ABSTRACT
Most faculty knew the tale. No one disputed that it could have happened, yet no one was sure of the year, the women involved, or the men who spoke in these terms. It was commonly agreed that these untoward behaviors no longer occurred, and that was taken as an indication of progress; yet I wondered if this story and its retelling illuminate current practices. As a twice-told tale, it functions to establish women faculty’s subordinate place on campus. The original telling by men in power equates women’s entering previously male bastions to a kind of assault on a sacrosanct society. The retelling as a parable serves to consolidate the power of men by dismissing sexist practices as something “other people” had done in a bygone era. Apocryphal or not, statements like this emerge from and reinforce men’s opposition to women’s presence as full-fledged members of engineering education.
