ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 10, 1996 TAG: 9603110075
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-22 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: FREDERICKSBURG (AP)
SOURCE: SUSAN TREMBLAY THE FREE LANCE-STAR
The men who attended Mary Washington College right after it went coed turned antique fire extinguishers into squirt guns. Some of them sneaked girls into their rooms after curfew, started food fights and even ran naked through the campus.
Although similar activities were going on at other colleges across the nation, Mary Washington had been somewhat immune to pranks as an all-girls school. Women had gotten into mischief, but the men raised the high jinks to new levels.
``They weren't a bad group, just friskier,'' said A.R. Merchent, a Mary Washington administrator at the time.
Now a third of the school's 3,500 undergraduates are men. But in 1971, there were four guys who lived on campus among 2,100 women.
``It had always been a small, quiet, conservative Virginia women's school. They didn't get quiet, conservative Virginia men when we came,'' said Marty Manch, 50, who graduated from MWC in 1975.
Manch, who was the resident assistant in charge of the men during the two years the first men lived at Trench Hill, was the only one of the four male residential students who enrolled in 1971 to graduate from Mary Washington. The others left.
He said the first male students who lived on campus were a varied group, ranging in age from 18 to 38. Some were fresh out of high school; others were Vietnam veterans.
``My roommate was a 38-year-old ex-CIA agent. I believe he was in hiding,'' said Manch, who now works for the Spotsylvania County public works department.
In 1972, 10 men enrolled as residential students. As did Manch's group, they lived in Trench Hill, a 1927 brick home filled with fragile furniture and Oriental rugs. ``The furniture wore out before its time,'' Merchent said.
When men came to MWC, the school required students to be in the dorms by midnight, check in with a security guard when they walked into their dorms, then call the guard to let him know they'd reached their room. Freshmen weren't allowed to drink.
The guys balked at the rules and ignored them. ``We were more pragmatic than policy-oriented,'' said Donald Wolthuis, 41, now an assistant U.S. attorney in Roanoke.
They poured water into the hallway until it cascaded down the stairs, threw firecrackers into the campus police office and released 500 crickets into the dining hall during parents weekend.
They tormented the campus police, sometimes hiding police cars or letting air out of the tires. ``It was very fun and innocent, but very wild,'' said Richard Hasty, 41, who works at Mary Washington Hospitals laboratory.
David Kitterman, 42, now executive officer for the Fredericksburg Area Builders Association, was one of a handful of MWC students to streak across the campus in the spring of 1974.
He said word of the planned streaking spread across campus, and quite a crowd had gathered by the time he and his buddies ran through in their birthday suits.
``We turned into Ball Circle, got in the bushes and put our clothes on. I don't remember getting in trouble for it.''
Hasty said living in Trench Hill was like being in a fraternity because there were so few men.
``Nothing interfered with our camaraderie,'' Manch said. ``We couldn't have gotten that at another school.''
With more than 2,000 women on campus and only a handful of men, the first male students figured Mary Washington was an obvious choice.
But many of the women weren't happy to have them. ``The animosity was pretty evident. It went on for quite some time, through the first year,'' Hasty said.
He said people thought that all the guys were gay. ``It never made sense to me. We used to get asked this repeatedly,'' he said. ``The girls would ... flat out ask us.''
Bob Barron, 42, said the men got special treatment that probably didn't endear them to the women. For instance, he said, men could get second helpings at meals, but women couldn't.
When he signed up for golf classes, the college had to buy a new set of clubs just for him. The women used old clubs. He was the only man in his swim class, and he said none of the women wanted to be his partner.
``The college professor was my partner. ... We became good friends,'' said Barron, who works for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Merchent said he could understand why the men had trouble adapting to life at Mary Washington. The dorm furniture was feminine-looking. The shower heads were too low, and the beds too short.
``It had been a women's world, and then we interjected these new people. Some of these guys wanted to exert some leadership and see some things change, so it represented competition,'' Merchent said.
He said having men on campus forced college officials to ``realign our thinking. I'm glad we had them. I think the college is a better college as a result of having men and women.''
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP David Kitterman, Richard Hasty and Marty Manch standby CNBoutside Trench Hill, their former dorm when they were the first male
students at Mary Washington College in the early 1970s. The dorm is
now the college alumni office.