Breaking the glass ceiling: 40 years of coeducation

After graduating in 1948 as Vassar College’s only astronomy major, she sent a postcard to the dean of the Graduate School requesting a catalog about the University’s graduate program in astrophysics.

“I got a letter back saying in as much as they did not accept women, they would not send me a catalog,” she said, adding that she was very annoyed. “I wasn’t even asking for acceptance ... just a catalog.”

It wasn’t until 1969 that the University first began admitting women — and four decades later, members of the graduating classes from the early 1970s have looked back on their undergraduate years and said that, while the transition was challenging, they are proud to be members of the first classes that graduated following the arrival of women on campus.

Robin Herman ’73, a former managing editor of The Daily Princetonian who is organizing the distribution of 3,500 buttons at Reunions to commemorate 40 years of coeducation at Princeton, said she “didn’t want the 40th to pass by [without notice] ... Certainly in my class both men and women identify ourselves as the first coed class.” The Class of 1973 was the first coeducational class, while this year marks the 40th Reunion of the Class of 1970, the first class to graduate having experienced a coeducational campus.

“We’re very proud — very proud!” Herman said, adding that it is important to commemorate the occasion since “there will be a point at which people who weren’t at Princeton back then won’t ever know that at one point it was all male — they’ll think Princeton was never an all-male institution.”

But four decades ago, the path wasn’t always smooth.

Women faced discrimination during the admission process, as Jerome Karabel wrote in his book on the history of Ivy League admissions, “The Chosen.” Women were held to a much higher standard than men were, given the policy that only women with “exceptionally high levels of capital” would meet “the exacting admission standards.”

Once students were on campus, the atmosphere was generally one of confusion.

“For some men, that was not what they signed up for,” Ellen Honnet ’73 explained. “It almost felt like you were in the middle of an experiment where you were in a petri dish and being observed in a certain way. It was just like ... ‘Wow, these aliens have arrived on campus. Are we supposed to date them? Look at them?’ ”

Most of the male students had attended coeducational high schools, Margaret Cannella ’73 said in an e-mail, so she felt that most of the slow adjustment was on the part of male faculty who “may have felt uncomfortable having women in their classes.”

“My adviser on my junior paper, for example, asked me what I planned to do with my life — and was surprised that I was not going to be a homemaker, even after giving me an A on my paper!” she said.

Honnet noted, however, that none of the women she knew came to college for the purpose of finding a husband. “By that time, you would never admit it — it would be your deepest, darkest secret [if that were the case],” she said.

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Honnet recalled that, rather than acting hostile, male students and professors attempted to overcompensate for the difficulties they thought women were facing. “It was almost like people making an extra effort to be inclusive sometimes ... It ended up being confusing from the receiving end — I don’t want that much attention.” she said. “But everyone was well-meaning for the most part.”

One hurdle for Princeton’s first women was finding the confidence to participate in class, particularly in instances when there were only one or two women in a precept of 15 students. But the women were a self-selective group that “probably had a component of self-confidence to be a woman in a previously all-male institution,” Herman said. “They knew going in that they would be in the minority and would be called upon to participate in the social change.”

Bruce Merrifield Jr. ’72 remembers the environment well. “The first women at Princeton were part of the co-creating learning curve of all that needed to be done to and within a complex, turbulent-at-the-time system,” he said. “Obviously when you’re a pioneer ... it’s just totally bumpy.”

Like the academic environment, the social scene underwent changes with the admission of women. Before women matriculated, men would often look elsewhere — often at historically women’s colleges located in the Northeast, known as the “Seven Sisters” — for dates.

Some male students at the time were eager for the women to arrive. “I said ‘Hooray!’ ” Luther Munford ’71, a former chairman of the ‘Prince,’ recalled upon hearing the news. “It wasn’t much fun without women — and I think 90 percent of the men felt the same way.”

But the small number of women, who comprised roughly 20 percent of the first classes, often complicated the social scene, Karabel wrote in his book.

“Without bringing in girls from outside, there were very limited social options on the weekends on campus,” Rick Shea ’73 said, adding that he spent many weekends off campus.

Munford noted that because of the gender imbalance, “The men by and large just assumed that women had dates, so a significant number of women would end up without a date ... And then they would be like ... ‘Wait a minute, I’m in a school where I’m outnumbered four to one, and I don’t have a date?’ ”

But confusion in the romantic scene did not prevent students from forging solid friendships. Students didn’t date as much as they “hung out,” Vickery Kehlenbeck ’75 said — and many women, such as Honnet, added that they made “incredible friends” in their male peers.

James Lape ’73 said he feels these long-lasting friendships indicate the success of the new policy of admitting women. “The telling sign is that after all these years — 41 years — I still consider these three or four women [whom I befriended] in 1969 just really good friends,” he said. “And the older you get, it’s not about what you’ve done — it’s about how you feel, how happy you are, how your friends are.”

Both women and men said they took pride in belonging to the first classes with women on campus.

“I feel proud to be in the first class with women, and I feel proud of the men who welcomed us,” said Honnet, adding that she hoped the men in her class realized that they helped make the new system work. “I have a lot of gratitude for the guys who said ... ‘This isn’t what I signed up for, but now that this is what I’ve got, I’m delighted and looking forward to getting to know all my classmates.’ ”

Lape was more succinct. “It is so freaking cool,” he said when asked how he felt about being the first class to march with women at the P-Rade. “It is just ... freaking cool.”