Randolph-MacOn College issued the following announcement on March 3
In the fall of 1971, the arrival of 54 female students on the Randolph-Macon campus would forever transform the College from a male school to a coeducational institution. While a small number of women had been educated at R-MC as early as the late 1800s, these 44 freshmen and 10 transfers were the College’s first female residential students.
A pattern of declining enrollment in the late 1960s along with financial pressures led to a need to expand the pool of potential students. Combined with a changing social environment that made single-sex education less appealing to many, one solution to declining enrollments was to recruit female students. Coeducation was widely discussed on campus throughout the late 1960s, and in March 1970, the College formed a Commission on Enrollment that was tasked, in part, with exploring coeducation at R-MC. The Commission surveyed faculty and staff in the fall of 1970. The results of their research showed that both faculty and students strongly supported admitting female residential students.
Though the majority were in favor, there were vocal opponents of the move. President Luther White went on the record in the Yellow Jacket Weekly in October 1970 as not supporting the move to coeducation, though he later changed his position. While many alumni were supportive of coeducation, others were vociferous in their disapproval; a small number even called for the closing the College rather than allowing female students.
Most objectors eventually changed their opinion, such as Tom Bass ’54, who said, “With the change to coeducation I was vehemently opposed to it. I’ve been happy to eat my words. It’s been the salvation of this college … What the women who have gone through this institution have done for this institution after they have left—a lot of it puts those of us who are men to shame.” Another alumnus, Dick Forrester ‘57, said, “I was most upset in the early ‘70s when women were admitted. I think a lot of us were, because we’re real good at looking backwards and didn’t like it one bit. Then I fast-forward to that scene, that same person is that happy dad who told his daughter, ‘You’re going to be a Yellow Jacket.’”
Prior to residential coeducation, the College had for many years enrolled a small number of female non-residential “day students”—young women from the local community who were often daughters of faculty and administrators. Over 100 female students have been identified as having attended R-MC prior to the fall of 1971.
In the end, the change moved quickly. The Commission on Enrollment submitted a report to the Board of Trustees in late 1970 that included the recommendation that the College go coeducational for the 1971-1972 school year: “Randolph-Macon should go co-ed, and do so immediately.” This report was written by the College’s administration rather than the Commission members, and the Trustees held a special meeting in January 1971 to approve the move to admit residential women. College recruitment materials that called R-MC “the College for the individual man” were quickly revised to include women and sent out the day after the Board of Trustees’ meeting. A day later, the first female applicant appeared in the Admissions office.
Many of the first women to enroll were from families with a connection to the College—daughters, sisters, and granddaughters of alumni. Others were attracted by the male-female ratio or the opportunity to be a groundbreaker. Cheryl Woolfolk Kfuri ’76 was one of the latter: “I thought it was interesting to be a pioneer, to be one of few, if you will. That made me feel that the women that were accepted were more carefully selected,” she said.
Mary Branch Residence Hall was designated the women’s dormitory and quickly renovated. Conrad Residence Hall, new at the time, became the second female dorm when Mary Branch reached capacity. Betty Jean “B.J.” Seymour, a visiting instructor of religious studies and one of the few female faculty members, was appointed Assistant Dean of Students in 1971. “House mother” staff was hired to oversee the dormitories, where residential women were required to follow rules that were different from the male students, including a curfew not required of the men. Some students remember these as being repressive; others indicated many people just ignored them with few consequences. Several of these policies were quickly revised as a result of student protests in the first year.
While the academic atmosphere was generally positive, some of the early female students recollected an environment that challenged their full acceptance into the community. Noanie Busch Sullivan ’76 recalled an interaction with a professor: “I said, ‘Dr. so-and-so, are you going to teach me how to think?’ And he says, ‘Why yes, Miss Busch, I think the housewife today needs to know how to think’ … The presumption was that I was only there to find a husband and get married. That was probably the first time it hit me in the face that this is an all-male [institution] that economically needed to accept women.”
Pat Gradwohl Hanback ’75 also experienced challenges but noted an overall inclusive atmosphere. “You were surrounded by a bunch of men, but they made you feel like you were part of the group. It was across the board—the administration, the faculty, the students,” she said. “There’s no question some alumni were upset over the fact that they had let females in, and it was no longer an all-male college, but you didn’t get that feeling when you were on campus. You felt like you were cherished and loved and you were part of the family from day one.”
The new coeds enthusiastically immersed themselves into campus life as evidenced in the Yellow Jacket Weekly and the Yellow Jacket Annual. They joined in extracurricular activities, student governance, and athletics. Several women’s sports teams were organized, although parity with men’s sports was slow in coming until Title IX, a situation common to most educational institutions. Female students and coaches recalled having to carpool to competitions for several years, often funding their own travel, while male teams were provided support by the College. The school did provide locker rooms, which many other schools did not; several women recalled having to change into their sports gear in their cars during away matches.
The move to coeducation in 1971 profoundly altered the Randolph-Macon student experience. The contrast between the 1971 Yellow Jacket yearbook, in which only a handful of images included women, and the 1972 yearbook, in which a significant number of women are depicted not just in the class photos but also in the casual photos of campus life, is startling. The Class of 1971 was the last male-only residential class; only 16 years later the Class of 1987 was majority female. Most will agree that the women of Randolph-Macon have done us proud. As that happy father of a female Yellow Jacket, Dick Forrester ’57, so eloquently stated: “The girls, the women, of Randolph-Macon are much smarter than the boys of Hampden-Sydney any day!”
To read more about coeducation at Randolph-Macon College, see James Scanlon’s second history of the College, Randolph-Macon College: Traditions and New Directions, 1967-2005, available in McGraw-Page Library or for purchase in the Campus Store. The history of women at Randolph-Macon College is preserved in the College Archives, part of the Flavia Reed Owen Special Collections and Archives in the McGraw-Page Library.
Original source can be found here.
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