RE LOG Fall 2024

12 Ransom Everglades LOG FALL 2024 he countercultural movement and free-spirited attitudes that characterized the late ’60s and early ’70s swept dramatically through the Everglades School for Girls and Ransom School for boys. The influence of hippie fashion, equal-rights quests, war protests and other hallmarks of the times sparked conversations and tugged at long-held rules and traditions at the close-knit girls’ school along South Bayshore and the genteel boys’ school on Main Highway. It was amid those changing times that discussions about a possible merger between the schools evolved into an agreement to unite as Ransom-Everglades School. The November 1973 decision that altered the course of history for both schools landed relatively softly in an era of institutional transition and upheaval across the nation. Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth and Brown had recently moved to full coeducation, and private high schools around the country were following suit. “It was a very changing environment from the late ’60s going through ’70s,” said Rudy Prio Touzet ’76 , a member of the first combined graduating class at Ransom-Everglades. “Everything was in shift and the school was really no exception to that. You felt it everywhere, whether it was the teachers, the students, the environment … It was really a fascinating time.” Faculty and students recalled virtually no apprehension about mixing boys and girls in the classroom, but plenty of trepidation REmembering the Fifty years ago, the Everglades and Ransom schools T “We have kept aspects of both schools ... They were both great schools separately and they are tremendous schools now together.” – Wendell Graham ’74 By Amy Shipley