Vassar Quarterly - Fall/Winter 2019 - 21

Roommates Kathy
Miller '69 and
Geraldine Bond '69
express their initial
excitement about
a Yale merger. They
tore up the sign
the next day.
Below: President
Simpson officially
announces the
Vassar-Yale study
from the balcony
of Main.

press accounts, young women turned out in force in front of Main
to hear Simpson's campus announcement. In Full Steam Ahead,
Daniels and Griffen paint a picture of the scene in Poughkeepsie as
young women sang "Boola Boola" and the "Whiffenpoof" song-
iconic Yalie tunes-while Simpson stood on the balcony over Main
Circle trying to quiet the crowd. An Associated Press photographer
captured a photo of Geraldine Bond '69 and her roommate Kathy
Miller '69 holding a sign that read: "ON TO NEW HAVEN!"
Now a trustee, Geraldine Bond Laybourne says that students
were thrilled when news about the Vassar-Yale Study first broke.
"It was exciting-you never read anything about Vassar in the New
York Times, and here was this piece. At first, we thought, 'Oh, it'll be
fun going to Yale.' And then the next day we started thinking, 'Whoa.
This is not a good idea.'" She and her roommate tore up their sign a
day after they made it. A survey by the Committee on New Dimensions in the spring of 1967 found that while students overwhelmingly favored coeducation, their enthusiasm to move the college to
New Haven dampened rather quickly.
Among the faculty, reactions were mixed. Anne Constantinople
was in favor of coeducation-she had seen its positive effects at
the University of Rochester, where she had served as house advisor
for the school's first coed dorm. "Men and women got to know and
respect each other as friends," she recalled. "There was no need to
put on makeup to come to the breakfast table. I saw it as a healthy
dynamic." Like Constantinople, some faculty members were excited
about finding a way to change the trajectory of the college. For
others, she says, "there was a real sense that if we went to Yale, we'd
be second-class citizens and Vassar would disappear. I think those
concerns were legitimate." Her own preference had been that Vassar
retain its campus and go coed in Poughkeepsie.

"could not possibly agree at this moment on what direction we
hope is indicated, nor could we hope to represent fairly all of your
sentiments." But, she said, the board welcomed "constructive
inquiry." She promised that any concrete proposals would be
communicated to the alumnae body so members could provide
their "informed opinions."
Looking back on the coeducation debates in 2016, Taft told VQ
that she had eventually come around to thinking that the college
should go coed and had urged the administration to follow suit.
After all, she reasoned, other single-sex colleges certainly seemed to
be heading in that direction. When it came time to make a decision,
she said, the tide-even among alumnae-seemed to be shifting in
favor of coeducation in Poughkeepsie. Alumnae, nonetheless, had
no hesitation in sharing their "informed opinions" with the administration. Many insisted, for example, that Vassar men were not to
displace women; the student body would simply have to grow.
Trustees set a goal of having a student body of roughly 2,400 students,
up from 1,500 students in 1968. This number would put tremendous
pressures on the college to expand its facilities and faculty.
The initial reaction of students to the Vassar-Yale Study remained quite positive. Alerted to the prospect of a merger by earlier

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Vassar Quarterly - Fall/Winter 2019

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