing school. Albeit with some rules specific to college campuses, the rules and regulations in the handbook now pertained more to legal issues at large. For instance, rules were written against the damage of property and the use of drugs on campus. By the 1990s, the handbook was even less concerned with the specificities of student conduct than in the 1970s. From this point on, the handbooks each included approximately ten rules regulating student behavior and were comprised mostly of academic procedures and policy. Authorship of the handbook was less obvious by this time as well, with campus regulations rarely attributed to a single author or group.