Kenneth Burkes Dramatism Theory and Seton Hall Today, Seton Hall University is attended by nearly 10,000 male and female students, but it has not always been that way. Just over a half century ago, Seton Hall University was a male-only institution that only accepted female students into its main South Orange campus after a series of debates that spanned more than 4 years. The artifacts of interest for this study are two newspaper articles from issues of the Setonian in 1963 and 1967, with the first announcing the student vote concerning whether Seton Hall should be a co-educational institution and the second announcing the approval of the initiative. This paper reviews the relevant literature to connect these articles to Kenneth Burkes' Dramatism Theory concerning the reasons women are treated less fairly than men and why they have not experienced the same academic fairness as men. Finally, a summary of the research and important findings concerning these issues are presented in the conclusion.

Review and Analysis

Overview of Seton Hall Today

Founded in 1856 as Seton Hall College by Catholic Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley, Seton Hall was reorganized into a university in 1950 and currently provides undergraduate and graduate studies in more than 90 majors to almost 10,000 male and female students (About Seton Hall, 2015). The university has been widely recognized for its commitment to academic excellence by U.S. News & World Report, The Princeton Review, and Bloomberg Businessweek (About Seton Hall, 2015). This commitment to academic excellence is borne out in the university's student-faculty ratio at just 14:1, and nearly half (46.8%) of the university's classes have fewer than 20 students (Seton Hall University, 2015). At present, the most popular majors at the university are as follows: (a) Registered Nursing/Registered Nurse; (b) Biology/Biological Sciences, General; (c) International Relations and Affairs; Finance, General; and (d) Humanities/Humanistic Studies (Seton Hall University, 2015). With an average freshman retention rate of 83.5%, it is clear that Seton Hall is also attractive to new students (Seton Hall University, 2015).

The university's main 58-acre campus is located in South Orange, New Jersey and the Seton Hall School of Law is located in Newark, New Jersey (About Seton Hall, 2015). Today, more than half (59%) of the university's undergraduate enrollment are females (About Seton Hall, 2015). According to U.S. News & World Report -- Education (2015), "As the nation's oldest diocesan Catholic university, Seton Hall embraces students of all races and religions" (Seton Hall University, 2015, para. 3). This mission and the current enrollment levels of women are a sharp contrast to the school's undergraduate enrollment in the mid-20th century when the institution was male-only as discussed further below.

Seton Hall in the 1960s

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Brown v. Board of Education that the "separate but equal" provisions of Plessy v. Ferguson decided in 1896 placed minority students at a disadvantage and mandated integrated schools across the country (Moore & Lewis, 2014). It was against this setting that the debate over whether women should be allowed to enroll in the South Orange campus took place. Although Seton Hall established a "university college" for women in 1937, it was not until 1968 that Seton Hall changed from a male-only to a co-educational institution (Seton Hall history, 2015), and this situation only changed after a series of debates by the university's students and board of trustees. For instance, the headline of the February 7, 1963 issue of The Setonian (see copy at Appendix A) read, "Should SHU Go Coed? Students To Decide." An excerpt of this article reads, "The student body will be asked to vote on February 27 on whether the South Orange campus should become co-ed" (p. 1). The decision to allow a vote on the co-educational issue was described by this article as a "compromise": "Student Council authorized the referendum in a compromise move. Earlier, it defeated a resolution to reject all future women special students and passed another advocating complete co-education at Seton Hall" (Should SHU Go Coed?, 1963, p. 1).

More than 4 years later on October 25, 1967, the announcement was made in The Setonian (see copy at Appendix B) that, "Seton Hall [goes] Coeducational in September -- Trustees Approve Changeover." An excerpt of this article reads, "Starting next Fall [sic], applications for admission into any school of Seton Hall University will be accepted from both males and females" (p. 1). The article also noted in this article that, "This move by the school follows the already scheduled exodus of girls from the Seton Hall campus in Newark. It was originally planned that the girls...

Now, girls entering Seton Hall will have the opportunity to seek a degree in Arts and Science or Business as well as Education" (Seton Hall [goes] Coeducational, 1967, p. 1). The initial enrollment for women was estimated at under 100 students due to a lack of appropriate resources for female students (Seton Hall [goes] Coeducational, 1967). It is also noteworthy that although the February 7, 1963 article refers to "women students," the October 25, 1967 article refers to them as "scholarly young ladies" but also as "girls," a demeaning reference even then that is consistent with Kenneth Burkes' Dramatism Theory as discussed below.
Application of Kenneth Burkes' Dramatism Theory to Seton Hall Coeducational Debate

An application of Kenneth Burkes' dramatism theory to the debate over whether Seton Hall should become a co-educational institution is congruent with the observation by Klumpp (1993) that, "Kenneth Burke's dramatistic theory revitalized contemporary American theories of rhetoric into new understandings of the ongoing rhetorical processes of societal construction" (p. 148). In 1945, Burke posited that any type of act requires an agent and a setting for the action to take place (Hare & Blumberg, 1988). In addition, Burke maintained that any type of act must have a corresponding purpose (Hare & Blumberg, 1988). Besides these initial concepts, Burke later incorporated the "concept of attitude" which was used as a reference for "incipient action" (Hare & Blumberg, 1988, p. 4).

In sum, the basis of Burkes' dramatism theory concerns the concept of motive, or the rationale in support of human actions (Burke, 1945). According to one authority, "Burke believed that all of life was drama . . . and we may discover the motives of people by looking for their particular type of motivation in action and discourse" (Burke's Pentad, 2015). The so-called "pentad" created by Burke contains five fundamental questions that can be asked in order to identify the underlying motive of any type of human action as follows:

1. Act: What happened? What is the action? What is going on? What action; what thoughts?

2. Scene: Where is the act happening? What is the background situation?

3. Agent: Who is involved in the action? What are their roles?

4. Agency: How do the agents act? By what means do they act?

5. Purpose: Why do the agents act? What do they want? (Burke's Pentad, 2015, para. 1).

These five elements of dramatism are described further in Table 1 below.

Table 1

Five elements of dramatism

Element

Description

Act

The act is a motivated and purposeful action. It may be a simple, single action, such as moving or speaking, or may be more complex and compound. The act is an important part of the meaning, thought it is not the whole meaning, even though it may sometimes be thought to be so. The other four parts of the pentad of course also contribute.

Scene

The scene is a 'container', the place where the action of the act occurs. This includes both physical location and the contextual situation, occasion, event, time. People who put emphasis here believe that changing the scene changes everything else.

Agent

The agent is the person or group of people who perform in the act. They are the characters in the story, the people who enact the meaning. Motives, such as hatred, envy and love can also act as agents as 'they' are the moving force that acts. Countries and organizations can also act as agents. People who focus here believe that you need strong individuals to make things happen.

Agency

Agency is the technique or method by which the agents achieve their goals. This may be a sequence of acts encompassed by an idea or principle.

Purpose

The purpose is the reason that the agent acts, the outcome they are seeking from what they do. Sometimes it is obvious and in the open, at other times the agent's purpose may be covert and hidden. Purpose may be layered and distracting, for example where an apparent good purpose cloaks an underlying selfish motive.

Source: Adapted from Burke's five elements of dramatism, 2015

Applying these dramatism elements to the debate over whether Seton Hall should transition into a co-educational institution that took place during the late 1960s indicates that these debates followed a pattern that was taking place across the entire country during this period in American history. In this case, the "act" was the debate over whether Seton Hall should allow women to attend the main South Orange campus, the agents involved were the male students and…