University of Virginia Library

XV. The Students—Admission of Women

Previous to 1910, the question had been raised but
once whether or not the student body should be permitted
to receive recruits from the ranks of women; this
was in 1893; and after a somewhat timorous coquetting
with the proposed innovation, the Faculty and Board of
Visitors decided that the University must be reserved for
persons of the male sex alone. At that time, there was
no very aggressive sentiment abroad in Virginia in favor
of granting the same opportunities to women as to men
for the acquisition of a higher education. There was,
it is true, a hazy sort of impression that, as a matter of
common equity, they were entitled to it in all the institutions
supported by the State; but public opinion was
not yet ripe for the introduction of so radical a change.
Many years were yet to go by before the women themselves,
under astute leadership, would grow bold enough
to knock, not at the Faculty door of the University, as
in 1893, but at the door of the General Assembly itself,
as the most direct path to the possession of those educational
privileges which they stoutly asserted belonged as
much to themselves as to men.

The first bill was entered on the calendar of the Senate
in January, 1910, by Aubrey E. Strode, of the Amherst
district, one of the ablest members of that body. Under
its provisions, women who were at least eighteen
years of age could be enrolled in the undergraduate department
of the University, but they were not to occupy
the class-rooms with the male students,—a special
group of buildings was to be erected for their use; special
equipment supplied; and special instruction given, just so
soon as the required fund should have been accumulated
by the Board of Visitors. This measure, which had a

coordinate college distinctly in view, failed of passage
in the Senate by a narrow margin, and was not brought
up in the Lower House.

A second bill, known by the names of its patrons as the
Early-Rison bill, was submitted in 1912. It provided
for the inauguration of coordinate education at the University
on a more elaborate scale than the preceding
measure had done. The bill expressly prohibited a system
of coeducation in the undergraduate department,
but that system was to be allowed in the graduate and
vocational departments, should the Board of Visitors,
having no objection to the innovation, consent to lay
down the terms for admission. The Governor of Virginia
was to be empowered to appoint the members of a
board to supervise the affairs of the projected coordinate
college. The Rector and President of the University
were to serve as members of that body ex officio. The
bill containing these matured provisions was defeated in
the Senate by a large majority of votes, and was never
pressed to an issue in the House of Delegates.

But the advocates of a coordinate college were not to
be discouraged,—in 1914, a third bill was introduced.
This provided for the establishment of such a college;
appropriated a large amount for its construction; and
expressly subordinated its administrative board to the
Visitors of the University. The Senate passed favorably
on the terms of this measure, but it failed of adoption in
the House by six adverse votes. A fourth bill, submitted
in 1916, with almost identical requirements incorporated
in its text, was successful in the Senate, but was
lost in the Lower Chamber by a margin of two votes.
Two years later, Senator Strode, with his spirit of loyalty
to the cause only whetted by all these discomfitures,
introduced the fifth bill, which provided for the admission

of women to the graduate and professional departments,
—with the exception of law and engineering, which were
omitted from the list. This bill, having been entered
low on the calendar, never reached a vote.

Such, in very bare outline, was the history of the legislative
steps taken in the progress of the controversy
which the proposed innovation at the University aroused.
By keeping these successive steps in mind, the course of
that controversy, and all the influences which entered
in it, are rendered more intelligible.

When the movement for the higher education of
women began in Virginia, it was acknowledged by all who
were interested in its success that there were only three
ways of securing for the members of that sex the advanced
instruction which they demanded as a right: (1)
by the erection, at the expense of the State or private
philanthropy, of a great college resembling Bryn Mawr,
Vassar, and Wellesley Colleges and entirely conducted by
women; (2) by throwing the doors of every seat of
learning in Virginia, controlled by the commonwealth.
open to the entrance of female students on a footing of
complete equality with male; or (3) by building an imposing
coordinate college, which, in essentials, would be
divorced from the University, but, in the point of administration
and guidance, would be subject to the authorities
of that institution. The proposed college would be
an integral part of the greater seat of learning, but separate
from it. They would be equal in dignity, equal in
scholarship, and equal in all other claims to consideration.

It was the general opinion that Virginia was not yet in
possession of sufficient wealth to justify the State in erecting
an entirely distinct female college, like the greatest
of those in existence in the North and England; nor, at
that time, could it be hoped that private benevolence

would undertake to build such an institution. It was
the impression of many men who had pondered over the
question of higher education for women that their isolation
as students was not favorable to the acquisition by
them of the richer fruits of such education. "I do not
believe," declared the President of the University in a
letter addressed to the Board of Visitors in December,
1917, "that a policy of complete segregation is the
best way to give to women the training which they will
need for their public life in the century to come." And
this was also the conviction of many of the female advocates
of this wider instruction for the members of their
sex. What those advocates as a body preferred was
either a partial association with the State University in
the form of coordinate education, or complete identification
with it through the adoption of coeducation.
Every one of those measures, which, as we have seen,
were introduced into the General Assembly in the interval
between 1910 and 1918, had in view, not absolute
independence, like that of a private foundation,
but, at the lowest reduction, coordination. It was equality
that was desired, if not within the actual bailiwick of
the male students, at least so near the fence as to catch
some of the inspiration pervading the atmosphere of the
jealously guarded ground beyond it.

While the controversy over the admission of women
to the advantages of the University was absorbing the
attention of the General Assembly, what convictions
on that subject were expressed by the authorities and
students of the institution? The editors of the magazine,
in 1911, pointed out that coeducation already
prevailed in the medical department, for had not a class
been established for the training of nurses? Had any
harm followed? None at all, was the reply. How

then could evil consequences be expected to spring from
the proximity of a coordinate college? One beneficent
result at least was certain to flow from it,—it would
increase the number of those who would be practically
interested in the prosperity of the University. In other
words, it would be sure to swell the contents of the University's
treasury. But it is doubtful whether the students
as a body, at this time, took so favorable a view as
this. They unquestionably did not do so at a later date.

The President and most of the Faculty, in May of the
same year (1911), by formal resolution, assumed a favorable
attitude towards the proposed coordinate college;
urged its establishment in the "environment" of the University;
and advised that it should have a separate and
distinct individuality and academic life, but that, at the
same time, it should be so joined on to the University,
through its administrative board, as to make unnecessary
any duplication of instruction and expense. An amendment
was afterwards submitted, which, while approving
coordinate education, set forth the suggestion that coeducation
might be practicable beyond the Master's degree.
Forty-two of the professors present supported this
amendment, but without committing themselves beyond
that point. Messrs Graves, Dabney, Echols, Minor, and
Wilson, who were warmly inimical to the proposed coordinate
college, voted in the negative. These members
of the Faculty had been cooperating with Eppa Hunton,
Jr., Murray M. McGuire, and Henry Taylor, spokesmen
of the Richmond alumni.

It was the opinion of both President Alderman and
the rector, Armistead C. Gordon, that the establishment
of the coordinate college was the only means of warding
off coeducation in all the departments of the University.
"Is it not saner," wrote Mr. Gordon in January 1912,

to an opponent of the bill then under discussion in the
General Assembly, "is it not really wiser, that the
friends of the University, by allying themselves with the
coordinate bill in its least objectionable form, shall seek
to control, guide, and direct this force rather than permit
it to fall into possibly reckless hands? I favor the
coordinate college because I am opposed to the coeducational
university. This movement, I feel assured, will
never end until Virginia women receive a university
education." Such was the conclusion which had been
reached by most men who had been observing the drift
of public sentiment.

The cry for higher educational opportunities for Virginian
women was never more insistent than it was at
this hour. Where was the most modern advanced instruction
to be obtained by them? Not on their own
soil. Not a dime was then appropriated from the State
treasury for such instruction in its highest form for the
benefit of the members of this section of the community;
not a dollar for the benefit, even in a lower form, of at
least eighty per cent. of the women who taught in the
public schools. On the other hand, the facilities in the
State for the higher education of men were sufficient to
meet the needs of two thousand or more of their number;
and great sums were expended to afford them all these
advantages.

It was pointed out by advocates of the coordinate
college that the experience of Harvard University, Columbia
University, Brown University, and Tulane University,
—each of which had connected with it an institution
of this kind,—had proven the perfect feasibility
of this type of institution. "Coordinate education,"
said President Faunce, of Brown University, "has meant
for us the same standards, the same examinations, the

same degrees, the same teaching force, for women as
for men, and, at the same time, an entirely separate
social life." The same experience was reported by the
representatives of Radcliffe, Barnard, and Sophie Newcomb
Colleges. It was asserted that, in these coordinate
institutions, the women did not feel like intruders. On
the contrary, their attitude, sustained by their separate
college life, was one of complete independence, and yet
contemporaneously they enjoyed all the benefits of instruction
by university professors, and the use of the
best libraries and the most fully equipped laboratories.

In spite of all these practical illustrations, the bill of
1911–12 was thrown out, as we have already mentioned.