Should single-sex colleges turn coeducational? During the years of controversy over this issue, all-male Haverford College and neighboring all-female Bryn Mawr outside Philadelphia seemed to have worked out an admirable solution: a flourishing exchange program. In what Bryn Mawr billed as the “best of both worlds,” the program offered a choice between traditional single-sex education and enrollment in any course at the other college. Up to 150 women and an equal number of men could live on the other campus.
But Haverford became restless. President John Coleman, 55, felt that his Quaker school was violating the sect’s egalitarian views by refusing to admit women. He also believed that Haverford, worried about its financial wellbeing, would do well to expand from 750 students to about 1,000 by recruiting females. Last November the Haverford faculty voted almost unanimously to admit women, and the student body backed them up, 60% to 35%.
Bryn Mawr, however, saw Haverford’s decision as a direct threat to its single-sex future. Officials and students felt that if Haverford went coed, the mix of students in the exchange program would change from a roughly fifty-fifty male-female ratio to two-thirds or more women. Thus, in a time of increasing competition for bright female students, Bryn Mawr’s special situation would no longer look so attractive.
In the end, Haverford’s board of managers—including two members who also serve on Bryn Mawr’s governing board—saw things Bryn Mawr’s way. Although it voted to allow women transfer students into Haverford’s upper three classes, there are actually very few openings for transfer students. Bryn Mawr called the decision “a victory of coeducation through cooperation.”
The action was clearly a defeat for Coleman, who resigned last week after ten years as Haverford’s president. Four years ago, Coleman took a leave of absence and spent three months laboring as a garbage collector, dishwasher and ditchdigger. Now he says he will go to the state employment service and register for whatever is available.
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