Selwyn is staging a series of events in 2016 to mark the 40th anniversary of the admission of women as students and Fellows. The College was one of the earliest in Cambridge to change its statutes to make co-education possible, and the first female undergraduates arrived in October 1976. Forty years on, there will be reunions, debates, speaker sessions, music and comedy to mark this milestone. Details can be found at https://www.selwynalumni.com/eventscalendar.
The College has also commissioned a series of portraits of Selwyn’s women of today by the award-winning photographer Jeff Overs. Some of them are now on display in the Hall, and all of them are online: https://www.flickr.com/photos/selalum/albums. The current photograph on the homepage and below shows Dr Jean Chothia, who was the first woman Fellow in 1976 and went on to become Vice-Mistress of Selwyn.
We’ll be launching a special section on this website soon giving details of all the activities that are planned, as well as some of the history and achievements of the last four decades. In the meantime, the Cambridge News published a feature on January 6th about the photographic project: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Selwyn-College-Cambridge-puts-women-wall-mark/story-28469398-detail/story.html. It includes a portrait of our head porter Helen Stephens, the first woman to take that role in a Cambridge college, and of women officers of the JCR.
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