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219 SECTION V Structural Issues Although coeducation seemed to be “in the air” by the late 1960s, some men’s colleges found it easier than others did to make the decision to admit women. In Chapter 9, Poulson compares two institutions that differed in this regard: the public university, Rutgers, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the Catholic university, Georgetown, in Washington, D.C. Poulson shows how the need at Rutgers to placate internal constituencies, particularly those associated with the university’s women’s college, Douglass, slowed decision-making. At Georgetown , in contrast, the centralized administration, and the fact that the other four undergraduate colleges at the university already admitted women, facilitated the 1968 decision to admit women to the liberal arts college. Poulson’s discussion of changes in the two campus’s climates once coeducation was established makes it clear that although there are similarities from one type of institution to another, there are also differences depending on such factors as whether the university is religious or secular, private or public. Hamilton College was a conservative men’s college for more than 150 years before it decided in 1968 to found an innovative women’s college, Kirkland, as its coordinate. In Chapter 10 Miller-Bernal discusses the reasons for this seemingly surprising development, as well as the consequences for women when, a decade later, Hamilton College took over its coordinate to become a coeducational college. The sense of identity and entitlement that women, both faculty and students, developed in their own college enabled them to press for and obtain concessions in the newly coeducational Hamilton. Thus coordination , established in large part to appease male students and alumni by avoiding full coeducation, had unanticipated positive benefits. CoingCoedFinalPages.indd 219 5/26/04 4:54:11 PM CoingCoedFinalPages.indd 220 5/26/04 4:54:11 PM ...

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