Pajama days are over for Wells women

Students adjust to new atmosphere after coeducation decision

Jamie Rosen Life Editor

When the Wells College Board of Trustees announced last October that the women’s college in Aurora, NY would become co-ed the next fall, Sarah Clement ’06 joined hundreds of students in protest. Dozens of students took over the administration building for a week, and over two-thirds of students in residence signed a petition supporting the protest. Alumnae reacted with equal scorn, arriving to campus from all over the country in support of the upset students and against the new decision.

Now, the first generation of men have arrived on the Wells campus, numbering 33 men in a school of just over 400 students. So far, most women have accepted their presence on the campus.

“I don’t think anyone who was here last year has been overly mean to [the men] or pushed them away to my knowledge, but I think a lot of them have definitely had to find where they fit in here,” said Clement.

“The general sentiment here is not so much enmity against the guys, it’s more against the administration for accepting the guys,” said Travis Niles, one of the new male freshmen.

The Decision

The Wells College Board of Trustees voted Oct. 2, 2004 to admit men as matriculated undergraduate students the following year.

As the College struggled to increase enrollment, the Wells administration considered coeducation for four decades, amending the College charter in 1969 to allow the College to grant degrees to men. Attempts were made to increase enrollment by cutting tuitions by 30 percent, adding new programs, launching new marketing campaigns, and increasing spending on student aid. Still, the College was unable to meet necessary enrollment.

“Wells College confronted a stark choice: continue to shrink and decline until we were no longer viable, or choose to transform to fit new realities leading to an opportunity to survive and prosper,” wrote Wells College President Lisa Marsh Ryerson in a letter announcing the decision. “We chose change over decline.”

The decision was met with sadness, said Clement. “Very few students were actually happy with the decision,” she said.

Clement, who chose Wells for its small class sizes, was upset about the way the Board made the decision, and she participated in the protests to express her discontentment. “It wasn’t so much that it was going co-ed, it was more the way that it was gone about,” she said. “It was the fact that there wasn’t really any student input in the decision.”

For some Wells women, who felt more comfortable in classrooms without men, the decision came as a blow. Six students transferred primarily because of the co-ed decision, and for others it may have been a factor. Two students filed a lawsuit against the College for fraud and breach of contract, but the suit was dropped.

While many were upset, opinions varied across all populations, said Vice President for External Relations Ann Rollo. “By and large, faculty have been focusing on…the academic program and are less concerned about whether they are teaching male students or female students. From our alumnae, we felt some initial sorrow, but by and large...most would like to see a thriving Wells rather than one that struggles.”

The decision temporarily divided students, said Clement. “Once the protest started, the campus started to get divided, and it got more divided as the protest went on,” she said. “People didn’t agree with the protest, the way it was going and what people were doing…You couldn’t really go anywhere on campus without being part of the protest, so they just got sick of it. They didn’t want to deal with it anymore.”

As studies suggested, applications and enrollment went up after the co-ed decision, said Rollo. More than 400 matriculated students currently attend the college on a full-time basis, up from 302 last year.

The New Atmosphere

Clement said that while most women have accepted the presence of a few men in their classes, for some it is intimidating. “We were a lot more comfortable in speaking out in class,” she said. “Being all women gave [every student] a chance to open up.”

While most women still participate in class, the presence of men has impacted students’ lifestyles. This year, many women are more conscious of their appearances, said Clement. “We used to wear pajamas to class,” she said. “[Now] people tend to care what they look like when they go to class.”

For some students, like Ashlee Kelly ’09 who has never known a Wells without men, the presence of men in the classrooms seems insubstantial. “Most of my classes are all girls, and a few have one or two boys in it,” she said. “It’s fine; it doesn’t affect anything.”

Kelly said the atmosphere is comfortable among men and women. “I haven’t seen any open hostility at all,” she said.

Niles has found that the school is “close-knit” for both men and women. He said that upperclass women have been welcoming to him “once you get to know them.”

Niles added that being in the minority will augment his education. “The Caucasian male is predominantly the majority in this country, so being placed in a situation where I’m a minority is a learning experience. It doesn’t really bother me,” said Niles.

Coeducation: Vassar’s Story

In 1966, Vassar’s trustees met to do some long-term planning. One item on a long agenda was to discuss the possibility of coeducation, according to College Historian and Professor Emeritus of English Elizabeth Daniels, who was Dean of Studies at the time. Shortly thereafter, Yale University invited trustees to think about merging in New Haven.

Vassar had a loose partnership with the University, but Yale was considered too far away for visiting during the week. As a result, Vassar was a “suitcase school” on the weekends, said Professor of English and former Dean of the College Colton Johnson. Many students worked Mondays through Thursdays and left Friday mornings after class for Yale. The focus of social life was on the Yale campus, so Vassar offered far fewer extracurricular activities and events than it does today, he said.

The situation led to student discontent about the lack of male companionship and artificiality of social life. Some students at women’s colleges, many of whom came from co-ed high schools, “were feeling that it was a big fall downwards to have to go to a single-sex college,” said Daniels.

At the time, students who wanted to go to small, liberal arts colleges had few options, because “a great number of the best liberal arts colleges were all men’s colleges at the time,” said Johnson.

But many students, alumnae, and faculty resisted assimilation with Yale in New Haven. One alumna presented her views with a spread in Life Magazine, showing the urban manufacturing setting that Vassar would move to next to an idyllic picture of Vassar in Poughkeepsie.

In November of 1967, the Board of Trustees announced that Vassar would turn down the Yale merger, but would move forward with some type of coeducation in Poughkeepsie.

The Miscellany News reported Oct. 4, 1968 that on July 11, 1968 the faculty voted 102-3 in favor of Vassar remaining one coeducational campus rather than setting up a coordinate brother college and announced a goal of enrolling 2,400 students—up from 1,600, according to Daniels—and achieving a one-to-one ratio of men and women by 1975. Faculty “would have said we don’t want coeducation…but the decision was already made,” said Daniels.

That week, The Miscellany News Staff Editorial said, “Students today believe that a class benefits from the...different points of view men and women bring to a class…Social life is commonly regarded as part of the college experience and most students believe that coeducation offers the only ‘normal’ life.”

It was decided two weeks later that Vassar would accept qualified transfer students in Sept. 1969 and freshmen men in Sept. 1970.

Daniels recalled that an early male student reported opening the door for a woman, only to have it slammed in his face. “I would say that seventy percent of the College received [coeducation] with open arms, and thirty percent of the college received it,” said Daniels.

“Most of the students came around to thinking that coeducation and the admission of males was a good idea,” added Johnson.