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7. Women’s Admission to the University of Virginia: Tradition Transformed
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181 7 Women’s Admission to the University of Virginia Tradition Transformed Elizabeth L. Ihle Virginia cherishes its heritage as a preserver of tradition. It is the site of the first permanent English colony in North America, the home to eight U.S. presidents, and the location of both the second oldest college in the country (William and Mary, founded in 1693) and the most traditional of state universities. The University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 in Charlottesville as an “Academical Village,” has always reflected the state’s reverence for tradition . The old part of the university is still covered in cobbled walks and contains numerous buildings designed by Jefferson himself. Indeed, the most honored student housing, offered only to outstanding student leaders, is on the Lawn and the Ranges, a series of rooms with working fireplaces (with wood provided by the university), distant bathrooms, and a succession of tourists traipsing by.1 The university has a burial ground for students killed in the Civil War. No one would dream of commenting on the beauty of the campus because the university does not have one; instead it has “the Grounds.” Tradition is also a state of mind and a daily practice. The honor code is revered. Two literary societies, begun in the 1820s and 1830s, still flourish. Students are never referred to freshmen, sophomores, juniors, or seniors, but rather as first, second, third, and fourth-year students.2 Even today students wear coats and ties or dresses to football games. The university still has a number of secret societies that wield enormous influence. Professors have generally been called mister, as gentlemen ought to be; the term doctor is vocational and inappropriate to this haven of good breeding. Since Jefferson’s proposal for public education in Virginia, “A Plan for the General Diffusion of Knowledge,” did not suggest education for females beyond the elementary years, it should come as no surprise that Mr. Jefferson’s university CoingCoedFinalPages.indd 181 5/26/04 4:54:01 PM 182 Masculine Cultures and Traditions was created as the capstone of the state’s system of education with only males in mind. In this chapter, I argue that the state’s reverence for tradition delayed women’s admission to the university, as it struggled with the question for nearly ninety years; coeducation transformed the university but tradition as a whole still flourishes. This reverence for tradition is the reason that Virginia was the last state of the former Confederacy and indeed the last state in the nation to admit women unreservedly to its flagship state university. Overall, the South embraced coeducation later than the rest of the nation, although under special circumstances women occasionally were admitted to southern, all-male institutions in the late nineteenth century. The adoption of coeducation moved through the South from west to east. The westernmost states of the Confederacy, those that had the least amount of tradition, either simply created a policy of coeducation when they founded their state universities or adopted coeducation early in their history. The first three to do so were Arkansas in 1872, Mississippi in 1882, and Texas in 1883. Then came both Alabama and Tennessee in 1893 and Louisiana in 1905. The holdouts were in the east. Florida maintained coeducation until 1905, then was sex-segregated until 1947, and then resumed coeducation. The last Southern states to admit women were the former British colonies: the Carolinas, Georgia, and Virginia. Georgia admitted women in 1918. North Carolina maintained separate schools for each sex until after World War II. South Carolina, under a Populist governor “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, made its liberal arts college at Columbia coeducational in 1894, despite the wishes of the academic community. However, the college provided no facilities for women, not even toilets, and their reception was so hostile that few women enrolled before the 1920s.3 Georgia admitted women in 1918 and North Carolina integrated Chapel Hill in 1945. Virginia, however, established separate and inferior colleges for women and maintained them until the 1970, giving it the dubious distinction of being the last state in the nation to admit women to its flagship university. Early Attempts to Admit Women The question of women’s education arose at the University of Virginia when John W. Mallet, a chemistry professor, moved in October 1880 to establish a committee to investigate the ways the university could sustain the highest education of women. In December the...