It’s often difficult when a school goes co-ed, and many Division III women’s schools have begun to admit men in recent years. Immaculata, Regis, Lesley, Chestnut Hill (since moved to D-II), Hood and Wheelock are among them. The Atlantic Woman’s Collegiate Conference was a casualty.
Wells College is adding men’s basketball soon as well.
Randolph-Macon Woman’s College became Randolph College after admitting men, and the transition wasn’t easy — not for the teams and certainly not for the campus.
“We applied to a women’s college, and we’re not graduating from one,” said Hillary Peabody, the student government president. “(Men) are the reality of what we don’t want to happen at our school.”
Read the full story, from the jealousy over full stands at a men’s soccer game to a group of hooded figures stalking freshmen in the school’s first co-ed class to a wake-up call in a Roanoke Times feature story by Erinn Hutkin.
Great article…similar things happened when VMI and the Citadel were forced to admit women.
That is a great article… though very disturbing. Some of the actions of students on that campus could easily have been dealt with by Lynchburg or Virginia authorities… or even federal. However, I can appreciate why the school probably didn’t go down that road – hats off to them!
Something that article didn’t mention was that Coach Clay Nunley played for and graduated from Goucher College – another institution that made the same move Randolph College made back in the mid-80’s.
I graduated from that same school and attended the school as a student along with Clay. The problems Goucher experienced while dealing with becoming co-ed during our time were certainly no where near what Randolph has or will deal with, or what Goucher dealt with in its first years. However, there was, and still is, some lingering affects on the Towson, Maryland campus.
Goucher is the only school in the country with an Alumnae/i House or Alumnae/i Association. Reason: those who attended the school during the “change-over” or right before are so angry with the change, it is about the only way the school could appese them. I still remember the day I saw the sign go into the ground and how it not only angered me, but made me realize I would never be good enough to be considered a part of the rest of the former students of Goucher.
However, I recently spoke with a woman who attended Goucher during the “change-over” and is now working in the Alumnae/i office. She said she understood Goucher’s situation at the time (the school probably would have been bought-out eventually by Johns Hopkins or another school if they hadn’t gone co-ed; many of the residence halls in the 80’s were being rented out to Towson Univ. and Hopkins to be their residence halls) and joked that she actually looked forward to seeing the boys come to campus. She also understood were others came from at the time. However, she admits that many of her generation and ones before her are still, to this day, angered by the college’s decision. However, the campus has flourished after going co-ed.
But, the anger is strong enough to still not have an Alumni House or Association and many women only donate to the college as long if their money doesn’t go to anything envolving men (i.e. Women’s Studies programs).
I can also tell you stories of myself and friends being bad-mouthed by girls for just holding a door for them; complaints that many male students were athletes – growing pains at the time; students whose mothers who were former graduates that didn’t appreciate if they had guy friends on campus; efforts to degrade men; and guys falling through the education cracks because there wasn’t as much care about their well-being. It all happened at least ten years after the school went co-ed, so Randloph may have gotten over the first extremely major hurdle, but there are more ahead.
That being said, Goucher continues to grow, mature, and strengthen and I am not aware of the same struggles – or nearly to the same degree. There are more men and students on the campus then even in my day, and they are more diverse. I can only hope Randolph figures out some of its hurdles sooner rather than later.
And Coach Clay Nunley may be the perfect person to not only build a quality basketball team for that school, but to help the school grow as a community.
Good luck Randolph, I, for one, am pulling for you!
Thanks for your comments, Dave.
It would be interesting to compile the list of D3 schools that have gone co-ed and the year that it occurred.
Ralph,
From the great state of Minnesota I have two for you.
St. Mary’s (Minn.) went co-ed in 1969 and decades later bought the campus of it’s Winona, Minnesota, women’s equivalent-school, St. Theresa’s, which closed in 1989.
St. Thomas went co-ed in 1977.
I checked those in Wikipedia, the other MIAC schools do not have mentions in their articles about co-educational status or change over.
The hatred for the decision is still rather evident despite what the article says.
Randolph has been trying to sell some valuable art pieces for over a year now and still haven’t been able to because Alumni have been protesting it and suing Randolph largely because they hate the decision they made.
I have talked with several Randolph Alumni who have said they hope the college goes bankrupt and has to shut down because they hate that Randolph went co-ed. They would much rather see their college fail than to see it succeed. If they hadn’t have gone co-ed, they likely would ahve shut down. Now they made a decision to avoid it, and the alumni still want to see it fail.
I haven’t talked to many current students who were there before it went co-ed, but 100% of the ones I have talked to all praised the decision and report having a much more enjoyable experience this year than in previous years. The ones making all the ruckus are bad apples: you can buy a bushel of apples, mostly all of them will be good ones worth eating, but there will be a few in it that are nasty.
From NE Pa., there are four: Scranton(1972) and Kings from men’s schools and their former sister schools Marywood and Misericordia. The 2003-4 bball season was noteworthy for Scranton when they lost at home to both former women’s schools for the 1st time.
Separately, i saw a list of current men’s schools(~5) Hampden-Sydney, St. John’s(Minn), Wabash.
Thank you for the blog entry and the link to the story.
Vassar went co-ed in 1969 and still uses the dumb alumnae/i format. For a school with supposedly high academic standards, they do not know their Latin.
The presence of men are tolerated at worst. The school has yet to establish an identity as a co-ed institution. Indeed, when you mention the school’s name, many people will ask if it is still a women’s college.
Most alumnae from the pre-1969 period recogonize that the decision to go co-ed offered the best chance for the school to remain independent.
At the time the board in control (I do not recall the proper name) faced three decisions. One, the school could close. Two, the school could join a merger with Yale and RPI. Three, the school could admit men. The first option was out of the question.
The second option progressed to the point that letterhead was created, and a new logo was commissioned. The respective faculty of the three institutions held retreats to discuss the integration of curriculum.
The plan was to move Yale’s math and engineering and Vassar’s math undergraduate programs to RPI’s Troy campus. RPI’s and Yale’s arts and sciences undergraduate would be housed at Vassar. The remaining undergraduate programs as well as graduate and professional programs would be housed at Yale. I am not sure if Vassar’s famed arts program would have moved to New Haven.
At the last possible moment, Vassar’s board opted to remain independent and admit men.
FWIW, if any school can benefit from a football program, it is Vassar.
Other former women’s schools that began admiting men include Manhattanville, Skidmore, and Connecticut College. I may be wrong on M’ville.
Hobart and William Smith remain independent, degree granting institutions; however, they share classes.
St. Johns in MN should not be considered a men’s college since their students and those of the College of St. Benedict (all-women’s college) attend classes with each other on both of their respective campuses.
“FWIW, if any school can benefit from a football program, it is Vassar.”
As cold as it has been this winter, I think that it will more than the proverbial cold spell before Vassar adds football.
Thanks for the post.
Centenary was an all womens school until sometime in the 80’s. Not sure exactly when, but I know that in the early 80’s I used to go to Hackettstown NJ when I was home on leave because I knew that the college girl to men ratio was favorable to me. I just looked it up, they went Co-Ed in 88.
Centenary offered Co-Ed courses for evening students starting in 76 when they went from a Junior College to a four year school.
Going back to my days at RPI, there were several schools nearby in the late 60’s that were women’s colleges at the time – Skidmore, Green Mountain, Bennington (is it still?), and Russel Sage (I assume still a lady’s college). I also dated a girl in HS that attended Wheaton (Mass) – I believe it was all women back then
“St. Johns in MN should not be considered a men’s college since their students and those of the College of St. Benedict (all-women’s college) attend classes with each other on both of their respective campuses.”
However you miss something. St. John’s students pay tuition to St. John’s and St. Benedict’s students pay to St. Benedict. They share a website, and do many things together, but that’s not unlike St. Theresa’s and St. Mary’s — mentioned previously by me. They are near each other, have similar values, but they are not the same and thus are called men’s and women’s colleges.
Is the College of St. Catherine’s not an all-women’s college as they have students that attend class at St. Thomas, Macalester, and Hamline and those schools have students that attend classes at St. Catherine’s, too?