University of Virginia Library

For More And Better Women

'A Slightly Immodest Proposal'

By Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr.

—ed.

Time was, when ambulating past certain fraternal
establishments, I was wont to hear wafted from their
portals such festive and unhallowed strains as "We think
we need another drink/ For the glory of the U. Va."
Fancy my surprise the other day when, passing one of
these same Greek-letter emporium, I heard, or thought I
heard, the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
Listening more closely, I caught, or thought I caught,
the following words:

What a delightful change, I thought. These estimable
young men have turned from wine to women, and to
women not merely as the opposite sex but as an
educative agency, a symbol of self-improvement, a
civilizing force. How utterly admirable and lofty-minded,
this turn from barbarism to civilization. Surely
the University should take steps to further the trend.

Already we have at the University and vicinity a
number of charming and delectable females, dishes,
birds (the last is, I believe, the latest word for them), as
any experienced girl-watcher on the grounds (that is,
male of any age) can testify. But the number is too
small, and the largest of our schools, the College,
remains practically destitute of femininity. Alas that it
should be so. Something must be done.

I have what seems an eminently reasonable and
practical solution to the problem, an only slightly
immodest proposal.

Incorporate Neighboring Academes

I suggest that at the earliest possible moment we
move to the vicinity of Charlottesville and incorporate
as "colleges" of the University certain of the neighboring
female academes, of which there are a goodly
number of high quality in Virginia. I have in mind places
like Sweet Briar, Hollins, Randolph-Macon Women's
College, Mary Baldwin, and of course our sister liberal
arts college, Mary Washington, which should have been
here from the start. The worst hoax ever perpetrated on
the women of Virginia was to persuade them that the
setting up of a new (or relatively new) college in
Fredericksburg would give them as good education as
the University in Charlottesville could offer. Everyone
knows that this is erroneous. And as the University
moves ahead on the national scale, the discrepancy
becomes more apparent. Women of Virginia, rise! You
have nothing to lose but your education.

Your virtue will, of course, be as safe in Charlottesville
as elsewhere - or even safer. For it will be not only
in your own keeping but in the keeping of so large a
number of chivalrous Virginia Gentlemen. Think of
that! Yet I doubt if seduction or attempted seduction
(by male or female) should be made an Honor offense,
at least at the start of the program. Such a course might
put a slight strain on even our well-established Honor
System. But let us not look to such unlikely eventualities.
Is not resistance to temptation a very necessary
part of education and of the development of true
virtue? And have we not a Dean of Women and a Dean
of the University, to say nothing of the expected influx
of Deans of the new colleges? All ill be well. Virtue as
well as learning will surely triumph.

Stupid Alumni May Object

There is, of course, no economic problem involved.
The women's colleges could sell their plants - probably
at great profit - to local groups for community colleges,
or to local industries for expansion or housing. The
value of their plants could be transferred to the
Charlottesville area in a gesture of amalgamation at a
minimum of expense to the University or to the state.
But please don't let the local real estate agents get wind
of this. Let us keep it a secret until it is - as I am sure it
soon will be - a fait accompli.

Nor is there any problem with the University of
Virginia alumni. There was a time when many of them
would have objected. Myself an ancient alumnus, I
know that most of the alumni who would oppose the
idea are either already dead or will certainly drop dead
of apoplexy when they read this. No doubt some of the
stupidest of our alumni and some of those living in and
around Richmond (categories somewhat overlapping)
will pass resolutions. But considering the enlightened
character of our alumni body in general, we need not
bother too much about these backward brethren. Let us
go forward.

Reluctant Virgins And Maidenly Identities

The Board of Visitors? But this is too important a
matter to be left to politicians, business men, and
political appointees. Let them remember their designation
of mere "Visitors" to the grounds, who can't
possibly know as much about us as we full-time
residents and professionals know. Rumor has it that
they are already looking into this matter, albeit somewhat
tentatively. Let us forget such ancient and
ungentle persuaders as and feathers and riding out of
town on a rail, and hope to deal with them, as they with
us, in terms of sweetness and light. The outcome cannot
be much in doubt.

It is possible, of course, that some of these neighboring
female academes may be virgins and
prefer to retain their own maidenly identities. This may
be especially true of those colleges with close denominational
affiliations. But it is believed that the younger
women of the alumnae will favor the move and will
make themselves heard. Yet let us not press them. The
University could probably not absorb all of them at
once. Let us accept them one by one, gratefully, for our
own enrichment and possibly theirs - the latter is for
them to decide. Sooner or later it is believed that they
will all be attracted into our orbit, which will also be
their orbit, since the move will be a genuine amalgamation,
not an Anschluss or absorption, and the sister
colleges will retain their names and as much as possible
of their identities as resident colleges of the University.
The University would also need their present faculties -
or most of them. And of course their Presidents would
come as Presidents or Masters or Headmistresses or
Deans of their respective colleges of the University of
Virginia. What an educational power, what a social
Elysium, we would be.

If anyone thinks this is a frivolous idea, let me point
out that Yale and Vassar are about to marry and live in
New Haven; that Harvard and Radcliffe have been more
than companionate; that all the other great state
universities have long been completely coeducational;
that only a handful of really good universities remain
purely masculine; that even staid old Oxford is recommending
an additional woman's college (it already has,
five) and an increase of a thousand women to its student
body; that we ourselves are already completely coeducational
in all graduate and professional schools, and
except for a two-years-of-college admission requirement,
in all undergraduate schools except the College, which is
itself already partly "integrated" as to sex and as to
color. Why should we hesitate to take the simple final
step, and to enrich ourselves from these neighboring
female establishments, some of them almost as distinguished
as ourselves? The time may come when only
Princeton will be left as a little boy's club on the
Eastern seaboard. And has it that Princeton is
looking somewhat wistfully toward the New Jersey
College for Women - or was it Smith? Bryn Mawr has
said firmly from its blue-stocking eminence - or so I
understand - that it wants nothing to do with those
Presbyterian playboys. Even solemn old Johns Hopkins
is reported to be flirting with neighboring Goucher.
[Watch this, Marvin Perry!] Yes, it would definitely
seem to be a springtime in Academia, but, equally
definitely, it has not all to do with fertility rites or the
sex revolution.

Equality For Women

What then? Why all this? At the risk of being a bit
obvious and perhaps a bit repetitious, I throw out a few
points, in slightly less playful vein. First, in a democratic
society women as well as men deserve the best education
that the state can offer them, and in the state of
Virginia that means, in my opinion, the University of
Virginia. Second, our men students need the intellectual
stimulus and challenge that the best women students
can give them. Third, the University will never attain the
national eminence it is striving for until it combines
woman power with its manpower in its intellectual life.
Fourth, in the interest of both men and women
students, a social as well as educational and intellectual
center must be developed which will discourage the
absentee weekend and its invitation to excess and look
toward the restoration of normal social contacts and
normal day-to-day relations between the sexes. A
university should be an environment which represents
life in all its variety and trains for all its complexities,
not a narrow or monastic institution. Surely this implies
the presence of the opposite sex, and in a modern
democratic society, of the opposite sex on more or less
equal and congenial and neighborly terms, sharing an
intellectual as well as a social and emotional experience.
On all grounds, educational and more broadly sociological,
it seems the consensus that young men and
young women should be thrown together, not kept
apart, during the impressionable and susceptible college
years.

On second thought, it is possible that this result may
be achieved for the University of Virginia without
disrupting all those delightful haunts of collegiate
femininity and transporting them to Charlottesville, but
surely not so immediately and charmingly. I am
unwilling to relinquish my almost modest proposal. It
should gain support both because of its sweet-reasonableness
and because of my own disinterestedness. In
view of my age, it is unlikely that I will benefit very
much from it. But who knows? There may be life in the
old boy yet. (Adv.)

But this is irrelevant. Back to the main point. A
slogan?

"More and better women for the dear old U. Va."
Prosit, Bravo, Hallelujah, Amen - or, in view of the
theme of this discourse, shall we rather say Ah, Women?