Coeducation – Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

Student Council Social Rules Committee Questionnaire

Through this questionnaire (Document AW, 43), which was distributed to 300 students before the 1966 fall semester, the Student Council Social Rules Committee investigated student attitudes towards the College’s existing parietal rules, particularly as they pertained to women visitors on the then-all-male campus. The Social Rules Committee intended to take student responses to the questionnaire under advisory as it determined the future of parietal rules on campus—that is, those in loco parentis restrictions that fulfilled the College’s perceived “obligation to provide a moral environment” for its students (Peril, 174).

The questions reveal the existing dormitory and fraternity house social rules (which differed slightly from one another), as well as the College’s tendency to solicit student input before making broad policy decisions, which continues to this day. Women visitors were allowed in common living areas in fraternity houses and dormitories, although they were require to have “approved chaperones.”

Bowdoin’s campus rules at the time were slightly more strict than those of some other all-male institutions. For example, at Columbia University, women visitors were allowed in male students’ bedrooms without chaperones “on alternate Sundays, as long as the door was left open the ‘width of a book,’ which at least one student interpreted as the width of a matchbook” (Peril, 171).

After coeducation, Bowdoin relaxed its campus social rules tremendously. Trustee Ellen Schuman ’76, recalls that at Bowdoin, unlike at some peer schools that had different curfews for men and women students, “both men and women had equal stature in terms of their rights and responsibilities on campus.” (Trustee Focus Group, 3:20-3:54)

Works Cited:
Peril, Lynn. College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Coeds, Then and Now. New York: Norton, 2006.

AW43 Page 1 - Student Council Social Rules Committee Questionnaire

AW43 Page 2 - Student Council Social Rules Committee Questionnaire

Report of C.E.P. Sub-committee on Coeducation

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, many single-sex colleges across the country began to consider transitioning into coeducational institutions. In 1969, Bowdoin became one of twelve colleges to participate in a Twelve College Exchange program that allowed male and female students to spend a semester to a full year studying at a college from which their sex had previously been excluded. Through the exchange program, the colleges involved hoped to learn more about the changes that would occur and the new facilities and/or provisions that would be necessary for the admission of predominantly female students, but in general, students of the opposite sex. Bowdoin considered and evaluated the many modifications required as a result of women’s potential admission by forming various sub-committees within, for example, the Committee on Preparatory Schools and Admissions, the Committee on Student life, and notably, within the Curriculum and Education Policy Committee (C.E.P.).

The report presented here (Document, SW, 31) is from the C.E.P. subcommittee on Coeducation. It addresses the general and specific curricular implications the entrance of women to Bowdoin could have based on the subcommittee’s reviews of “extensive reports prepared by the faculty and administrative groups at Kenyon, Vassar, Wesleyan, Williams, and Yale,” institutions that were all coeducational by 1970 and some of whom were members of the College Exchange.

According to this report, the C.E.P. subcommittee on Coeducation favored the admission of women to Bowdoin, asserting that women, “as students and as faculty” would “improve and enrich the cultural and intellectual climate of the College.” With regards to curricular implications, the subcommittee claims that, despite the finding that “girls do not necessarily ‘bunch up’ in the humanities courses and avoid the natural sciences,” it still might be necessary to give “wider offerings in music, art, and languages” and provide an “extension of the offerings in psychology to meet the interests of women in child development and clinical psychology.” In addition, they state that greater demands may be made on the faculty based on the evidence that “academically able women” are often very interested in independent study

Report of C.E.P. Sub-committee on Coeducation

“Coeducation Plan is Proposed” The Bowdoin Orient February 13, 1970

The Pierce Report attempted to anticipate many changes that coeducation would usher in at the college. The committee’s general plan included considerations of admissions, housing, facilities, and curriculum (Document GB, 12). One major decision by the committee was to admit transfers as well as first year students in an attempt to spread the women among the classes. In the first year, Bowdoin admitted 29 junior transfers and 39 exchange women to supplement the 66 members of the first year class of 1975.

This committee attempted to consider nearly every area of the college that would be impacted by coeducation. By publishing this excerpt in the student newspaper, the committee attempted to share its findings with the entire student body. Oral histories of women from the early years clearly reveal that even with this input, however, Bowdoin’s understanding of what coeducation would really mean. As women arrived, Bowdoin learned that additional changes were needed to make women feel more at home in this environment. For example, one demand by the early classes of women was to have working locks on every door of their residence. Other demands would follow.

GB12 - "Coeducation Plan is Proposed" The Bowdoin Orient February 13, 1970

Orient Poll on Coeducation

At the beginning of the second semester of the first academic year of official coeducation at Bowdoin, the college newspaper ran a poll to find out what students and professors were thinking about the new student body at Bowdoin. The poll results (Document EN 25.1), published in the Orient on February 4, 1972, paint a mixed picture of coeducation in its first semester. Although the poll results included a number of outright sexist responses to coeducation and to Bowdoin women, the actual poll numbers show that for the most part, students and professors supported coeducation and that the issues they took with it could be remedied.

In response to criticisms that the article providing the poll results focused too much on negative comments, an article was published in the following week’s Orient issue, on February 11, 1972, giving several examples of positive comments among the poll results (Document EN 25.2). As the author states, these comments are “based upon the assumption that coeducation is desirable and feasible.”

Similarly, two student-written letters to the editor of the Orient also from February 11, 1972 (Document EN 25.3) suggest that coeducation is a worthwhile endeavor for Bowdoin. The letters provide thoughtful reflections not just on the poll, but also on the situation of coeducation at Bowdoin. If the poll is discouraging, these letters and the February 11 article help show that, in fact, coeducation did have support and that at least some students saw it as an important improvement on the College.

Athletics Focus Group

For this discussion, three women who were among the first female athletes at Bowdoin came together to share their stories. Click the audio links below to listen to Karen Brodie Doyle, ’79 (field hockey, diving, lacrosse), Sally Clayton Caras, ’78 (field hockey and lacrosse), and Ruth Spire Small, ’77 (lacrosse and swimming), discuss their experiences as female student-athletes during the initial years of coeducation at the College.

Audio: click title(s) below to begin listening