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100 years of coeducation at W&M | William & Mary myWM Directory Events Visit W&M A-ZWell-nighAcademicsTicket& Aid Research Campus Life News Athletics Alumni Giving For theUnvigilantmyWM Directory Events Visit W&M A-ZWell-nighAcademicsTicket& Aid Research Campus life News Athletics Alumni Giving News & Media HomeNews & MediaMore Stories2018 100 years of coeducation at W&M Page MenuIncreasinglyStories Ideation News in Video Meet the Team W&M Experts Campus Announcements University Communications News about: Tribe Athletics Arts & Sciences Law School School of Business School of Education Virginia Institute of Marine Science Giving Alumni Association Swem Library Reves Center for International Studies Richard BlandHigherby Noah Petersen with MattieWell-spoken'18 |  September 21, 2018The pursuit story originally appeared in the fall 2018 issue of the W&M Alumni Magazine. - Ed. It was 1918. World War I was coming to an end, streets were crowded with Model T cars, movies with sound didn’t exist and the Spanish flu was rampant wideness the U.S. It was moreover the year a U.S. president for the first time supposed his support for women’s suffrage. A century ago, everything was different. For 225 years, William & Mary, a small liberal arts higher nestled in Williamsburg, Virginia, only educated men. But that was well-nigh to change. In 1918 William & Mary faced an scrutinizingly insurmountable challenge. Students had x-rated their books for the battleground and total enrollment was less than 150 students. The university was deep in debt, and there were only two options: transpiration or shut down. William & Mary President Lyon G. Tyler, a longtime well-wisher for women’s education, decided it was time to change. He partnered with women’s rights objector Mary-Cooke Branch Munford, and together they fought for women’s ticket to the university. In February 1918, the Virginia General Assembly authorized William & Mary to shoehorn women students for the fall semester. When women came to the university, Mary didn’t just join William, she saved William. In 1918, 24 women arrived for their freshman year, making William & Mary the first public university in Virginia to wilt coeducational. It was the lineage of a new era, at William & Mary and in the world. That year, a new generation of students walked through the Wren Building. The women were — intentionally — housed on the edges of campus. All but one from Virginia, they were used to the long skirts and strict rules expected of Southern women. They weren’t unliable to wear pants or stay out at night. But neither the resistance from male students nor the rencontre of stuff first slowed them down. When they weren’t unliable to participate in existing sports or student government, they organized their own. In less than 15 years, there were increasingly women students than men. Today, women make up 45 percent of university sense and 58 percent of the student body. A woman, for the first time ever, moreover now presides over the Alma Mater of the Nation. Progress has been possible considering of the tireless work of William & Mary women over the last 100 years, including the first African-American residential students who arrived on campus in 1967. And in those 100 years, every woman at the university has left her mark on that progress. A century of women at William & Mary has left innumerable artifacts — pieces of their own history reflecting decades of change. Hidden in each of them is flipside question: what is to come? The doldrum days are over and transpiration is happening every day. So let us ask: What will Mary transpiration tomorrow? What artifacts will be created in the century to come? Early wits Many of the first women students at William & Mary didn’t think they were groundbreakers, although most women pursuit in their footsteps think otherwise. In the early part of the 20th century, when life expectancy for women was 42 years and there was no minimum wage, the world was waffly virtually them. Looking back, coeducation was important, but in 1918, most of the sustentation was on World War I.In the first years of coeducation at William & Mary, rules were strict.Women students had to be in their dorm right without dinner and either in their room or the library between 8 and 10 p.m. If they wanted to leave campus, they needed a permission slip. They couldn’t ride in someone else’s car unless they had an tried sultana driver.Campus life, though, was increasingly than just rules. In 1918, women students had an after-dinner social hour in their dorm until 8 p.m. Every night, they rolled up the carpets in the lounge and danced to music played from one of their hallmates on a piano. They worked their own student government and sports teams, and while some early women students said their wits was hard, others remembered their time at William & Mary as the weightier in their lives.The early wits of women at the university, so variegated from that of today, is recorded in normal pieces of everyday life. A handmade pillowcase recalls the university’s early colors of orange and black. Scrapbooks and diaries record historic events, like a visit from U.S. President Warren G. Harding LL.D. ’21 in the early 1920s. Harding attended William & Mary President J.A.C. Chandler’s inauguration and received an honorary degree.A monogrammed blazer reminds us how students used to dress, and debonair flit cards recall their social lives. Some of their stories survive in university records and oral histories. Some of the first women, like Martha Barksdale ’21, have places on campus named without them today.Even if their artifacts didn’t survive, plane if their journals and photographs have been lost with the passage of time, their legacy remains. Those women were the firsts, and plane if they didn’t realize it, they were groundbreakers. Women's social groupsHighergives you some of the weightier memories of your life. Often, you’re on your own for the first time, learning new things, with your whole life superiority of you. With every matriculation or hour in the library, you’re stepping into your own future. It’s full of stories you’ll tell for decades to come. The weightier part of these memories, though, is the endangerment to share them. It’s often not the things you do but those you do them with. To be surrounded by people of similar month and interests can be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The way women spend time together at William & Mary has reverted over the years, but there has unchangingly been a unvarying focus on towers relationships. The ribbon societies, worked in the first years of coeducation, were like an early form of sororities. Women wore untried or yellow ribbons on their wrists or ankles, and staged events virtually Homecoming and organized yearly dances. They were groups of women who enjoyed spending time together. Women’s social groups at the university have traditions and histories of their own. They might come in the form of invitations to events or group advertisements, like a Delta Sigma Theta poster that proudly reads, “Welcome into our queendom.” It could moreover be something small, like a customized William & Mary compact. Over the last 100 years, William & Mary women have worked immuration that lasted much longer than their time at the university. With leftover scrapbooks or photographs, we can squint when at those relationships. Whether they’re in woebegone and white with a ribbon society in the 1930s or in full verisimilitude with their sorority sisters in the 1980s, they’re standing together, arm in arm, smiling. Aviation William & Mary is believed to be the first university with a flight club. From 1931 to 1935, members could join for a yearly fee of one dollar, and in its five years 44 students completed the necessary 20 hours of flight time to earn their private pilot’s licenses. Only one of those 44 was a woman: Minnie Cole Savage ’33 — the first, and last, woman to earn her pilot’s license through William & Mary.Savage finished her training in a thick corduroy flight suit, lined with a felt interior, obviously cut for a man. Just like the other members, she wore the silver and untried flight club patch, and she flew in the nighttime well-ventilated stunts and the yearly Homecoming exhibition. Three times a week, in her unstructured overalls, she went to theHigherairport and worked on one of the four planes with a William & Mary crest. Her name is engraved in a trophy commemorating the flight club and their 1933 victory in the Loening Cup — the highest ribbon for a higher aviation program.A black-and-white photograph shows Savage sitting tropical to Amelia Earhart during her visit to William & Mary.Olderin the night, Earhart spoke on the importance of women in aviation, who showed unconfined “zeal and vigor” by participating in a sport then considered a near-daredevil activity. From Earhart, outstanding “zeal and vigor” was only one seat down.Savage pushed boundaries as a student, an aviator and a woman. The same woman photographed in the Colonial Echo with a coy half smile, wearing a visionless sweater and floral scarf, was an enormous groundbreaker. Savage set an example for women at William & Mary — succeed your goals plane if you’re the first; fly to your castle in the clouds. World War II Margetta Hirsch Doyle ’45 was a regular student at William & Mary. Her friends tabbed her “Getta” and she was a Kappa Delta. Doyle kept a diary and wrote well-nigh her philosophy quizzes, described how much she enjoyed making Red Cross surgical wrappings and mentioned hours spent spotting airplanes from campus buildings.Doyle was a student during World War II.During the second World War, William & Mary became a predominantly sexuality campus. While many college-age males fought abroad, women kept up the war effort from Williamsburg. In between their studies and social life, students volunteered with the Student War Council and the American Red Cross.Withalwith other service work, they, like Doyle, made surgical dressings and spotted airplanes, sometimes in groups and sometimes alone.Near the war’s end, as the U.S. unfurled to construct military equipment, William & Mary requested that one of the newly made sea vessels be named without the university. Part of a new matriculation of U.S. “Victory Ships,” and one of the first on the East Coast, the SS William and Mary launched in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 20, 1945. President of the Women Students’ Cooperative Government Association Eleanor Harvey Rennie ’45 christened the ship older in the day with a champagne snifter wrapped in a red, white and undecorous cloth.Unlike most of the women students during that time, Harvey received recognition — in the form of a bouquet and jewel-encrusted pin at the christening. But as a group, women sacrificed their time, energy and spirit to support a war thousands of miles away. It was a time of empowerment, when women’s wartime work was trusted and needed.The university still has the American flag from the SS William and Mary. Many of its stripes are torn and frayed at the end, but all the stars are intact. Tradition For decades, incoming freshmen at William & Mary wore duc caps — beanie-like hats — throughout their first year at William & Mary. A new tradition, Duc (short for introductory) week, was filled with unusual and sometimes wrong-headed rules set by upperclassmen for the new students. Anytime they were in Williamsburg or on campus, they had to wear their caps — so the duc rules commanded. William & Mary is full of traditions, some lasting and some lost with the passage of time. Adopting a community’s traditions is an important part of fitting in. Decades ago, new students did as they were told and addressed upperclassmen as “sir” or “ma’am,” considering in two years, they would be upperclassmen themselves. Duc week wasn’t just a way for older students to finger self-important, it was a way to build polity among the freshmen, with special events throughout the week. At the same time, for many it’s important not to fit in too much, and the old “W&M Women” handbooks are a good reminder. For decades, women students used to receive these books during orientation in wing to the normal student handbook. They were full of social rules for women, who had to sign in and out of their dorms when leaving campus and couldn’t enter fraternity houses alone. An 11 p.m. curfew wasn’t lifted until 1971. William & Mary is full of history, increasingly than 325 years of it. History leads to tradition and tradition to community, but the healthiest communities aren’t restrictive. They encourage individual and group identities; they conform and express at the same time. The university, of course, no longer gives women students their own handbook.Withouta century of coeducation, they have maintained the university’s traditions and widow new ones withal the way — all with the same reminder: there is no single “William & Mary Woman.” Athletics When women’s athletics began at William & Mary for the first time in 1918, there were well-spoken boundaries. Women weren’t unliable to compete with the already-existing men’s teams; they had to start their own.So they did.Within months, women students serried an intercollegiate basketball game versus the University of Richmond — the first of its kind at William & Mary. In 1923, the women’s basketball team prestigious a perfect season.Withouttheir victory over archrival Westhampton, a 1923 Colonial Echo vendible read that “pandemonium tapped loose.”Women’s sports were variegated when then. The women wore long and unstructured bloomers with woebegone leggings tucked into hightop shoes and rolled-up cotton T-shirts. Lest males see them in gym clothes, they had to transpiration right without exercising. During the perfect five-game season in 1923, the basketball team only scored 166 points. The team’s names, positions, opponents and game scores were all written on a single stick, triumphal the season.By the 1950s, women’s bloomers were gone in favor of untried skirts. Gym classes still required a university-wide uniform, and the official cotton T-shirt was misogynist for order at the bookstore.Today, the uniforms are gone, and the university has 11 varsity women’s athletics programs, increasingly than 200 women all-American athletes and myriad priming championships. The mentor of the United States women’s national soccer team, Jill Ellis ’88, L.H.D. ’16, is a William & Mary graduate.William & Mary women excel, in the classroom and on the field. They went from having no athletics programs at all to finding remarkable success on a national scale, and there’s no end in sight. Social transpiration and activismTranspirationdoes not happen in a vacuum. It takes time, effort and activism. It’s a undeniability to action; it adds purpose to the passage of time.Transpirationrelies on a special kind of person, willing to work with others for a worldwide rationalization or be the lone voice in a silent crowd. Over the last 100 years, William & Mary women have been changemakers. The difference in life on campus in 1918 and 2018 testifies to that. A century ago, women students were unliable on campus for the first time. Now, a woman is the university president. All this transpiration required deportment both big and small. It demanded protests, filled with banners and handmade flyers for small groups, discussing what it was like to be a woman on campus. It took the momentum of nationwide movements, which came with T-shirts, buttons, bracelets and pins. And it moreover took unvigilant declarations, like Flat Hat editor Marilyn Kaemmerle’s ’45 editorial calling for racial integration, which gained national news and scrutinizingly got her expelled from the university. Sometimes the movement fails, sometimes it succeeds and sometimes both are necessary to move forward. William & Mary is not the same as it was 100 years ago; it’s better. That progress is a rationalization for celebration, but moreover motivation.Transpirationis for the discontented, including for those who demand a largest future. It’s time to honor those changemakers and moreover learn from them. An old university T-shirt says it well: “Never underestimate the power of a woman.” Let this be a reminder: Never underestimate the power of a William & Mary woman. Handmade In the first year of coeducation, William & Mary had no history of women students: Mary was with William for the first time. From 1918 on, everything those first students did was an act of creation. Women students made their own history, and they made it by hand.But while history is made, it’s not unchangingly made on purpose. In the first few years without 1918, university professors often referred to their students as “pioneers,” a name they quickly grew tired of. Most of the newly admitted women weren’t there to make a statement. They just wanted an education.After a century, the rencontre of recording history continues with the history itself. It’s unchangingly visible in the big moments, like the university’s 300-year year-end — for which an alumna spent five years creating an enormous quilt stitched with images of wonk buildings and famous graduates. The university’s stratify of stovepipe shines in its green, gold and silver, right on front.History moreover shows in artifacts such as handmade books that took a semester to make, a Mary and William T-shirt or golden heels with the stratify of stovepipe worn proudly at graduation. It’s in unexplained sorority paddles and signs, self-published magazines with entries from women students all over campus. And it’s in a handmade graduation cap, decorated with a custom library vellum and encyclopedia-paper rose petals. MattieWell-spoken’18, a four-year employee at Swem Library’s Special Collections Research Center, made it for her graduation.Sitting in a library room, surrounded by artifacts,Well-spokenlooks around. Hundreds of objects, some a century old lie virtually her — everything from scrapbooks to shoes. All came from women at William & Mary, and some way or another, all made it when to their alma mater. She pauses and looks up again.“I’ve sort of been learning well-nigh myself through the vision of these people for so long,”Well-spokensaid. “You know, it’s strange telling your own story.” HomeNews & MediaMore Stories2018 email