THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 29, 1996 TAG: 9604290026
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HAMPDEN-SYDNEY LENGTH: Long : 345 lines
Nearly every college has its bumper sticker. Hampden-Sydney's says it's the school ``where men are men and women are guests.''
But college leaders are seriously thinking about letting women stick around full-time.
While the state-supported Virginia Military Institute awaits word from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether it must admit women, Hampden-Sydney College - Virginia's private and lesser-known all-male school - is considering going that route voluntarily.
Administrators are investigating coeducation as one of three options to brighten the school's financial picture and raise the quality of students. The other possibilities are maintaining the status quo or cutting the size of the student body and faculty.
They may announce their recommendation as soon as the next board meeting, on May 10, though the board is expected to take months to decide.
As at VMI, the notion of going coed has inflamed passions on campus. But if VMI has stood united against the push to admit women, Hampden-Sydney has split on the issue.
Students are overwhelmingly opposed, some having posted signs reading: ``Better Dead Than Coed.'' Most faculty members are supportive. The provost has told the school paper it's a good idea. The president says he really hasn't decided yet.
The 220-year-old school - known for graduating predominantly white, conservative Southern gentlemen - is one of only three non-military all-male colleges in the country. The others are Wabash College in Indiana and Morehouse in Atlanta.
It's a three-hour drive from downtown Norfolk, six miles south of Farmville. It has barely more than 900 students. Yet Hampden-Sydney has produced a disproportionate number of local leaders, including former U.S. Sens. William B. Spong and Paul S. Trible Jr., Del. George H. Heilig Jr. and former Norfolk Mayor Joseph A. Leafe.
``There are no spectators at Hampden-Sydney,'' said Trible, now president of Christopher Newport University. ``Because of the small size of the college, there is no hiding. You have to participate in the classroom, and you have to participate on the athletic field. By fully participating, leaders are born.''
Ryan Hayes, a 20-year-old junior from Virginia Beach, says those opportunities would be narrowed if women were brought in. Gone, too, would be that sense of comfort, that ``spirit of brotherhood and male bonding,'' that connects the student body.
``In a coed school,'' he said, ``women would be a distraction. We would worry about who's dating who and offending other people.''
But Owen L. Norment Jr., a religion professor who supports going coed, says the influx of women would ``increase the overall quality of the student body and . . . academic enthusiasm on campus.'' Norment spearheaded a pro-coed resolution, approved by the faculty earlier this month by a 43-17 vote, with five abstentions.
``Something will inevitably be lost,'' he said, ``but in my view we cannot achieve the fullest realization of our potential excellence until we become coed.''
Some students fret that coeducation is already a done deal. But even if administrators propose that option, the board may well shoot it down, a local member said. Dr. Willette L. LeHew, a Norfolk obstetrician, says he and most board members now stand opposed to the idea: ``I think the tradition, the atmosphere and friendships need to be preserved somewhere in the country.''
John L. Brinkley, a classics professor and 1959 graduate, uses one of his sources to support single-sex education. Athenaeus, a second-century philosopher, wrote: ``It is a saying of Demetrius Phalereus that men, having often abandoned what was visible for the sake of what was uncertain, have not got what they expected, and have lost what they had.''
Brinkley himself - a large man with an ever-present cigar hanging from his mouth - is one of the rich traditions that endear the college to generation after generation of students.
His discipline, still a full-fledged department at Hampden-Sydney, reflects another tradition that students appreciate.
``Hampden-Sydney has resisted the fashionable curriculum that other schools have been willing to accept,'' said John-Garrett Kemper, a 1993 graduate from Norfolk who will get his law degree in May from the College of William and Mary. ``. . .It is, in the truest sense, a very traditional liberal-arts education, with an overwhelming emphasis on writing skills.''
Majors are the old reliables - religion, math, political science. Upper-level English courses generally focus on the old masters - Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens - with Hemingway one of the few moderns included in the curriculum. All students must pass the ``rhetoric requirement,'' which includes a three-hour essay test in the sophomore year.
Outside class, there are the weekly football games, which students attend wearing coat and tie, sometimes sharing a fried chicken lunch with family or friends.
And the honor code. Students dump their backpacks in a clutter outside the dining hall without fear of theft. ``Here I can go to the post office to mail a letter and put a $10 bill on the counter and come back the next day to pick up my change,'' said Baxter Vendrick, a sophomore from Norfolk. ``I was scared to even bring a wallet to high school.''
But some things have changed, says Samuel V. Wilson, a retired lieutenant general who became president in 1992. And that, he says, is why the college must take a hard look at its future.
The total cost - including tuition, fees and room and board - has risen to $19,500 a year. But the number of annual applications has stagnated at about 800, and that means the college must take in most of those applicants. The acceptance rate last year was 83 percent - above the rates of two-thirds of Virginia's public four-year schools.
Anita H. Garland, the admissions director, says the college still has ``a student body head and shoulders above the student bodies of most universities. They have goals, they are striving for them, and they are meeting them.'' But Wilson says the college is not ``living up to its potential,'' and faculty members see a decline in brainpower and motivation in the classroom.
As Wilson sees it, these are the challenges for the future: How can the college slow down tuition increases without losing money? And how can it draw a better crop of students and more applicants?
One possibility is to go coed and increase the size of the student body to 1,150. That, proponents say, would attract more top-notch applicants - and more money - to the school. The financial down side: It would add at least $5 million in startup costs, mostly to build athletic facilities and hire coaches to satisfy federal laws requiring gender equity in sports.
The other alternative, aside from staying the course, is to cut enrollment, to about 850. That would allow the college to be more selective. But to do that and avoid budget losses, Wilson says he would have to lay off about 15 of the 90 faculty members and limit academic offerings.
Looming over Hampden-Sydney, too, is the VMI case, which the Supreme Court is expected to decide in the summer. A narrow decision, tailored to VMI, would have no effect on schools like Hampden-Sydney. But a broader mandate to admit women might force private single-sex schools, like Hampden-Sydney, to choose between going coed or giving up federal funding.
Most students say they didn't come to Hampden-Sydney because it was all-male. Maybe it was the wide-open, sloping 820-acre campus, with its clean-looking Federal buildings and running paths, that sold them. Maybe it was the small classes, which rarely hold more than 20 students and sometimes have just eight or 10.
But once they're there, they grow attached to the all-male atmosphere. They're hard-pressed to explain how their friendships differ from those at, say, a U.Va. fraternity. But it's the kind of place, Vendrick says, where you're almost certain to get a ``hi'' from strangers. When you ask someone for directions, chances are he'll walk you to the building you're looking for.
The kind of place, sophomore Todd Heaton of Norfolk says, where you can find a least a handful of buddies as close as your best friend in high school, and open up to them about girls you like, and other guys at school.
All that could change, they say, if Hampden-Sydney went coed.
Like students at women's colleges, the guys at Hampden-Sydney say that if the opposite sex were brought in, there'd be less time to study and more inhibition in class.
Hayes, the junior, said, ``People wouldn't want to talk about certain issues for fear of offending somebody.''
Or embarrassing themselves. ``You might worry about whether or not what you said would make you look stupid in front of a girl,'' said Dan Dillon, a senior from Virginia Beach.
But proponents of coeducation say women would enrich the classroom. ``It would deepen the quality of the discussion of a great many issues that our graduates will be facing,'' said Norment, the religion professor. ``I do think there will be different emphases, feelings and experiences.''
For instance, his Christian ethics class usually covers the pros and cons of abortion, but it stands to benefit from women's perspectives. Roxann Prazniak, an associate professor of history, says female students could enlarge the discussion of Asian novels in her classes, where female characters sometimes get short shrift.
Shaun Irving, a junior from Farmville who is yearbook editor, is one of the few students who's on the fence on the issue. But he said, ``I think there are a handful of people here who have that chauvinistic mindset - a woman's place is in the kitchen - and don't realize that when they get out in the real world, they may have to deal with female superiors. (Coeducation) might help them.''
To these sorts of arguments, Brinkley, the classics professor, says: Nonsense. ``There is no subject which has a legitimate place in liberal education on which there is a distinctly male or female point of view.''
And single-sex advocates say the diversity argument cuts both ways. Advocates of diversity should want diversity in higher education, too. So why not keep the Hampden-Sydneys for students who still want to attend an all-male school? ``I don't want this school to be a run-of-the-mill Virginia university,'' said Mike DeBender, a junior from Chesapeake. ``Why not be a little different?''
As for social life, senior David Ware of Norfolk said, ``You'd be lying if you said it was great. I put a lot of miles on my car.'' But others say there are carloads of women on campus on the weekends from nearby Longwood College and women's schools such as Hollins and Sweet Briar.
With women on campus full-time, there could even be some disadvantages, students predict: Administrators might be forced to tighten visitation policies in dorms, where students now are relatively free to have overnight visitors.
Not everyone from Hampden-Sydney has sharply drawn opinions. Irving, the yearbook editor, said, ``I personally don't think it's that big a deal.''
And some alumni, though preferring the single-sex approach, are in favor of doing whatever's best to keep the college healthy. Kemper, the graduate from Norfolk who is attending W & M Law School, said: ``You really want the institution to survive as an institution and be competitive first.
``The gut reaction of just about everybody you talk to is: Don't go coed. But should the situation arise where it becomes financially prohibitive to stay single-sex or it becomes a barrier to competitiveness, then I think the answer you get may change.'' MEMO: HAMPDEN-SYDNEY ALUMNI SPEAK
Leafe
Lehew
Spong
Trible
JOSEPH A. LEAFE
Occupation: Lawyer with Willcox & Savage in Norfolk; former mayor of
Norfolk
Age: 60
Date of degree: 1958, chemistry
On the past: ``It was then a much smaller school. We only had 450
students, and it was a very close environment where everyone knew
everyone else. You knew all the professors. It was like a small
community that was isolated from the rest of the world. It was a very
comfortable environment.''
On the future: ``There are still advantages to single-sex options in
private education, but higher education is changing so dramatically,
with cost factors and so forth, that Hampden-Sydney needs to do whatever
it needs to do to remain competitive. The long-term viability of the
institution as a small liberal arts college to me becomes the overriding
factor, and those responsible for running the college need to make
whatever judgments are necessary to ensure that.''
WILLETTE L. LEHEW
Occupation: Associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, Eastern
Virginia Medical School; vice rector of Medical College of Hampton Roads
Board of Visitors
Age: 61
Date of degree: 1957, chemistry
On the past: ``My experience was really very good. Once I got there,
I really liked the all-male atmosphere. The sports part of it seemed to
be a really popular thing there. You have very small classes of usually
20 to 25 students in each class so that you get to know your professor.
He's available for counseling every time you want. I think personally
that the all-male environment is really a good environment to be able to
study in without a lot of other outside disturbances.''
On the future: ``I just feel strongly we should keep the option
available as a single-sex school. We don't promote it enough. I think
the tradition, the atmosphere and friendships need to be preserved
somewhere in the country.'
WILLIAM B. SPONG
Occupation: Lawyer with Cooper, Spong and Davis in Portsmouth; former
U.S. senator and president of Old Dominion University
Age: 75
Date of degree: Attended from 1938-41 before serving in World War II;
studied English
On the past: ``I was only 16 years old and it seemed well suited to
me. I was admitted to Brown and Duke. My father had gone to Duke, but I
just decided I wanted to go to a smaller school. I think its size gave
the students who attended there individual attention that they might not
have received at larger schools. The requirements were very rigorous in
those days. For a bachelor's degree, you had to take Greek and Latin.
The sciences were very good but very difficult.''
On the future: ``For sentimental reasons, I would prefer that
Hampden-Sydney remain an all-male college. Also, I am persuaded that
single-sex education is best for some students. However, the underlying
question is whether the college can continue to operate effectively and
legally. I'm confident the college's board will give any change its most
prayerful consideration.''
PAUL S. TRIBLE JR.
Occupation: President, Christopher Newport University; former U.S.
senator
Age: 49
Date of degree: 1968, history and political science
On the past: ``It was at Hampden-Sydney that I first experienced
great teaching and appreciated the importance of liberal learning.
Hampden-Sydney teaches young men how to live and not just how to earn a
living. There's a sense of community at Hampden-Sydney unlike any school
that I've ever seen.''
On the future: ``I was passionate about keeping Hampden-Sydney
all-male until my first child was born, and the child was named Mary
Katherine. I wish that she could have the opportunity to share the
Hampden-Sydney experience. . . . But I fully understand the concern that
people have about changing the character of a school that has done so
well for so long. The special quality of Hampden-Sydney is the sense of
community and commitment to one another and to core values. And all that
is certainly influenced by the small size of the student body and
perhaps by the fact that only young men have attended Hampden-Sydney for
hundreds of years.''
ILLUSTRATION: HAMPDEN-SYDNEY COLLEGE PONDERS ITS FUTURE
[Color Photos]
LAWRENCE JACKSON
The Virginian-Pilot photos
Although most faculty members support the coeducation proposal,
Hampden-Sydney students are almost completely against it.
The small college, a three-hour drive from Norfolk, has produced a
dispro-portionate number of area leaders.
Baxter Vendrick, a sophomore from Norfolk, says the school's strong
honor code is important to him.
``I don't want this school to be a run-of-the-mill Virginia
university,'' says Chesapeake junior Mike DeBender.
Times have changed, says President Samuel V. Wilson, and
Hampden-Sydney must take a hard look at the future.
ABOUT THE COLLEGE
One of only three non-military all-male colleges in the U.S. today.
Founded: 1776
Number of students: 905
Cost: $19,500 a year (including room and board)
Graduation rate: 67% (over five years)
Average SAT score: 1057*
Average number of applications: 817
Acceptance rate: 83%
*Before SAT scoring was adjusted; scores now would be higher
WHAT'S HOT, WHAT'S NOT
The scoop from the 1996 Student Access Guide to the Best 309
Colleges:
Strengths:
conservative politics
honesty
school runs smoothly
dorms
old-fashioned dating
Weaknesses:
negative attitudes toward minorities
theatre
music organizations
homogeneous student body
negative attitudes toward gays
VIEWS ON COEDUCATION
THE STUDENTS
Students are overwhelmingly opposed. Some have posted signs
reading: ``Better Dead Than Coed.''
THE ALUMNI
Dr. Willette L. LeHew, a Norfolk obstetrician, says he and most
board members now stand opposed to the idea. ``I think the
tradition, the atmosphere and friendships need to be preserved
somewhere in the country.''
THE FACULTY
Most faculty members are supportive. The provost has told the
school paper it's a good idea. The president says he really hasn't
decided yet.
JOHN CORBITT
The Virginian-Pilot
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