Jeers in eating clubs. Attacks in dorms. Scarcity of bathrooms. Thirty-one years ago, Princeton University was an old boy's club. The next year, the first class of women entered and chaos erupted. The University wasn't prepared for the ways in which women would be treated, but as Donnica Moore '81 puts it, "How could they have been?"
Moore should know. Amid the struggles of the 1970s, as a 16-year old girl, she strode through FitzRandolph Gate into a male-dominated environment.
Last weekend, twenty years after her graduation, Moore — who since Princeton has compiled an impressive record as the president of the American Women's Medical Association, the medical director of a pharmaceutical company and founder of Sapphire Women's Health Group — arrived on campus once more, but this time to collect a leadership award from the Women's Center.
At first, Moore appears to be the stereotypical Princeton alumna. With her frankness, energy and humor, she seems to be another fortunate, blond, white Princetonian from an upper-middle class family.
"I was able to fit in much better at Princeton because I looked like I was from a Princeton background. People generally just assumed that I came from a Princeton family," Moore admitted.
She was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, the oldest of six children — of whom three would follow her to Princeton. But there the stereotypes end. Moore belonged to a lower-middle class family with a "fairly controlling" father in a "turbulent" household, which, according to Moore, "defined my personality, and my character and shaped my desire and motivation."
Looking at her family life and the "transitional" high-crime neighborhood she lived in, Moore knew that she wanted to find a new home.
So, at the age of 16, she enrolled at Princeton as the youngest student in her class. Her youth gave her uniqueness.
"You come to Princeton and you're just one of 1,100 students. But for me, being the youngest gave me some kind of distinction," Moore explained.
Imagine a girl leaving gritty Brooklyn and arriving at a place steeped in tradition and wealth like Princeton, and you can understand Moore's first impression of the University.
"I felt like I was Dorothy and [had] dreamt the Land of Oz," she said. The people, the culture, the buildings — all were alien to her.
For a youth with a tumultuous childhood, it took only one look at Princeton to know she "wanted to call [Princeton] home.
"It was the first place that, in my mind, I wanted to come from," she said. "I reveled in the whole concept of Princeton tradition and values and all the things I didn't have growing up. I started my life over at Princeton."
Her new life encompassed quite a lot. At Princeton, this self-described "culturally illiterate" became the first woman business editor of The Nassau Weekly and manager of a student travel agency. She also helped form the women's water polo team and the Tigressions.
"A lot of women's groups started at Princeton [with] no lobbying, no complaint, no official action," Moore noted. "Women just started doing it."
Throughout Moore's four years as an undergraduate, she was hampered by her physical disability of severe scoliosis. While she went through spinal surgeries and body casts, Moore's eyes were opened to the superficiality of Princeton.
"In my freshman year, a woman in my dorm was raped in the bathroom," she said.
"I was shocked that [crime] could infiltrate Princeton and it became clear that you were not safe in the bathroom of your own dorm.
"The next year my dorm room was actually broken into, and was trashed and we were robbed," Moore added.
As terrifying as this incident had been, it wasn't the worst Moore experienced at Princeton.
"My fourth year I was actually attacked in my own dorm room by a classmate. I came into my room, which was dark, and somebody was lying [waiting]," she said.
Moore does not talk about the experience very often; it is an extremely painful topic for her. Instead, she stresses the importance of general campus safety.
"I think the 70s were certainly a turbulent time in general," she noted. "Freshmen women were targeted in many ways — walk into dinner at the all-male eating clubs and they would all stand and make hooting cattle calls."
After graduation, she received a Rotary International Graduate Fellowship and became a goodwill ambassador to war-torn and terrorism-stricken Ireland. She then returned to New York for medical school.
In medical school, however, she faced the same gender discrimination she had tried to escape at Princeton.
"It was just par for the course and was something we just had to deal with," Moore noted.
But if medical school denied her freedom from sexual discrimination, it at least provided her with a calling.
"It was very clear that from the time I was a freshman in medical school that all the data was based on men, and it peaked my interest in how were things different for women," Moore explained.
Though her spine continued to deteriorate, Moore eventually left her residency position to become the medical director for a prominent pharmaceutical company. There, with the support of the company and a grant, she was able to research much more on women's health.
With other women doctors — whom she met during a meeting at an AWMA conference — and the support of members of Congress, she started a movement for women's health awareness.
During this time, Moore's own health deteriorated again. In addition to the precarious condition of her spine, she came down with an illness that would go undiagnosed for a long time.
Because the pharmaceutical company would not let her return to work until she was cleared — she was eventually diagnosed with lyme disease — Moore took the next step in the women's health march. "I decided to resign and I started my own company," she explained.
She also became president-elect of the AWMA. The same day she was elected, NBC asked her to appear on its Weekend Today program, and when the network started Later Today, she was offered a position as the regular medical correspondent on women's health.
Today Moore runs a company called Sapphire Women's Health Group. Sapphire is a multimedia women's health education and communication firm. It has a Website — Dr.Donnica.com — and has a nationally syndicated daily radio show — "Dr. Donnica's Women's Health Report."
"Where I am today is exactly where I want to be today," Moore noted. "There is nobody else I'd rather be, but I am so thankful and so aware that I am in a privileged place in my career and in my personal life."
Her family is an aspect of her life that is especially fulfilling, Moore said. With her husband, six-year old son and seven-year old daughter, she said she shares "a true, reciprocal, unconditional love," a love she had sought and failed to find throughout her childhood, she said.
Ironically, it was her father, the person partially responsible for her turbulent childhood, who provided her with a philosophy that she has held onto over the years.
"You don't have a choice to do this or not, your choice is whether or not to enjoy it," Moore said, remembering her father's views.
"I have always looked for the joy in whatever it is I'm doing, and I have always been empowered by the feeling that it is my choice."
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