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The Coeducation Debate at Yale College
September 8, 2009
See below for links to the texts of the interviews excerpted in the September/October 2009 print issue -- and PDFs of articles from Yale Alumni Magazine issues published just before and just after Yale College went coed.
"Admitting Women to a College on the Moon"
Elga Wasserman, who oversaw the first four coeducational classes, shares her views on why Yale really went coed -- as well as the reasons she and Sam Chauncey selected, as the entering students of 1969, "women we thought were sturdy."
The Great Bathtub Fiasco
Longtime Yale administrator Henry "Sam" Chauncey Jr. '57 on bathtubs, Kingman Brewster on the cusp, and how alumni feel about their sons and their daughters.
It's Not about Home Economics
Avi Soifer '69, '72MUrbS, '72JD, was one of many male students who pushed for coeducation after the Yale administration dragged its feet.
What They Said Then
"The University Dips a Toe into Coeducation; 500 Women to be Admitted Next Year" and "Elga Wasserman to Head Planning for Coeducation" [PDF]
by the Editors
December 1968
"Coeducation Inside and Out: A Collection of Views and an Informal Discussion" [PDF]
April 1970
"Yale Is Now a Completely Different Place"
Frances Beinecke '71, '74MFS, found the campus welcoming -- and highly politicized, especially by the draft. She also shares her perspective on how and why Yale today differs from the Yale of the first half of the twentieth century.
"Blank Stares and Open Mouths"
Lawrie Mifflin '73 discovered as a freshman that neither the administration nor the Yale Daily News had any idea what to do about women's sports. She helped start the first women's varsity sport at Yale and later became one of the first female sportswriters in U.S. journalism.
"A Thousand Male Leaders" Plus a Handful of Women
When Yale's president famously said coeducation would never stop Yale from admitting 1,000 male undergrads -- "a thousand male leaders" -- every year, Diane "Cookie" Polan '73, '80JD, felt "like an add-on." Her Yale experience led her to feminism, social justice advocacy, and a legal career.
"What Was Missing"
For Vera Wells '71, Yale opened up new possibilities. But she also discovered a lack of black female professors, and she and another student proposed a college seminar on black women -- whose teacher later became the first African American woman tenured at Yale. 
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