THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 5, 1996 TAG: 9602020022
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Set in Virginia's serene countryside near Farmville, tradition-steeped Hampden-Sydney College is toying with turbulence. Professors at the 220-year-old institution have drawn a resolution to admit women. This follows on a recommendation from last year's self-study that the issue be discussed.
The faculty is expected to consider the proposal within the next few months and probably will adopt it. More than 20 years ago faculty members called for coeducation, but at the time the idea found little favor among the school's trustees.
Today, if Chris Stirewalt is right, most of his fellow students part with their teachers on admission of women. ``If the board of trustees and our president are the men we think they are, this place won't go coed,'' Stirewalt said. ``You don't come to Hampden-Sdyney in spite of single-sex education; you come because of single-sex education.'' To which we'd guess most alumni would say amen.
Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. Samuel V. Wilson, H-S president, says: ``We are simply trying to plan prudently. Factors include the fact that enrollment is highly competitive and we have to work very hard to fill a class. Another thing is the VMI case and what it might portend for Hampden-Sydney.'' A challenge to Virginia Military Institute's males-only policy is before the U.S. Supreme Court.
H-S can find parallels, and perhaps clues to what coeducation might bring, some 90 miles to the west in the 1980s experience of Washington and Lee University. Polls showed the Lexington school's faculty favoring admission of female undergraduates - women had been attending the W&L law school, with good result, since 1972 - and students and alumni opposed.
Then-President John Wilson pushed for coeducation, arguing that competition for the most gifted students would accelerate. Would W&L, he asked, be risking its strong academic tradition by disqualifying half the potential applicants?
The board of trustees, in effect, answered yes, and women were part of the first-year class arriving in fall 1985.
The controversial decision won converts as coeducation began smoothly. (An initial shortage of washers and dryers proved the most serious logistical problem.) Time proved the wisdom of the change and brought general acceptance among students and alumni.
There was, for example, the alumnus who, initially furious at W&L for admitting women, was angered anew when his alma mater turned down his daughter. by CNB