Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 9, 1990 TAG: 9005090789
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: TRACY VAN MOORLEHEM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Yes I did," the woman answered. "Why?"
"You were leading," he said.
Hollins College senior Elizabeth Shanklin said this incident, which happened to a Hollins student, illustrates that women's colleges give students the self-confidence to lead in all areas of their lives.
Shanklin was on the committee that planned the Women's Education Appreciation Rally, held Tuesday as part of an annual spring festival at Hollins. The women's education focus was chosen as a response to a recent decision by Mills College trustees to make that 138-year-old California institution coed.
Shanklin, a Richmond native, said Mills students called the remaining 93 women's colleges in the United States and asked that they show support in some way to the Mills College students' fight to reverse the board's decision.
Hollins students decided to show support not by protesting, but by calling attention to the need for segregated women's education.
"This is a moment to appreciate women's colleges," said Linda Steele, director of college relations.
"It's an affirmation instead of a protest. We have nothing to protest," said Randy Wiley, Hollins alumna and director of alumnae relations.
Professor Alvord Beardslee said he would be sad if Hollins College were ever made coed. Beardslee said that after 30 years as a religion professor at Hollins, he is a believer in women's education.
"Research has shown that many women learn better in a women's environment," he said. "[In a coed situation], women are more likely to learn that the way to please a professor is to agree with him or her, while a man is more likely to learn to disagree and argue."
He said that his function sometimes is to teach women to disagree. Beardslee also said the absence of male undergraduates firmly reinforces for women the idea that they are brains and not bodies.
Students said that while they "love men," they are more able to take risks, offer suggestions and argue in classes composed of females than in coed classes. Most are veterans of coed high schools.
"I'd be more intimidated in a class with men. You're afraid of looking dumb," said Jennifer Thompson, a senior from Bethesda, Md.
"We aren't a bunch of bra-burning women," said senior Kristin Kardash from Annapolis, Md. "But a place like this makes you realize what you're worth." Kardash supports single-sex schools for both sexes.
Steele said the issue of coeducation at Hollins is not being considered now and hasn't been brought up since 1974.
by CNB