to the trustees that the alumnae be represented upon the board,
and the recommendation was accepted and acted upon by the trustees.
In 1914, about one fifth of the trustees were alumnae.

Professor Burrell, Miss Shafer's student, and later her colleague
in the Department of Mathematics, says:

"From the first she felt a genuine interest in all sides of the
social life of the students, sympathized with their ambitions and
understood the bearing of them on the development of the right
spirit in the college." And the members of the Greek letter
societies bear her in especial remembrance, for it was she who
aided in the reestablishing in 1889 of the societies Phi Sigma
and Zeta Alpha, which had been suppressed in 1880, under Miss Howard.
In 1889 also the Art Society, later known as Tau Zeta Epsilon, was
founded; in 1891, the Agora, the political society, came into
being, and 1892 saw the beginnings of Alpha Kappa Chi, the classical
society. Miss Shafer also approved and fostered the department
clubs which began to be formed at this time. And to her wise and
sympathetic assistance we owe the beginnings of the college
periodicals,--the old Courant, of 1888, the Prelude, which began
in 1889, and the first senior annual, the Legenda of 1889.

The old boarding-school type of discipline which had flourished
under Miss Howard, and lingered fitfully under Miss Freeman, gave
place in Miss Shafer's day to a system of cuts and excuses which
although very far from the self-government of the present day,
still fostered and respected the dignity of the students. At the
beginning of the academic year 1890-1891, attendance at prayers
in chapel on Sunday evening and Monday morning was made optional.