University of Virginia Library

Coeducation Discussed

One of the last issues discussed was
coeducation. Frank Hereford Jr., Provost of the
University and chairman of the committee on
the Future of the University, gave a brief
run-down of the rationale for the admission of
women through 1980. One of the most
important aspects of the plan was the fact that
it had to consider Board of Visitors' edict of
not cutting back on the number of qualified
men admitted to the college. A plan was then
proposed which would see a ratio of approximately
65 per cent men to 35 per cent women
by 1980. In the fall of 1970 there are to be
approximately 400 women admitted to the
college - 225 in the first-year class, and the
remaining in the upper classes.

Several persons asked if the plan was in
effect a quota system. This was vigorously
denied. But one student member of
the committee said that the plan was indeed a
quota system which was based on "rigged
reasoning." (A full report on the plan for
admission for women will be explored next
week in The Cavalier Daily.)

There was also discussion of the human
aspect of coeducation, Dean of Women Mary
Whitney and others said that women must stop
being overlooked at the University. They stated
that women cannot simply be "added on" to
the existing structure of the University.
Coeducation means that the University community
must in some ways change. Women must
stop being thought of as "on the fringe of the
University" but recognized as an integral part
of it.

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Mountain Lake. Impossible to report on,
impossible to summarize. Aside from the
rhetoric and ideas of the discussions, there was
raw emotion, both beautiful and distasteful. It
is unfortunate that remembered most is the
feeling of mistrust and the one incident which
seemed the epitome of that feeling. It occurred
when a "faculty administrator" questioned the
sincerity of a student leader's love for the
University because the student had dated to
propose that all was not as well as it might be
with the University. We remember the bitterness
in the accusation, the flushed faces and
bowed heads about the room, and silence. And
the silence was deadening.