Girlhood at Colorado College Through Special Collections

MARCH 6, 2025 | FEATURES | By  Lilly Asano (Co Editor-In-Chief)

Dorliska Crandall’s scrapbook lies in front of me. It’s black with yellow bindings, and the letters ‘CC’ embellish the cover. The binding is worn from time and other hands flipping through Crandall’s time at Colorado College. It’s a few inches thick and can barely lie flat, bursting with loose papers, small booklets and keepsakes.

I spent my morning on Wednesday, Feb. 26, at the Special Collections and Archives in the basement of Tutt Library, immersed in the historical records of CC and Colorado Springs for my class “The Craft of Writing History.” The morning focused on learning how to use archived material in historical writing. Various pieces of archive media were available for us to look at, but the worn scrapbook held my attention. I sat in front of it for two hours, delicately taking in one woman’s experience at CC.

Her recorded time here echoed similarities to mine, with one glaring discrepancy: Crandall’s time here occurred almost 115 years ago, pre Title IX or even the women’s suffrage movement.

Crandall, known as “Dorlie,” attended Colorado College from 1908 to 1912, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Her scrapbook, which vividly documents her time at CC, was donated by her granddaughter Elizabeth Cree in 2009. 

The scrapbook moves chronologically through Crandall’s four years. The opening pages include a name tag from a welcoming banquet at “The Jungle,” an old reception space.“Miss Crandall, Santa Fe,” it reads. The scrapbook ends with 10 photos of women in graduation gowns, hair pulled off their necks and tassels hanging by the left side of their faces. The remnants of glue reveal the absence of two women; without names under the photos, they are mysteries.

Between her first day at CC and graduation on June 12, 1912, Crandall saved important or sentimental materials, and even a few materials that seemed to be inside jokes with friends. She was a Contemporary Club, Dramatic Club and Pearson’s Literary Society member. She lived in Bemis and Montgomery Hall and went to fraternity parties and dances at Kappa Sigma (KSig) and Phi Gamma Delta (Fiji). Playbills list Crandall as the leading actress in multiple performances, and other newspaper clippings recognize her attendance at various events.

In one photo, three women hold arms as they walk away from the camera. In another, four girls sit on the floor with plates and food surrounding them. They wear floral robes, their hair pulled up and one drinks from a glass bottle. Crandall kept two tickets to the Manitou Incline. Her class schedule from her sophomore fall. The Contemporary Club’s initiation handbook. A note reading, “Your sweetheart is artful and deceiving.” A cigarette from Nov. 16, 1911, almost perfectly preserved in a ribbon. Her tuition card from her final year at Colorado College, just $25 for a semester.

One note reads, “We are very sorry Dorlie dear, that you are sick and can’t be here; and since the nurse says ‘don’t go near’ I’m sending this your heart to cheer.”

After graduating, she became a teacher and included her State of South Dakota Teacher’s Contract signed Jan. 20, 1913, near the end of the scrapbook. Crandall married Williams Seaton Hannan and became Dorliska Crandall Hannan in 1921. She gave birth to her oldest son in 1922 and had two more children in five years. 

Crandall became a woman, and the scrapbook was left incomplete, with items from 1913 through 1915 stuffed in the middle of the book. 

Crandall entered society on the edge of the Rocky Mountains, and the college mimicked traditions of similar institutions, preparing some of the nation’s elite for mature life. The Dean of Women and the college’s Executive Board provided women with the “Regulations Governing the Life of the Women in Colorado College.”

Under the regulations, all female students were required to submit all plans to the Dean of Women for approval. Undergraduates “shall not be out more than two evenings a week,” and freshmen were limited to one night a week. A 10 p.m. curfew was enforced along with chaperones on evening trips, “at the theater in the evening,” afternoons for freshmen, hotels, restaurants and with men.

As I sat with Crandall’s time at CC, I became emotionally attached to a woman I’d never meet, who inhabited the same place I do, 115 years ago. She was so clearly loved and remembered through her now donated scrapbook. 

Unlike Crandall, I don’t have to submit my plans to the Dean. My ability to leave campus is only restricted by gas and time. I don’t have a curfew and live in a hall with boys. I can leave parties whenever I want, with whomever I want. My tuition isn’t $25, but almost $73,038 as of March 4.

Instead of documenting my time here through scrapbooks or collected material, I document others’ experiences through writing. I’ve memorialized myself and peers into our school, creating a footprint of stories and brief moments in a college’s long history.

And yet, Crandall and I have experienced girlhood together. 

When I got COVID in my first block at CC, my friends would stand outside my door to say hi or leave food, sending my “heart to cheer.” I go to games and parties, and while it isn’t a literary society, I joined a sorority as a freshman. I’ve practiced initiation songs and saved my name tag when I toured CC, keeping it in my journal; “Lilly, North Carolina.”

We both left home for a place in the Rockies. We both have parents who let us move away, confident we’d be okay on our own. We have both been girls here. 

I stopped flipping, focusing on one photograph. My class silently ruffled through other parts of history. Looking at the picture, I opened my phone’s photo app and pulled up a photo from Aug. 30, 2024. 

Three of my friends walk on a dirt path to Craig’s House, a senior house hosting an outdoor party. It’s the first weekend of our sophomore year. It’s dark, and my flash is on, briefly capturing their embrace as we walk; they’re dressed in cheetah print and Arc Thrift Store finds for Jersey Night, a theme inspired by Jersey Shore. In the live photo, my friends are engaged in a conversation, and I can hear them laughing. I love candid photos, capturing the small moments we forget to celebrate. Apparently, Crandall did too.

I looked back at the photo in Crandall’s book. Three women walk together in daylight, arms linked. One woman is slightly turned to the two on her right, seemingly in the middle of a conversation. They all wear long skirts and hats, concealing the rest of their identities. There’s so much I don’t know about them.

Somehow, Crandall and I both found meaning in similar photos. Similar moments were captured and remembered, cementing those brief embraces. Time separates us, but we are all CC girls, experiencing growing up on this campus. 

Lilly Asano