The Year That Changed Nazareth

50 years ago, the first men graduated with degrees from Nazareth — and men literally moved in

By Garry Besigel ‘76

1972 was a historic year for the United States. There was the Nixon & Watergate scandal, 100,000 anti-war demonstrators marching in U.S. cities, and NASA’s Space Shuttle program was officially launched. But from my vantage point, nothing was more historic than Nazareth College graduating its first men with Nazareth degrees — and that fall I was one of five young men to enroll and be housed on campus. This was a year before Nazareth officially went co-ed.

Young men from St. John Fisher College had been able to take classes in Nazareth’s excellent fine arts programs since 1960, but we were the first men to live in a dorm. 

The 5 daring young men were Glenn Buck (music), Stefan Scimone (art), Leo Williams, John Deyle, and myself (theatre arts). We had the second floor to ourselves in Carroll Hall (overhauled and turned into York Wellness and Rehabilitation Institute in 2015). Below us was an experimental preschool, which we assiduously avoided. We were not the best role models.

Our dorm was as far away from the women’s housing as they could place us. And we had no tunnels. We walked outdoors to classes and the cafeteria. 

During that first year, Nazareth had no idea what to do with us and we felt like we had no rules. Unlike the women, we had no curfew or requirements to sign in and out. Anyone could visit our dorm. We heard we had a RA, but we never saw him. He wasn’t a student. He worked for Kodak and was gone bright and early. In the evening, he hid in his room. Do you blame him?

The first evening, we huddled together trying to muster courage to go to dinner. We walked into the dining room, which became totally silent with hundreds of women staring. We never ate so fast in our lives. We ran back to the dorm wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. Evidently no one told the women or parents there would be men living on campus. 

But it didn’t take long before the women forgot we were there. We would go to breakfast and see women in robes & fuzzy slippers, with curlers in their hair. But we also became good friends with many of the women.

I went to Nazareth after the mother of my high school classmate arranged an interview with Sister Stella Regina. Even though I believed I wasn’t college material, she took a chance with me, giving me the confidence that I needed to be successful in and out of school. 

Nazareth prepared me to work in a female-dominated environment as a teacher for 42 years. I’m proud to be a graduate of Nazareth. It was the perfect school for me. But after all these years, I still wonder how the nuns' color TV magically appeared in the dorm! 

Garry Besigel ‘76 and his wife of 44 years, Patricia F. Horan, Ph.D, raised two sons and live with a cat and a dog in Cary, North Carolina. He retired as a special education teacher in 2019, after teaching in Arizona, Switzerland, and North Carolina.