“Taylor-Made” Students

Student identity was formed in part by the choices made in curricular offerings, but also by how that education shaped their shared interests and knowledge. The Classics became deeply ingrained in student culture and served as the basis for insider jokes and references. Participation in student culture required mastery of a Classical Curriculum, which was possible for only a small minority of women in nineteenth-century America.​

From the early days of Bryn Mawr, students performed songs, which were collected in books. The 1889 class song was an original Latin composition, and the Pallas Athena (still sung at Lantern Night) appears in 1889 song books. In 1903, more songs referencing Greek and Latin were added, including one that implies that knowledge of Ancient Greek is proof that a woman was “clad in Taylor’s new suit,” which, at this point, referred not to the founder, Joseph Taylor, but to the building that commemorated him, Taylor Hall, and all that its architecture and decoration encoded.