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Mr. Jefferson's University: Women in the Village!

Posted on: Thursday, 17 May 2007, 06:00 CDT

By Leffler, Phyllis

I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue, and advancing the happiness of man.1

Thomas Jefferson, to C. C. Blatchly, 1822

The University of Virginia opened its doors in 1825. Its founder, Thomas Jefferson, described it as "the last act of usefulness I can render . . . ," and it was one of three accomplishments for which he wished to be remembered on his tombstone.2 For Jefferson, the university would serve as a training ground for the future leaders of the republican experiment. This university was to have a distinctly southern flavor, and Jefferson hoped thereby to counteract some of the Federalist teachings of northern institutions of higher learning. In this university for southern gentlemen, there was no place for women.

Yet, women found ways to access the university as early as the late nineteenth century. Their place at "Mr. Jefferson's University" over the last hundred years has never been adequately explored. This essay uses institutional records and the voices of former female students to reconstruct the history of women's education at the University of Virginia. Administrative records have been supplemented by recollections collected through a 1998 survey of alumnae who attended between 1920 and 1976. Over 2,000 responses provide information on the academic, social, and institutional experiences of several generations of female students. These records now exist in a digital database and provide a new research tool based on the voices of women themselves. Together with archival records, newspapers, journals, and other publications, they help us to understand the opportunities and the restrictions that women encountered. The memories of individual women, inevitably diverse, help construct a collective story that illuminates the struggle to achieve educational parity.

The larger narrative reveals a university community mired in traditions of aristocratic culture from which southern women largely were excluded. There was resistance to full educational opportunity. Women were accepted only on a marginal basis and relegated mostly (but not exclusively) to the nurturing professions. But it is also a story that illustrates the remarkable fortitude and courage of women to fight for educational equality, to persist in an uncomfortable climate to realize their professional aspirations, and to create vehicles for their personal survival. Their struggle is part of both the university's history and of the efforts of women in the South to achieve educational opportunity. Although women constituted a majority of both undergraduate and graduate students in 2006, and were represented broadly in university organizations, this was not always the case.3

The history of women's education at the university reveals consistent conflict over issues of, at first, gender recognition, and then gender equality. A common refrain, frequently accepted without qualification to this day, is that women first came to the university in 1970. This myth reflects the fact that women were entitled to matriculate in the undergraduate College of Arts and Sciences on a non-exceptional basis with men in that year.4 With their entry, the nature of the university was forced to change, and with time, women would become a central part of the "academical village," making up a majority of students in recent years. The year 1970 thus marked a very significant turning point. Before that date, however, more than 15,000 women earned professional, graduate, and undergraduate degrees and an equal or greater number earned diplomas or degrees in nursing.5 Others accessed the university through summer programs at which they often made up a majority. The history of these forgotten women, however inconvenient to the nostalgic memory of Jeffersonian traditions, must be reconstructed in order to correctly understand the gendered assumptions about education in the commonwealth and the experiences of women within the system.6 This essay tells the story of women's efforts to advance an educational agenda at a university where resilient opposition flourished.

The story of women's educational opportunities at the University of Virginia begins with Thomas Jefferson's vision and intentions. His values created the nineteenth-century university and hovered over it through much of the twentieth century. Over the years, administrators, students, and alumni summoned the Sage of Monticello and the force of tradition to justify the status quo and to resist full incorporation of women into its programs. In so doing, they claimed to protect the honor system, maintain standards, and preserve the elite reputation of the university.

The roots of tradition stretch back to August 1818, when Jefferson was the first of twenty-one signatories of the Rockfish Gap report, commissioned by the Virginia General Assembly. The fourteen-page document was the blueprint for the University of Virginia. It listed a large number of pragmatic goals, focused primarily on political and economic development of the nation. Included as well were lofty and more abstract aspirations of developing the reasoning powers of America's youth, cultivating their morals, instilling order, and "generally, [forming] . . . habits of reflection, and correct action, rendering them examples of virtue to others, and of happiness within themselves."7

By 1821, progress was slow, and the aging Jefferson was not pleased. Writing to Gen. James Breckinridge, he claimed that the creation of the institution was tied to the "fortunes of our country" and that there was a need for men of the next generation "to receive the holy charge" that would inculcate the right political principles, offsetting those of northern seminaries where sons of the South were "imbibing opinions and principles in discord with those of their own country." The "canker" of the North [that is, Federalism] had recently resulted in the Missouri Compromise. Jefferson believed that it was critical to create a southern institution both to keep "recruits" from northern colleges and universities and to foster the principles of states' rights. The University of Virginia was meant to be a place where southern gentlemen would absorb southern principles in order to preserve anti- Federalist values.8

Jefferson's educational ideas were prescient in some respects. Critical of the inflexible curricula of the best-known northern colleges and universities established to train America's clergy, Jefferson proposed a fully secular and elective course of study. In his view, the teaching of any particular religion was inconsistent with unfettered rational discourse and therefore had no place at institutions of higher learning. In addition, Jefferson envisioned an environment where men would come to further their knowledge of disciplines already learned and where they could freely elect to study specific fields with a distinguished international faculty. This educational philosophy would later become the norm in American higher education. But it would be late in the nineteenth century before Harvard's president, Charles W. Eliot, adopted it.

Despite his radical vision, Jefferson's scheme for the University of Virginia did not include the education of women. Bounded by his largely southern and aristocratic milieu, he believed that women's education should be oriented toward the support of family needs, so that they might be able "to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be lost, or incapable, or inattentive." The primary purpose for the education of women was to develop their capacities as domestic caregivers. In addition, women ought to be tutored in the "ornaments" and "amusements" of life-those of "dancing, drawing, and music," in order to develop their attractiveness and taste.9 In short, women inhabited a different sphere where excellence was valued, but its parameters were defined domestically. Because women were not voting citizens in the United States, there appeared little need to consider their educational support through institutions of higher learning.

Jeffersonian thinking and values led to the creation of an all- male university. Its earliest traditions and character emanated from its genteel southern roots. The terms still in use recall its maleness: Virginia "gentlemen," Cavaliers, Mr. Jefferson's University, the Academical Village, and honor. These overarching references to history and tradition recall the university at its foundation in the early nineteenth century. Genteel, aristocratic, elitist, chivalric, honorable, gentlemanly are the prevailing attributes. Inherent in all these is the absence of women. That, too, is part of the Jeffersonian tradition.

Jefferson was, of course, reflecting values about higher education that were consistent with his time and place. Few people in the early nineteenth century supported higher education for women. Prevailing beliefs held that women's abilities and interests were distinct from men's. Women's knowledge remained "subjugated," and the female sphere remained outside the primary societal institutions. This remained true until at least the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Progressive Era reform movements drove national cultural values, spawni\ng greater focus on the educational needs of children and the training of their teachers, many of whom were women. Educational institutions across America were inevitably affected. College women, according to Lynn Gordon, constituted a "transitional generation," creating a bridge between the Victorian era and modern America. But it was not until the 1970s that full gender equality in education was reached through Title 9 of the Higher Education Act of 1972, which prohibited sex discrimination in schools that received federal funds.10

Although the trajectory for women's opportunities slowly moved in a positive direction, change came more slowly to the South than the North or West. Southern women were restrained by a more conservative mentality, and educational opportunities developed a full generation later than elsewhere." The Victorian ideology of "separate spheres" remained more pronounced in the South and complemented the struggle to maintain patriarchal hierarchies in the aftermath of the Civil War. Paternalism and civility often substituted for meaningful reform. Douglas Smith has revealed the effects of this commitment to order and stability on blacks in Jim Crow Virginia.12 Women, too, found their opportunities severely circumscribed by the Lost Cause mentality that venerated racial and gender hierarchies. For some, the result was a double consciousness in which women largely accepted traditional southern mores restricting their individualism but formed strong bonds of empowering sisterhood.13 Women created agency within their separate spheres, and educational institutions were an important locus for that self-development. But some colleges and universities made it more difficult than others. Although a range of possibilities existed for educational enhancement throughout the South, the University of Virginia proved particularly resistant to women's opportunities, even though a number of its administrators endorsed the Progressive agenda. As a result, women either had to become more strident or accept the status quo.

Only late in the nineteenth century did women inconspicuously find a chink in the armor of male privilege at the University of Virginia. Beginning in the 1880s they were able to participate in summer educational institutes for teachers, although they could not earn academic credit for their work. By 1901, a Virginia Summer School of Methods began, registering both men and women; although women were present, they were not considered enrolled in a university program. In that same year, a hospital-based nurses training program began, which brought women to the university to support the needs of hospital doctors. This program granted diplomas to thousands of nurses for half a century, but it was not recognized as an academic unit of the university.14

In 1920, the Board of Visitors officially accepted white women into graduate and professional programs, thereby opening up the schools of Law, Medicine, Graduate Arts and Sciences, and Education. This was the first stage of limited coeducation. During the Great Depression, women were allowed to request entrance into undergraduate programs on an exceptional basis, and small numbers of women who usually lived at home earned degrees. One black woman, Alice Jackson, tested the strict racial separatism in 1935. A graduate of Virginia Union who had also taken additional courses at Smith College, she sought entrance to the graduate school for an M.A. in French but was categorically denied because "admission of white and colored persons in the same schools is contrary to the long established and fixed policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia."1'' (No black students-male or female-would attempt to break the color line again until 1950.) During World War II, when many men were engaged in the war effort, white women's access again grew; in the final year of the war, they constituted 18 percent of the student body. At the same time, however, Mary Washington College (formerly Fredericksburg Normal School) was made the women's liberal arts college affiliated with the University of Virginia, providing broader educational opportunities at a location distant from Charlottesville. With the end of the war and the establishment of Mary Washington, the numbers of women on the main campus declined. Finally, in the 1960s, the women's movement and a changing cultural climate provided the impetus for the creation of the modern university. In 1970, the College of Arts and Sciences officially welcomed women students as undergraduates. With this decision of the Board of Visitors, the assumption that the educational needs and abilities of men and women were fundamentally different ended.

All educational institutions in America had not held such assumptions.16 Oberlin, founded in 1833, admitted women in 1837 and awarded its first B.A. degrees to women in 1841.17 Public universities in the Midwest followed suit. Between 1855 and 1870, the universities of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan had become coeducational. Private Northwestern University accepted women in 1869 at the insistence of the university's president. The University of California opened its doors to women in 1879.l8 In 1889, Barnard College became the official affiliated women's college of Columbia University.1'' By 1890, 43 percent of American colleges admitted both men and women; by 1900, more than 71 percent of all institutions of higher education were coeducational.20 But perhaps the greatest breakthrough for the "feminization of academe" in the nineteenth century came with the opening of the University of Chicago. Its first president, William Rainey Harper, invited Marion Talbot to become an assistant professor of sociology and an assistant dean in 1892. She joined Alice Freeman Palmer and at least three other faculty women, who shaped the institution in the company of John Dewey and George Herbert Mead. When Chicago opened in 1892, 40 percent of the undergraduate students were women.21

Southern universities were slow to change their nineteenth- century values that asserted separate spheres for men and women, but some progress was made. The University of Arkansas admitted women by 1872. Ten years later, women were admitted to the University of Mississippi.22 The University of Texas accepted women from its opening in 1883, and Alabama followed in 1892. In 1893, Gov. Ben Tillman of South Carolina, arguing a Populist agenda, tied state appropriation funds to that state's public colleges to the admission of white women who had completed two years of college elsewhere. Although heavily resisted by faculty and trustees, thirteen women enrolled at South Carolina College (later the University of South Carolina) in 1895. In the 1890s, Washington Duke made several gifts to Trinity College (later Duke University). One of these was contingent on the college admitting women "on an equal footing with men." In 1897, the public University of North Carolina admitted women to the graduate school by request of its president, Edwin Alderman, and soon thereafter to the undergraduate upper classes.23

In Virginia, progress was slow. When it occurred, it was the result of women who took the lead to press for additional opportunities. In 1882the very year that the University of Mississippi opened to women-the Society for Extension of Female Education submitted a petition by 400 Virginia teachers to the Board of Visitors at the University of Virginia, requesting that women be allowed to matriculate. Though one woman, Caroline Preston Davis, received a certificate of proficiency in mathematics that same year, the petition had no effect. Two years later, Addis Meade sat for and passed the examination granting her an M.A. in mathematics, but a bill to admit women to the university died in the House of Delegates when the faculty refused support and submitted a resolution of opposition. By 1900, a handful of schools in Virginia accepted women; they included Bridgewater College, New Market Polytechnic Institute, and Fredericksburg College.24 If educational opportunities for women were embraced slowly in the South, aristocratic Virginia was among the slowest and the University of Virginia among the most resistant.

Yet, change came even to the university, and women found opportunities for training and education, first in the nurturing professions of nursing and education. This was entirely consistent with conservative thought in the postbellum South because these professions supported the role of women as caregivers, reinforcing the region's historical gender roles.25 Nonetheless, such programs allowed women to develop knowledge and skills for nursing careers. These early nursing programs are too often discounted as evidence of women's education at the University of Virginia because they are viewed merely as hospital-based clinical diploma programs rather than academic degree programs. The Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree was approved only in 1949 and enrolled its first students in 1950. Before then, women received diverse training as the hospital expanded and were qualified to find work in both hospital wards and private-duty nursing, in pediatric and tumor clinics, in x-ray laboratories, and in rural communities.26

Women in nursing programs established a visible presence at the university, and their needs for housing and supervision were addressed by the school administrators. Not until the 1950s, with the creation of the B.S.N., were nurses viewed as bona fide students. Yet, their existence throughout the twentieth century constitutes part of the story of women at the university. In 1901, when the student nursing program began, there were three females enrolled. By the 1920s, the program had grown to at least ninety students, and by 1930, there were 135 nursing students and eighteen graduate nurses. The demands of clinical training were arduous, and nurses worked long hours, sometimes through the nigh\t. Providing for both the safety and supervision of student nurses led to the need for housing: Randall Hall and eventually McKim Hall (built in 1931) served as dormitory space.27 These dorms mostly housed students in the diploma program (by far the most popular option), or in specific programs for RNs, or the B.S.N.Ed., a program affiliated with the School of Education to train supervisors and administrators. Once the B.S.N. was introduced, diploma and degree students coexisted in the dormitory, until the diploma program was phased out in 1968 in favor of the degree program.

University administration did little to move the nursing programs toward academically recognized and accredited degree programs. A farsighted dean of medicine, Theodore Hough, suggested in 1920 that there should be a separate instructor for nurses in laboratory and science and that the university should view the nursing school as a place to provide a broad education rather than simply clinical teaching. But his suggestion fell on deaf ears, and nothing was done for another thirty years. In the 1920s, when graduate nurses sought to devise a program for higher-level training of nurses than was available in the South, they personally funded a drive to endow a chair of nursing. But despite the funding, housing the program in Arts and Sciences was resisted by the faculty, and President Edwin Alderman finally assigned the Sadie Heath Cabaniss Memorial School of Nursing Education program to the Department (later School) of Education.28 In 1939, Claire Wangen, superintendent of nursing, and Josephine McLeod, secretary-treasurer of the Virginia Board of Nurse Examiners and former U. Va. superintendent of nursing, wanted the school to be officially accredited by the National League for Nursing Education. But Dr. Carlisle Lentz, the new hospital superintendent, recognized the opposition of the medical faculty and refused to pay the accreditation fee. In response, the School of Nursing Alumnae Association raised the necessary funds for the required evaluation visit. Physicians were unhappy at the prospect of having nurses spend more time in classrooms rather than taking care of patients in the hospital. It was not until 1946 that the Collegiate School of Nursing was approved by President Colgate Darden and not until 1949 that the Bachelor of Science in Nursing became a reality, with the first students enrolling only in 1951.29 It was fine to have women serve the needs of doctors and patients in the hospital, but larger educational aspirations were actively resisted.

Nursing students were a fundamental part of the service mission of the university, but they often felt marginalized there. Two women who earned their Registered Nursing diplomas between 1939 and 1942 put it bluntly: "The student nurses were not considered part of UVA," contended Virginia Costello. "There were no extra curricular organizations of any consequence for us. I had been in everything in high school, but in nursing school we were there to work," reported Dorothy Gloor.30 Diploma students spent the vast majority of their time in grueling regimens on the hospital floors. At night, they returned to their dormitories where they felt isolated from the rest of the student body. Alumnae from the 1930s and beyond remember few social activities through either the nursing school or the university. They were not allowed to attend fraternity parties. Their work schedules made going to dances or athletic events difficult. Some women found opportunities through local churches to participate in glee clubs or community life, and one church rector even held early communion service for those people who had to be on duty later in the day.""The School of Nursing's work and study program left little time for community extra-curricular activities- a school apart," claimed Betty Shotton about her experience between 1944 and 1947.32 The lives of nurses were intense, and World War II made it all the more so.33 But the work created a sense of bonding with other students and was often its own reward.

Well into the 1960s, nursing students felt segregated by gender and program. The strict rules included curfews and chaperones: "like Cinderellawe had to rush home before the party was over," Alice Law Breitner recalled. Dress codes prevailed; throughout the 1950s, women were not permitted to leave the dorm wearing shorts, unless they covered them with raincoats. They were not allowed to be married in school, and when those rules changed, a pregnant woman in 1960 was not allowed to march in graduation.34

Nursing students often felt isolated and inferior. The "maleness" of the university was one of the reasons for this perception, and the feelings continued through the 1950s and 1960s. Gladys J. Chapman entered the B.S. program in nursing education, and at her graduation in 1949, she was awarded the Algernon Sydney Sullivan award for university service. She worked closely with the dean of women, Roberta Hollingsworth, and helped establish the Women Students Association. But despite this recognition, she did not feel part of the U.Va. community, stating: "Women were in the minority- mainly activities were male dominated." Diploma students felt this all the more intensely. P. B. Kennedy recalls: "it was a male school predominately and we had little physical contact as students. . . ."" Karen Wood, a woman related to the Dabneys and Carrs who helped build the university, and a student in 1967-68, recalled that diploma students did not feel a part of the U.Va. community-a reality she felt was reinforced administratively by the dean of nursing, who constantly reminded them that they were "only" diploma students. In response to a question about extracurricular activities, she writes: "None were available to diploma students. Constantly told we were NOT part of university and made to feel inferior." The male university students actively inculcated such feelings, Alice Barr claimed. As late as the mid-1960s, Marilyn Baker Shirley felt "separate and less than equal. Nursing students were referred to as 'McKim' pigs."36

Nurses' feelings of isolation were exacerbated by specific policies that excluded them as students. One diploma student from 1958-61, Ardra McKinney Withers, remembers: "I was very annoyed that we nurses were not allowed graduation on the Lawn as others were. . . ."37 And once they graduated, they were still considered a separate category of alumni. Susan Gallier White, a B.S.N. student from 1966-68, wrote:

As a new alum in the late 60's, I remember getting a letter from the Alumni Assoc., addressed "Dear Female Alumnus" (that situation still rankles). I was incensed.38

As late as 1971, students continued to feel isolated as women. One B.S.N. student, Ann Garland Carter, responded: "We were not 'accomodated' because we were female and we did not expect it. We signed the honor pledge on our honor 'as gentlemen.'"39

Regardless of program, nursing students rarely felt a part of the larger university enterprise. Often, they left the university with positive memories because the nursing programs created a sense of purpose and camaraderie among them. But they generally knew that by virtue of gender and their course of study, their presence was marginalized. A B.S.N. student from 1962-65, Mary Johnson Patterson, articulated a general sentiment: "I felt we were on the outside looking in."40

Although nursing students were separated from the rest of the university, the situation for other women changed radically in 1920. That was the year the Board of Visitors allowed women into professional and graduate programs as long as they met the educational and age guidelines. The decision came at the end of a decade-long struggle that involved university administrators, alumni, legislators, students, and women. It followed upon repeated attempts to pass a bill through the state legislature that would enroll women as undergraduates in a separate college adjacent to the university. Such a plan called for shared facilities, resources, faculty, and administrative personnel with classroom instruction separated by gender. The concept was called coordinate education. The bill failed every two years from 1910 through 1918 because of the determined efforts of alumni, students, and legislators to maintain the status quo. Nonetheless, reformers persevered. Fundamental to the struggle was Mary-Cooke Branch Munford, for many years the chairman of the Central Committee of the Co-ordinate College League. Her commitment to move toward a "politics of equality" and the dedication of hundreds of supporters finally pried open the doors of the university on a limited basis to women through a coeducational rather than a coordinate plan.41

Mary-Cooke Munford (1865-1938) was a remarkable woman for her time and place. She was fiercely independent and uncertain of whether marriage was what she wanted, despite being born into a genteel Richmond household in which her mother held onto the values of the Old South as a "sacrament sealed by blood." No doubt, her mother's views in part resulted from the untimely death of Col. James Branch, Mary-Cooke's father, in a tragic accident in 1869, and the need to honor the past. When she ultimately married at age thirty, Mary-Cooke also suffered the premature death of her husband, Beverley Munford, afflicted with tuberculosis from early in their marriage. Denied the opportunity for a college education herself, Mary-Cooke found common cause with her husband in fighting for "New South" values. Together, they devoted themselves to liberal causes for educational reform that would affect both blacks and women. Beverley wrote a pathbreaking book, published in 1909, focusing on Virginia's attitude toward slavery and secession. He also served as a trustee of Hampton Institute, was elected to both the Virginia house and senate, and hobnobbed with governors and presidents. Both befo\re and after his untimely death in 1910, Mary-Cooke worked tirelessly by his side for liberal change in Virginia. One such cause was public health and the creation of the Instructive Visiting Nurse Association, organized in Richmond in 1902. Lila Meade Valentine, Mary-Cooke, Sadie Cabaniss (for whom U.Va.'s graduate program in nursing was named), Nannie Minor, Adle Clark, and Kate Waller Barrett formed the ties that would later fuel the engine for women's educational reform. Together, they created the Richmond Nurses' Settlement-an interracial group of nurses-which ministered to the poor of the city.42 After her husband's death, Mary-Cooke devoted the rest of her life to continue the work they had shared so happily. She (along with many other remarkable women) dedicated herself to the creation of a coordinate college for women to be located at the University of Virginia.43 She was only partially successful.

Although the approval of coeducational opportunities in graduate and professional programs in 1920 marked a significant departure, women had already availed themselves of educational opportunities at the University of Virginia. By 1907, women were allowed to attend U.Va.'s summer programs, which focused mostly on teacher training. Although this may seem to reflect an early commitment to Progressive educational reforms in the commonwealth, the opportunity came a full thirty years after the University of North Carolina had created a summer normal school that enrolled hundreds of female teachers.44 At Virginia, women were not allowed to apply credits earned toward a degree until 1919, when the Summer Session was renamed the Summer Quarter. By the 1910s, however, women were a majority in those programs, primarily because they dominated the teaching profession in the state. In 1914, for example, 1,375 people enrolled; 1,232 were teachers, of whom 1,150 were women.45 Such participation helped enhance teacher preparation and improve primary and secondary education.

Edwin Alderman, named the University of Virginia's first president in 1905, had devoted his career to improving basic education in the South. When he became president, he announced the creation of the Curry School of Education through an initial grant provided by the Rockefeller Foundation. He viewed the training of teachers as a priority of his administration: "I am trying to build here a college for the training of teachers. . . . The great question with us is to build up now a system of secondary education, tying together the college and the primary school," he wrote in 1909.46 His goal was to focus on the university as an engine of social service, to move away from the aristocratic "ideals of Oxford" and move toward the more democratic philosophy of the University of Wisconsin. However, his actions fell short of his rhetoric. Despite their protests that Virginia's daughters were denied the same opportunities as its sons, and that Virginia was far behind the "daughter" state of West Virginia, women were not allowed to enroll in the regular academic year in School of Education programs until 1920.47 Before that, one female attendee asserted that her working toward a degree through summer programs "seem[ed] . . . only asking for 'the crumbs' as the doors of the University are barred against [women]."48

In between Alderman's appointment and the admission of women on a partial basis in 1920, a great struggle ensued over the establishment of a coordinate college at the University of Virginia. The creation of women's colleges that shared facilities and faculties yet allowed for the separate instruction of women had been successfully instituted through such pairings as Radcliffe/Harvard, Barnard/Columbia, and Sophie Newcomb/Tulane. Many other universities throughout the country, including the South, had become coeducational. Efforts to obtain legislative approval for a coordinate scheme rather than a full coeducational plan reflected a recognition of the power of male traditions at U.Va. Even Alderman, the great champion of educational reform, asserted that coeducation would be a profound mistake at an institution whose "personality" was "masculine."49 Thus, the coordinate plan offered the possibility of satisfying women who sought entrance as taxpayers to their state university without alienating those who wished to hold on to traditions of male exclusiveness. Although the plan eventually failed, its opponents saw it as the only possible means of progress.

The debate over women at U.Va. was often framed in ideological terms related to Jeffersonian and southern values. A primary focus was on Jefferson's original intentions for the university, especially in terms of how aristocratic or democratic he wished it to be. Students and alumni regularly invoked Jefferson's name in their defense of the male-centered university. They might have felt uneasy when Alderman became president. At an earlier stage in his career, he had worked tirelessly alongside Charles Duncan McIver in North Carolina to implement the southern Progressive agenda of educational reform. In this capacity, he orchestrated the admission of women to the University of North Carolina before 1900.50 Yet, despite his reputation as a reformer and his sincere desire to improve the commonwealth's educational infrastructure, he frequently reverted to positions that preserved university traditions and retarded change.

Mary Munford and the Co-ordinate College League representatives were the great champions of making the university more democratic. In 1914, Munford wrote to President Woodrow Wilson, a U.Va. alumnus:

The University of Virginia needs to be brought into touch with the life of the average man and woman in the State of Virginia. Its tradition and its attitude are largely aristocratic and academic as they touch the common life. . . . The State as yet makes no provision for training the women who form seventy percent of the teachers in these high schools. The co-ordinate college will train these teachers. The University will thus be brought into vital relation with the public high school, and the boys as well as girls grow to think of the University more as a peoples University. Thus a new element of democracy . . . will be injected into the life of the State's University.

Munford contended that Jefferson's goal was to establish a democratic, statesupported university open to people of talent. His intention could not be realized, she argued, because no true public system of education existed and students harbored the views of the "Planter class."51 Circumstances did, however, show signs of changing. In 1916, following the defeat of the College Bill by only two votes in the House of Delegates, Munford wrote to all members of the league: "The fight is at heart a fight of the people to further democratize the University and to make it more completely the head of our public school system."" And in 1918, with World War I framing public consciousness, the Co-ordinate College League lobbied the legislature. It invoked the Jeffersonian heritage:

In 1919, we celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the University of Virginia, the creature in spirit and pattern of Mr. Jefferson's mind. A few hours before his death he was heard by those gathered about his bed to say, "Warn the committee to be on the alert." As touching this vital and deeply important matter of the guidance and training of young women, and through proper provision for it, the completion in fact of a "system of general instruction, which should reach every description of our citizens," in the year when we strive and suffer "to make the world safe for Democracy," the dying voice of the great Democrat speaks to the members of the Virginia Legislature and bids them "Be on the alert."53

As they had before, opponents of the full admission of women to university programs countered with their version of Jefferson and the male, aristocratic tradition he had nurtured. Some argued that coordination should be rejected because it would be the first wedge to open the doors to full coeducation, thereby changing the basic character of the university. Others, including the university's rector Armistead Gordon and Alderman, argued that coordinate education should be supported as a compromise measure they hoped would forestall full coeducation.54

Many alumni, students, and some faculty members refused to accept the president's stance. Murray McGuire led the alumni fight, regularly using language of male privilege. In his opinion, allowing women through the doors would destroy the honor system, student government, and the very nature of the institution:

The University of Virginia is a man's university. It was founded as a man's university, and it has obtained a high position as such. Its history, its traditions, its system of government are all founded on the teaching of men and for the teaching of men and the association of men with men. The University is a little world of its own where young men find themselves, grow and develop amid surroundings that inculcate manliness and men's high ideals.55

He was unable to quote Jefferson directly on this issue, because Jefferson never addressed the possibility that women would inhabit the male sphere of higher education. His mentalit, which continued to influence crusaders for a nostalgic agrarian way of life, was that women were best educated for domestic roles. When Jefferson wrote about the University of Virginia, he simply assumed the maleness of the institution. By invoking the language of history, tradition, and ideals, McGuire implicitly associated his view with the university's founder.

Many currently enrolled students shared McGuire's view. In June 1918, a group of male students petitioned against both coeducation and coordination attempts, again asserting the importance of masculine tradition: "We believe that there is at the University of Virginia, as a priceless \heritage of ninety-eight years of splendid history, an atmosphere and spirit which fosters manhood and those other things which go to make men of honor and character. "% Claims of heritage and tradition were powerful emotional tools against the more democratic impulses.

The question of whether to admit women attracted national attention and was publicized through an anonymous essay that appeared in the New York Times Magazine in 1916, entitled "Shall Jefferson's University Admit Women?" The author wrote of the effort "to make this dream of democratic education for women come true in spite of the conservatism of the old regime. ..." The issue was definitely cast in regional terms, with the author claiming that establishing a coordinate college would not be of great significance in the North or West, but "To the Old Dominion, the idea is revolutionary.""To the chivalric ideal of the conservative South co- education is an impossible thing. Women must be kept apart, unspoiled by worldliness and intimacy." Opposition came from those who supported the University of Virginia as "intensely, vividly masculine." This author concluded that should the women prevail, it would constitute a victory for "Jeffersonian ideals in democracy over the caste and prejudice of an old social tradition."57

In response to pressure from without and within Virginia, President Alderman's position was ambiguous and inconsistent. He was intent on improving the commonwealth's educational system, and he used the language of democracy to promote the growth of the university. He supported the initial efforts for coordinate education, writing Mary Munford of his confidence that the Board of Visitors would not thwart the efforts of the Co-ordinate College League despite the "rhetoric and emotionality of public display."58 But admission of women was not his overriding priority. In 1913, he wrote Munford that his first duty was to the medical school; in 1914, he told her that he regretted that the action of the board was not stronger and that it left him unable to fight for the bill. By 1915, he wrote that he doubted the "wisdom of pushing the matter this year" and reminded her of the responsibility he bore for the entire university and his need to be concerned about legislative appropriations. By 1916, he placed himself in the camp that supported the location of a coordinate college on the far eastern end of Charlottesville, itself a point of contention. That year, he also wrote to Aubrey Strode, one of the original framers of the bill for a coordinate college, enumerating his aims for the university. Although he claimed that he wished to extend its reach through the Education School, Summer School, and Extension Service (among others), he never mentioned the aim of creating opportunity for women. He concluded his letter with the statement that the university "is essentially democratic to the core and hopes the Commonwealth will not deny it the privilege and opportunity of being more democratic than it is." Alderman, however, did not mention women. With World War I looming, he advised Munford that "there will be little time and strength to properly press or push the measure." Throughout, he claimed his belief in the importance of women's education through coordination but not coeducation, which he deemed "unwise and reactionary."59 Thus, the same Edwin Alderman who pressed for admission of women to graduate programs as president of the University of North Carolina in 1896 did not champion that cause in Virginia twenty years later. It appears he was unwilling to challenge the values of male legislators and alumni who remained attached to the traditions of the early Jeffersonian university. In the absence of strong leadership from the president of the university, the forces of resistance prevailed.

The Board of Visitors had the power to admit women to professional and graduate programs without legislative approval. After the coordinate fight ended, it quickly moved to do just that. Mary Munford had instigated the process when she asked Alderman to initiate such a discussion with the board. She provided him with seven cogent reasons, which he shared with board members.60 Their decision was based largely on the fear that U.Va. might otherwise be driven to full coeducation. William and Mary had moved to coeducational status in 1918. Alderman wrote Munford that William and Mary's decision created a "rival institution for State financial support," thereby driving the University of Virginia toward the logical conclusion of admitting women in a restricted capacity.61 Richard Dabney, dean of graduate studies, supported the admission of women on the grounds of "expediency" in 1919:

I opposed co-ordination because, rightly or wrongly, I held that it would prove the entering wedge, in a State University, to co- education. But, now that William and Mary is admitting women, I am inclined to think that, by co-operating with that institution, and agreeing to admit mature women to some of our courses, we have a good chance to escape the necessity of admitting young girls to all.62

The decision to admit women to graduate and professional programs was a defensive move-a measure to hold back the floodgates of full coeducation. By restricting women to programs for which few would qualify, coeducation might be contained and made less of a threat to the character of the southern, male, largely aristocratic university.

The struggle for women's equal access did not end with the board's decision in 1920. For the next twenty-five years, the fight continued for undergraduate female education affiliated with the University of Virginia. Only the dean of engineering, William Thornton, expressed deep disappointment of the failure of the coordinate college plan, claiming that until women were welcomed into the college, the institution would remain "small, anaemic, moribund."63 But other deans, including Richard Dabney and the law school's William Lile, had no enthusiasm for women at the university. Lile viewed the admission of "these new and strange beings" as a "radical deparcure" and claimed that he appealed to the "chivalry of the young gentlemen" to cushion the possibility of a rude response to their arrival.64

Perhaps most surprising is that Alderman clearly retreated from his earlier enthusiasm for coordinate education. By 1928, the General Assembly was considering a new bill in support of a women's liberal arts college affiliated with the University of Virginia. It was to be located within a three-mile radius of the Rotunda, with joint use of laboratories, libraries, and other facilities. Alderman objected, claiming that this would constitute "practical co- education in instruction in the natural sciences" and would "result in harm to both [sexes] in undergraduate life, and should not be enacted into law." His preference was for a building at least twenty- five to fifty miles away, still affiliated with the university. The Board of Visitors supported the president's position, stating that no college should be created so close "that the individuality of the University as a non co-educational institution may be engendered."65

Throughout the 1930s, efforts were made to work with Hollins College in Roanoke and Sweet Briar College near Lynchburg. Agreement seemed near with the former in 1931, but with Alderman's death, Hollins board members felt a lack of confidence in the terms. It was then that Fredericksburg emerged as a possible location. But it was only through the initiative of Colgate Darden as governor (before he assumed the presidency of U.Va.) that efforts were made final in 1944 for Mary Washington College to become the female liberal arts college associated with the University of Virginia.66 Founded in 1908 as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women, the institution broadened its curriculum in 1938 when it adopted the name of Mary Washington College. With the affiliated women's college located about seventy miles from Charlottesville, there was no danger that the masculine tone of the university would be compromised. It would be safe from the threat of creeping coeducation until the final challenge in the late 1960s.

Coeducation at the University of Virginia officially began in 1920, when women who were at least twenty years old could be admitted to the departments of Graduate Studies, Law, and Medicine on the same terms as men. They could also be admitted to the departments of Education and Engineering, and to the College of Arts and Sciences for vocational degrees if they had completed two full years of college elsewhere. Specified vocational degrees were the B.S. in biology, chemistry, geology, physics, mathematics, architecture, or commerce. They were specifically denied admission to Arts and Sciences for the "cultural degrees" of B.A. or B.S. However, if they chose to pursue those degrees through a Summer Quarter, they would be allowed to do so.67

Small changes were made to this policy over the next thirty years, allowing a few more women access, but they hardly affected the environment.68 Women remained a decided minority among the university's population of "Virginia gentlemen." In 1920, twenty- three women enrolled, making up 1 percent of total enrollment. By 1926, there were 118 women, representing 5 percent of the student body. The percentages remained stable except for the years of World War II, when men's military service caused overall enrollment to drop from 2,600 (in 1941) to 1,175 (in 1945). In that final year of the war, women constituted 18 percent of the student body. In the 1950s women's representation grew to 9 or 10 percent.69 The above numbers do not include the Summer Quarter, in which by 1925, 1,554 women enrolled, continuing the trend from the previous decade. They represented a whopping 70 percent of summer students. Most who participated in these summer sessions did so in an undergraduate capaci\ty, demonstrating the demand for female educational opportunities. And the official statistics did not include nursing students, who regularly numbered more than one hundred women annually through the 1920s and 1930s.70

Women were a substantial presence in some programs, despite their small percentage in academic-year enrollments. This was particularly true of programs in the Department of Education. By the 1926-27 academic year, fifty-seven of the 105 students enrolled were women. From that point on, women constituted a majority in education-based programs. The secondlargest cohort of women was in Graduate Arts and Sciences. According to the annual reports from Dean J. C. Metcalf, women in graduate programs quickly grew to one third of all students.71 Yet, in programs like Law and Medicine, they remained a tiny number. This was due, in part, to the lack of encouragement from the dean of law, William M. LiIe (who expressed relief when the small numbers remained that way), and the quota system in Medicine, which allowed for a maximum of four women in the program at any time.72

Once women entered the programs available to them in 1920, they both understood and felt the restricted nature of their participation. Their experiences were quite diverse. Some were married; some came only for evening or weekend courses; some commuted fairly long distances; some were fulltime students and became graduate assistants. Despite their varied personal circumstances, they generally agreed that there were few extracurricular or social outlets for them. Many felt they were merely tolerated and not welcomed. Too often, women pursued a course of study as a secondary choice because their preferred disciplines were not open to them.

Many women who enrolled in the education programs did so as a compromise measure. Often, they felt they had only two career choices-nursing and education. Margo Drucker commented about the mid- 1950s: "The only choices for women were education and nursing. I liked kids better than blood."73 Many were passionate about other fields and expressed resignation and frustration about the necessity of studying education. Julia Gathright McLaughlin received her B.S. in education in 1966: "I loved literature and had fantasies of working in journalism, editing, or teaching in college. I did not select the School of Education and hated it."74 One anonymous respondent previously attended Randolph-Macon Woman's College and painfully experienced the difference between it and U.Va. Her interest was in biology and medicine, but she was required to enroll in education because of the "treatment" of women. There were few opportunities for her to feel included in extracurricular activities. In the environment of the late 1940s and 1950s as she recalled, "women had leprosy." Although she had a productive thirty- eight-year career as a high school biology teacher, she felt especially bitter about squelched dreams:

As a UVA female student of the 1940s and 1950s I still hold resentments towards U.Va. in its treatment of women. My dream was to become a doctor. By attending summer school each year I was able to get the education courses out of the way. I was taking Pre-Med courses in the wintertime. By 1951, one of my sorority sisters and I were told by the Dean of the Medical School not to bother to apply for Med School because they were not going to waste the available spots on women.75

Education was the back door to college courses. To complete a B.S. in Education, women were expected to take a certain number of College of Arts and Sciences courses. To do so, they left a predominantly female world in the School of Education and migrated to the male dominated domain of the College. They often complained about how isolated they felt in those College classes. A student from the late 1950s, Mary Jo Ayers, lived at home and never felt part of the university community: "Being the only female in most of my classes was a very isolating experience-the prevailing mood at the time was to ignore women to the point of rudeness." In their College classes, women felt "a pervasive negative atmosphere because of... genderboth by peers and professors."76 Thus, even as students in the field of education where women had the best chance of feeling accepted, their experience was one of exclusion:

U.Va. in the 40's still upheld Thomas Jefferson's intent that it be a "Gentlemen's University" and women, although accepted into the professional schools, were looked upon as "interlopers" by some professors, ignored, in general, by the majority of the male students, and not welcome in "the Commons."

Such views prevailed through the 1950s and 1960s as well.77 Southern women had little option but to accept the conditions they faced, though many of them recognized and resented the culture of inequality.

For women in graduate education programs, the experience was better. Often, they enrolled as adults, with their own families and careers, and thus their needs for campus community were limited.78 In the classroom, they often felt challenged and stimulated and supported by professors in relatively small classes and seminars.79 One graduate education student, Suzanne Haff, remembered: "Professors gave my views respect, tried to stretch me intellectually, [and] occasionally socialized. . . ." Some were able to establish collgial relationships with professors for years and believed they were treated as professional peers.80

Beyond the realms of nursing and education programs, women were a tiny minority of students, and the road they traveled was particularly difficult. Through the years, their presence and their stories have been both hidden and forgotten. Yet, they did come to the university to study in undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs, officially enrolling in the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Architecture, Medicine, Law, and Engineering. As graduate and professional students, they were admitted under the terms of the 1920 provisions; as undergraduates, they were often considered exceptional cases. Some were the daughters of faculty, some were "local girls," and some were related to students who were matriculating. Most had educational experiences elsewhere and could compare their reception at U.Va. with other colleges or universities. Rarely did it come out favorably.

Consider the case, for example, of Constance Morris Page Daniel, daughter of the dean of the College, James M. Page. Ms. Page has completed one year at William and Mary, two at Cornell, and came home for her final academic year in 1931-32 where she completed a degree in English. She found her classroom experiences "ridiculous," remembering: "I was one of 20 co-eds and was 'stomped' if I answered a question or entered a classroom!"81 Stomping was a tradition of stamping one's feet, and it was almost always done as a group, following upon the lead of some male, to call attention to the presence of a woman. It might have been done with humor; it might have been done with disapproval. One never really knew. It could happen when a woman entered a room, or it could happen when she tried to speak, or it could happen when she submitted an exam paper. Other women reported similar experiences, which caused them to be unwilling to participate or made them feel intimidated.82

In the law school only one woman, Elizabeth Tompkins, enrolled in 1920. She had already earned an M.A. from Columbia. She found the social situation intolerable, writing to her father that the male students were "more repulsive than snakes that crawl in the grass." She believed that some of her professors sought to destroy her confidence, and she sensed that she was "butting up on this invisible wall." She considered leaving but persisted only because of her desire to please her father.83

Ruth Spottswood Mason-Grigg also experienced intimidation by male students. She was one of three women accepted into the medical school in 1921, and she completed her degree in 1925 before having a distinguished career in medicine. A poor girl from the Southside, she realized her dream of becoming a physician and specialized in diabetic obstetrics and general family medicine. She died prematurely in 1951 at the age of 57. Fortunately, her daughter provided some details of her University of Virginia experience at the hands of her male counterparts:

In those days, the men in medical school believed women should only be nurses or lab technicians, but not doctors, so it was a very uphill battle for this farm girl from rural Southside Virginia. They disliked the co-eds so much that they rigged her first cadaver with wires so that the first time she cut into it, its arms and legs moved.

Apparently, she never missed a beat, taking this in stride. After completing medical school, she also found that men got the best internships, while she ended up working at New York City's prison on Riker's Island. But Ruth Mason-Grigg understood the culture of her time and region, learned how to work within it, and claimed that she was more effective as a result.84 Others might not have been so good- natured or tough.

Women also remember that male professors tried to embarrass them in class and intimidate them into leaving. Intimidation came in many forms. In some cases, professors chose to discuss topics that would have been considered inappropriate, in others they were punitive through comments or grades. Stringfellow Barr, a prominent university history professor and later founder of the Great Books program and president of St. John's College, strongly opposed coeducation and tried to scare women away from his classes by lecturing on "the most scurrilous and dirty type of things related to ancient history," according to Ruth Peyton, a graduate student in economics.85 One brave nursing student in the 1920s was determined to make it through Barr's class, despite the fact that all five women enrolled failed the first ex\am. Over time, four of the five dropped, leaving only Mary Louise Habel. She reported:

I was left alone in that big class-room. Never had that professor spoken to me until one day he stopped me when I was turning in my blue book - He asked: why did you take this class? I said Are you sure you want to know? Then he replied yes. I said, I understand you do not want [a] woman in your class. I wanted to know what is so difficult about history that a women can not pass it. Then I turned and left the room. I passed several classes he taught.86

Other students faced intimidation through inappropriate public statements. One 1940 graduate of Hollins College entered the School of Architecture in 1942 for a B.S. degree. She reported: "In welcoming incoming freshmen Dean Campbell announced that this was the first year that he was forced to have a woman and a Jew in his school!"87

Well into the late 1960s and early 1970s, female students experienced hostility in the classroom. "Some faculty [members] . . . were openly hostile to the women in the class," wrote Jill Clement.88 Anne Barnett Parker, who generally had fond memories of her university experience, nonetheless remembers the jarring experience of her first class day.

I was the only woman in my English class and apparently the professor had not had a female student at the U. before. He was a young professor. He put his finger in my face and told me that women do not belong at the University.89

Similarly, Patricia Saunders, a history major and 1974 graduate, described her professors as "hostile when questioned or challenged." She remembered being "terrified" of her Latin professor, who "called us all Mr., even the girls. He particularly liked to harass the women. Typical of the first 2-3 years." Such hostility and intimidation was all the worse for women of color: "Many professors [were] openly hostile and resistant to the inclusion of women and blacks," wrote Jacqueline Curtis. She credits strong family ties and a small but supportive peer group "who made it possible to survive in such an oppressive environment."90

Outside the classroom, the situation was little better. Opportunities for extracurricular engagement were extremely limited. In 1921, a Women Students Self-Government Association was created, and the Lychnos Society (formed in 1928) provided a female alternative to the Raven Society, which excluded women until the 1970s. Occasionally, women participated in drama and pageant activities. There were few spaces at the university where women students could gather to establish common agendas or to feel that they could generate a critical mass to discuss issues of common interest. The Co-Ed Room existed on the West Range as of 1928, providing a social and segregated space where women could gather for meals and interact with one another. Ultimately, women carved out their own activities on their own initiative, and often outside the walls of the university. Some became active in church groups to find a sense of belonging.

The various deans of women regularly tried to promote the needs of female students to presidents of the university, including repeated efforts to create dormitory space for women, but little progress was made. The first female dorm, did not open until 1951, more than thirty years after women entered academic programs. Deans of women who aggressively pursued the creation of more academic and social opportunities for women found themselves pushed out of their positions. The decision to keep women restricted both academically and socially appears to have been a matter of university policy until at least the presidency of Colgate Darden. Exploring the correspondence of the deans of women is instructive in this regard. The first such dean, Adelaide Simpson, was appointed in 1921. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, she was educated in Philadelphia and graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1913 and Columbia University with an M.A. in 1917. In 1921 she was working on a Ph.D. at Columbia in philosophy. While there, she had been employed as assistant to the registrar of Teachers' College.91 Although a southerner, Simpson's experiences in northern colleges would shape her views of what was possible for women.

In the spring of 1921, before the appointment of Dean Simpson, the Women Students Self-Government Association (later Women Students Association) had been formed. Its goal was to offer women a social outlet, "to bring about a greater united and mutual helpfulness among the women, . . . and to promote and maintain the highest standards of University life." Adelaide Simpson was determined to build upon this initiative and to create a "corporate feeling" among the women at the university.92 But she also felt that women needed to have greater academic opportunity and to develop more independent habits.

Simpson's perspectives were not appreciated by President Alderman or by many female students who appear to have had a more traditional view of proper female roles. In 1926 Alderman asked her to spell out her own thoughts about the treatment of women at the university and questioned whether there was enough work to justify her deanship. In response, she wrote to Alderman that the university's position with regard to women is "anomalous and difficult to defend," and she proposed that "all degrees of the University should be open to women in the regular session just as in the summer." She supported university policy by not favoring unrestricted coeducation and agreed that women should accumulate thirty hours of work elsewhere before enrolling. One month later, she was even more specific about her philosophy:

The aim which governs all my dealings with the women students has been to assist them individually and as a group to adjust themselves to the academic and social conditions of a man's university, and with them to develop a tradition for women which shall not only be in harmony with the men's tradition but represent a distinct feminine contribution. ... I want the women here to take their plac

Source: Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, The

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