The women shared personal anecdotes dealing with issues ranging from depression and pregnancy to their own conflicted racial and sexual identities.
The seven seniors, who volunteered to share their struggles and the lessons they learned, were selected to represent a cross-section of women's involvement and experiences on campus.
Linda Lomelino '06 spoke about the shock of realizing she was five months pregnant after trekking 5,000 kilometers on a hiking trip in South America.
"I found myself drowning in fear for being a pregnant Dartmouth woman," Lomelino said. "I took the morning after pill and Dick's House guaranteed me I wasn't pregnant [before the trip]. It took me the rest of the year to realize that I had nothing to be ashamed of."
But despite what she called her "mistake," Lomelino said she could not ask for any other Dartmouth, or life, experience.
"Your plans will never go as you intended them to," Lomelino said, "because even with all my responsibilities, lack of sleep and malnourished social life, I can say today that I am more of a woman then I ever was."
The women's stories of triumph and frustration also aimed to inspire the next classes of Dartmouth women.
The crowd grew silent as the soft-spoken Sasha Acher '06 voiced her experience of sorting out her conflicted sexual identity while at Dartmouth.
"I felt things slipping away from my control," Acher said. "I felt like myself was oozing out everywhere and I had no boundaries to keep it in. I overwhelmed myself with everything falling in but at the same time exploding."
Other women, including Elizabeth Swedo '06, took the opportunity of a large, captive audience to weave in pleas for students to seek help and to recognize certain destructive aspects of the Dartmouth culture. Swedo shared her story of depression and encouraged students to pay more attention to the issue.
"Many issues that contributed to my depression I feel are alive and well at Dartmouth today," Swedo said. "I wish there was more awareness on campus. I am here to tell you that you can get help and no one needs to suffer."
Another goal of the panel was to encourage dialogue in the Dartmouth community about the female college experience in light of the perceived male dominance in fraternities and other social spaces.
Cristina Duncan-Evans '06, whose parents were members of the Class of 1976 in an era of what she termed hypermasculinity, stressed the need for each woman to craft her own Dartmouth experience.
"My experience as a gay women is not something I see very often, especially on this campus," Duncan-Evans said. "Just because your experience is different from everyone else's doesn't mean that it isn't the Dartmouth experience."
What most of the women had in common was a difficult journey either before they arrived at Dartmouth or once they got here.
Before Jennifer Krimm '06 applied to Dartmouth from a poor, rural area in Kentucky, her guidance counselor told her that women go to college to find who they are going to marry.
"She said, 'You could go to an in-state college, find a husband and then save a lot of money when you drop out.' She ripped my Yale [University] application in half and refused to fill it out," Krimm said.
But coming to Hanover and taking on three jobs every term has not alleviated the pressure that Krimm and other Dartmouth women like her feel to make something out of their lives.
"Now that I have a an Ivy League education I feel that same pressure and drive that got me here to make money to be successful. I feel like by giving myself more choices I've gone from one extreme to the other," Krimm said.
The panel which was entitled, "Will the women of Dartmouth please stand up?" was sponsored by one of Dartmouth's all-female senior societies, continuing a tradition that started with the Class of 1989.
