The phys ed requirement

I still have nightmares that I wasn’t allowed to graduate from Williams because I didn’t fulfill my phys ed requirement. In fact, I only fulfilled it through the benevolence of Lillian Bostert, who reasoned that I had begun so many semesters of phys ed (indeed, every semester of my college tenure) that my cumulative attendance was sufficient to meet the obligation.

Nowadays you can apparently take wellness classes or hike with dogs or yoga to meet the requirement. In our day, we non-athletes would take fencing or modern dance. A few weeks into the semester, though, I’d find that my extra-curriculars — theater, musical activities, writing for the paper — would take up so much time that something had to go, and it was usually my tiptoe into jockdom.

I tiptoed (and not much more) into the swimming pool, though, for my first semester of freshman year. My roommate Olina Jonas had been an Aquabelle in the International Water Follies during the summer before we entered Williams, and she and I persuaded Coach Carl Samuelson to allow us to do an independent study in water ballet.

How could he refuse two of the first female freshman their request?

What Olina hadn’t told Coach Sam was that the amount of athleticism and aerobics required in the International Water Follies was minimal. We weren’t even talking Esther Williams. We weren’t really talking synchronized swimming. The Aquabelles mostly moseyed in the shallow end of the pool and synchronized their arm motions. They wore black light swimming caps that, under the Follies’ elaborate lighting grid, created all the motion and excitement the crowd had come for until the Aquabelles exited in their somewhat skimpy bathing suits.

So Olina and I would go to the pool. She would swim many laps and I would swim a handful before experimenting with arm movements in the shallow end, not so much to mimic an Aquabelle as to attract the upperclassman with whose schedule we were not entirely accidentally in sync.

Coach Sam hadn’t been checking in on us, and eventually came the day when Olina and I had to present our petit ballet aquatique. (I was much more serious about my French literature course than the independent study in phys ed.) The two of us did our shtick, walking around in the shallow end, waving our arms and occasionally fluttering our legs. Unlike at the International Water Follies, we were without the glamour of a lighting grid on black light swimming caps. Coach Sam could actually see us.

Needless to say, he was not impressed, but Olina told him that’s how they’d done it in the Follies. He shrugged and gave us full credit.

How could he fail two of the first female freshman in their first semester at school?