Research Question: Next year will be the 45th year since the admission of the first undergraduate women to both Trinity College and Yale University. How did these to institutions experience co-education different in terms of the factors that led to the admission of women, the experiences of the first women to attend these institutions, and long-term effects of co-education?
Relevance: The late 1960’s were a tumultuous period on college campuses across the country. Controversy surrounding the presidency of Richard Nixon, the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights movement was leading to activism and protests on an almost constant basis on college campuses.
“All the world over, so easy to see, people everywhere just want to be free.” The 1968 academic year at Trinity and Yale began with the Rascals topping the Billboard charts, and students were taking their words to heart, protesting against Vietnam, in favor of Civil Rights, and for the right of women to attend their institutions. Many NESCAC schools were in the midst of co-education movements in the late 60’s, and much of the Trinity community, including 76% percent of the student body (according to a Tripod poll), many members of the faculty, and the Dean of Faculty, Robert Fuller, were in favor of beginning to admit women. They provided a wide range of reasoning, from social equity to improved academic discourse to the College’s financial health. 1968 found Yale as one of the final Ivy League schools that hadn’t either adopted co-education or named a sister school, and student pressure was beginning to escalate rapidly. Even when Yale did first admit undergraduate women, it did so at a rate of 1 woman to every 7 men, and the fight for true co-education went on for another several years until Yale adopted a progressive “sex-blind” admissions policy.
Research Strategy: I plan of answering questions motives for co-education, the process of co-education, and the long-term effects at Trinity and Yale.
To begin, I plan on using databases to find academic writing on the pros and cons of co-education from both the 1960’s and today, and am interested in seeing what has changed in the discourse of co-education during this time.
Next, I plan on using primary sources from both institutions regarding the era leading up to and immediately following the admission of women. At Trinity, this will include issues of the Tripod, the Fuller Memo, the Lockwood interviews, and other sources available at the Watkinson. From Yale, this will include the Sarrell Papers, the Records of Office on the Education of Women, and other documents. This week I will contact a friend of mine who is an American History major at Yale for more information on how to make best use of the Yale archives, and probably will make a visit to the Yale library once I have made adequate plans to do so.
Finally, I will find interviews with some of the earliest women at Trinity and Yale, including the anniversary documents prepared for Trinity that are available at the Watkinson, and similar documents at Yale. I will then compare these with the modern experience of women at these colleges, which I hope to gather through personal interviews and with the help of Professor Hendrick in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Department. I also plan on drawing from the findings of prior Ed. Reform students who have written on co-education, including 2013 graduate Devon MacGillivray
Sources:
“A Survey of Co-education in the Ivies.” The Harvard Crimson [Cambridge, MA] 4 Oct. 1974
Philip M. and Lorna Sarrel papers, 1966-2007 (inclusive), 1966-1980
Barreca, Gina. Babes in Boyland. N.p.: Lebanon, 2005. Print.
Miller, Beth K. The Evoluation of Coeducation at Trinity College, 1969-1983. Hartford: Trinity College, 2003. Print.
Trinity College Sit-in Watkinson Library Document Compilation
Dean of Faculty Robert Fuller, Memo to President Lockwood, “The Admission of Women Undergraduates to Trinity College,” 30 September 1968
Trinity Tripod Selected Articles, 1968-1970
As we discussed, you have a good start on a research question and sources for a comparative study. As you read more and reorder your research question parts:
– origins and/or rationale for the change
– experiences of female students, as well as if/how the institution adapted to its new students
As you look at available sources, decide for sure whether Trinity-Yale is the comparison that you wish to focus on.
For secondary sources, I highly recommend the Marcia Synnott chapter on Yale/Princeton in this edited volume:
Miller-Bernal, Leslie, and Susan L Poulson, eds. Going Coed: Women’s Experiences in Formerly Men’s Colleges and Universities, 1950 – 2000. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004.
See also America: History and Life for works by Synnott, or other Yale or co-ed histories since the 2004 book above
See coed chapter in
Karabel, Jerome. The Chosen : The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.