The Committee of Nine was established in 1935 as an enlarged version of the Committee of Four, which had been formed in 1934 to select a successor for Mary Emma Woolley as President of Mount Holyoke College. Trustees serving on the Committee were Lottie Bishop (Class of 1906), Howell Cheney, Paul Davis, Edgar Furniss, Henry P. Kendall, Rowena Keyes (Class of 1902), Mary Hume Maguire (Class of 1918), and Helene Pope Whitman (Class of 1904), and Alva Morrison, Chairman of the Board. The Committee solicited faculty opinions about Mount Holyoke's next president through the Faculty Conference Committee and alumnae opinions through the Alumnae Association. Opinions differed sharply as to whether the new president should be a woman or a man. In October of 1936, Amy Rowland (Class of 1893 and former College Trustee) instigated a writing campaign against the appointment of a man to the position. The appointment of Roswell G. Ham as Woolley's successor was announced in June of 1936. In November of the same year, Carolyn D. Smiley (Class of 1912) began a second writing campaign to protest the appointment of Ham, who became President of Mount Holyoke College in the fall of 1937.
From the guide to the Committee of Nine Records RG 3. 3. 4., 1933-1937, (Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections)
