Vassar Quarterly - Fall/Winter 2019 - 18

Declaring that "all good institutions in
the country are engaged in self-study," the
previous September Simpson had launched
a Committee on New Dimensions, charged
with conducting a study of alternatives for
remaining in Poughkeepsie. Elizabeth
Adams Daniels '41, then Dean of Studies and
Professor of English, directed the study as
it explored several options. Among them
were: a "coordinate" men's college close
to the main campus-some suggested the
Vassar Farm; bolstering off-campus
experiences for Vassar female undergraduates to give them more coeducational
experiences; offering coeducational
graduate training in education, government
service, and environmental studies;
launching new coeducational undergraduate programs in computer science; cooperation with the State University of New
York; and considering new models in
residential living.

THE CHALLENGES OF
R EMAINING SINGLE-SEX
In his open letter in 1967, Simpson reminded
alumnae that his predecessor, President
Sarah Gibson Blanding, had predicted that
"separate women's colleges might cease
to exist in their present form unless they
sought cooperation with other colleges."
He was referring to a luncheon in her honor
at the Waldorf Astoria in March of 1961,
when Blanding had predicted that "of the
hundred or more women's colleges now
in existence, no more than ten will be
functioning in the year 2061." Like many
liberal arts colleges in the 1960s, Vassar was
faced with the challenge of remaining
attractive and competitive in an environment in which universities vied for students,
faculty, and funding.
In Full Steam Ahead in Poughkeepsie:
The Story of Coeducation at Vassar 1966-
1974 (2000), Elizabeth Daniels and Clyde
Griffen, Professor of History on the Lucy
Maynard Salmon Chair, pointed to dramatic
changes in faculty between the 1940s and
1950s. In the late 1940s, the vast majority
of Vassar's faculty were women. By 1960,
44 percent of the full-time faculty were men.
18

FA L L / W I N T E R 2 0 1 9

A large proportion
of young male
faculty members
educated at coed
institutions helped
to spur the
acceptance of
coeducation at
Vassar.

Thus, men were already a strong presence on campus. "The impact
of male newcomers would be profound by the late 1960s," the
authors wrote. "Disproportionately younger and recruited at junior
ranks, they would become a majority of the tenured faculty by the
1970s. Many of them had been educated in coeducational institutions. Those who had not rarely had as strong a commitment to
single-sex education as the minority of older male faculty who had
come to Vassar in the 1930s and 1940s."
Changes in the make up of matriculating students were making
coeducation more and more attractive to prospective students,
too. While most Vassar students came from single-sex private
preparatory schools prior to the 1950s, the student makeup would
shift over the decade. By the 1960s, most incoming students came
from public high schools, where they were well accustomed to
coeducation. For many students, the focus was still on family
and early marriage. Daniels and Griffen noted that by the end of
the 1957-58 academic year, 30 members of '57 had married and a
third of the class had become engaged: "Proximity to eligible men
of similar educational and social background had been important
since the 1920s, with as much as one-third of a graduating class
marrying men from Yale, Princeton, and Harvard."
Professor Emerita of Psychology Anne Constantinople, who began
teaching at Vassar in 1964, sensed that among students, "the big
frustration was social." Having a dating life wasn't easy for geographically disadvantaged Vassar students. For those who wanted to date
men, it took planning and a high tolerance for weekend travel.
"I was a House Fellow for the first three years I was here, and it
was astonishing to me how many people left on the weekends," says
Constantinople, who felt a great deal of sympathy for the women
who were left behind. "There was nothing happening on weekends
because everyone left!"

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VASSAR GOES COED
Vassar Quarterly - Fall/Winter 2019

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