Towson U. Rights an Old Wrong

Amazing how closed minded we, as people, truly are.

Written – May 24, 2010, 02:00 PM ET

Onstage in cap and gown last week at Towson University’s commencement was Susan Fedder Garten, a woman who was denied the right to walk in the 1951 procession at Towson State Teachers College because she was visibly pregnant.

She was pregnant and married, mind you, but that made no difference to the adviser to the Class of 1951, who sent her a letter at the time telling her she was unwelcome at commencement, writes Susan Reimer, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun.

Mrs. Garten saved the the bizarre letter, which Towson President Robert Caret read aloud at last week’s ceremony:

“Because of your present advanced stage of pregnancy, I am confident that you have no serious intentions of attempting to participate in the academic processions. … You must realize that such participation would be most unwise from several points of view. … In making plans for the academic processions and related matters, no place will need to be made for you. Likewise, you will not appear in person on the stage of the auditorium to receive your diploma.”

“It was my mother who was heartbroken, and that really affected me the most,” Mrs. Garten told the Sun. “She was determined that I would get my degree no matter what.”

Mrs. Garten did get her degree, but not in a ceremony like her classmates. Within a week of the slight, the first of her five children was born.

She bore no grudge against Towson, and went on to help her husband, Herbert Garten, raise money for the institution. Seeking to right the wrong, her son, Maury, recently showed President Caret the letter, which Mrs. Garten had kept in a safe-deposit box.

After the president read the note last week and asserted that no graduate should be denied the right to walk at commencement, Mrs. Garten’s new classmates arose for a standing ovation.