In 1986, the school that began life as the Woman\u2019s College of Baltimore made the decision to open its doors to men.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t an easy call.<\/p>\n
![\"Protest](\"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/files\/2015\/10\/Coed_Button_1-300x300.jpg\")
\u00a0For several decades, college administrators and trustees had watched as many men\u2019s colleges, including the Johns Hopkins University and the Ivy League schools, began admitting women to their undergraduate programs, making it increasingly difficult for women\u2019s colleges to fill their classrooms. After years of study and debate, on May 10, 1986, the Goucher College Board of Trustees voted overwhelmingly to allow men to attend the century-old women\u2019s institution.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt broke my heart, but my head said it was absolutely the right thing to do,\u201d recalls Patricia Goldman \u201964<\/strong>, president of the Board of Trustees at the time. Led by then-President Rhoda M. Dorsey, the administration and board looked at other colleges, studied the effects of going coed, and took a hard look at the future of women\u2019s colleges.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a business decision,\u201d Goldman says. \u201cWe were marketing to \u2026 a shrinking population; women were not looking specifically for\u2014or were outright rejecting\u2014women\u2019s schools.\u201d<\/p>\n As the trustees debated inside the Alumnae House, some 200 students gathered outside to protest, according to a Baltimore Sun article. Many were wearing T-shirts made for the occasion adorned with the phrase \u201cBetter Dead Than Coed.\u201d Among the protesters was Meghan Orr Mulvihill \u201987<\/strong>, then junior class president. Mulvihill\u2019s outrage didn\u2019t stem from self-interest. Hardly a shrinking violet, she had spent three of her four years in high school as the class president in a large coed school. In retrospect, she thinks she would have done fine at a coed college. But she had heard the predictions\u2014that men would take over at Goucher\u2014\u2028and says she and her fellow students felt shut out of the decision.<\/p>\n \u201cI really felt as though I was an advocate for others,\u201d Mulvihill says. \u201cYou\u2019d hear studies about women who were suppressed in leadership opportunities\u2014even expressing opinions in the classroom\u2014\u2028because they were female.\u201d It was also, she says, a family tradition: \u201cMy mother went to a single-sex college; my sister went to a single-sex college; my father went to a single-sex college. \u2026 So it just sort of resonated with me.\u201d<\/p>\n For many, like Mulvihill, the controversy that surrounded the decision to go coed has faded with time. \u201cI do think it was probably the right decision,\u201d says the Chicago lawyer.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of the change in my opinion is because I now have a child who is a junior in high school. I would consider letting her look at Goucher,\u201d Mulvihill says. \u201cMore than anything, I\u2019m a huge proponent of small schools, and I\u2019m sure that was because of going to Goucher.\u201d<\/p>\n Some longtime members of the Goucher community remember the transition from single-sex to coed as traumatic; others say it barely made a difference in their classes. Still others point out that Goucher\u2019s legacy of single-sex education is one that continues to shape the college today.<\/p>\n \u201cI was very skeptical about going coed because I thought Goucher was going to lose its fundamental identity. I thought it would be a mistake,\u201d the longtime psychology professor recalls. \u201cWe were really good at educating women, and [college administrators believed] those skills were going to translate equally well into educating men, but there wasn\u2019t much intentionality.\u201d<\/p>\n Pringle has little doubt that the admission of men made more than a superficial difference. He and a colleague, Katherine Canada, who was then a Goucher psychology professor, studied classroom gender dynamics at Goucher before and after the transition and found that the interactions between students and professors shifted when men were present. In a solely female class, the professor would ask a question; the student would answer, and a back-and-forth exchange between the student and professor would ensue.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was almost conversational\u2014very probing, \u2028very respectful,\u201d he says. \u201cAs the proportion of men in the classroom increased, we saw women dropping out of those chains. How important was that? That\u2019s hard to say.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of his colleagues, including Jean Harvey Baker<\/strong>, who graduated from Goucher in 1961 and who has taught in the History Department since 1972, say while the campus dynamic was changed by the addition of men, it was also energized.<\/p>\n \u201cI believed vigorously for a long time before the college went coed that life was coed, so the college should be coed, especially since there were all kinds of financial reasons to do that,\u201d Baker says. \u201cBut in time\u2014maybe five or six years\u2014the whole project was successful, and we forgot about it. The pioneers disappeared, and while males continue even today \u2028to be a smaller proportion of Goucher College, it became natural.\u201d<\/p>\n From what Baker observed in the classroom and as an adviser, \u201cThe whole system of coeducation was just a marvelous boon for the women who went to Goucher.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore that, Goucher was something of a cocoon, and you could go and spend four years and study philosophy and never learn much about life. But with coeducation in the classroom and the dormitories, there was more energy. So that\u2019s the difference.<\/p>\n \u201cThe similarities were: small, intimate, faculty relations, and a non-competitive environment. And they were retained,\u201d Baker says.<\/p>\n Perhaps that was because faculty were aware of concerns that women would be pushed aside and went out of their way to make sure that didn\u2019t happen, says Political Science Professor Marianne Githens.<\/p>\n Githens, who in 1972 founded Goucher\u2019s Women\u2019s Studies Program, was in favor of going coed (though she points out that she was lucky enough to be on sabbatical when the heated debates were taking place).<\/p>\n Goucher had a longstanding tradition of preparing women to succeed in male-dominated professions such as law and the sciences, she says. And that didn\u2019t change. \u201cThe notion of encouraging women carried over, the notion of mentoring women, of really actively advising them about moving into more professionally oriented fields on graduation. There was that kind of carryover\u2014of not ignoring the women because men were more likely to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n Providing examples for women, many agree, was a big part of Goucher\u2019s success as a women\u2019s college, and one that remained after men were admitted.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the theories about why women\u2019s colleges were successful for women in the ways that they were,\u201d Pringle says, \u201cmight have to do with the fact that there are so many female role models in the administration, and on the faculty, and on the staff, and we still have that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cAt the time, I was vehemently opposed to it,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI felt as though there were fewer and fewer opportunities for single-sex education, and that we were just succumbing to perceived financial pressures, and I didn\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Button:](\"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/files\/2015\/10\/Coed_Button_2-300x300.jpg\")
\nN<\/span>early three decades have passed since that day. In 1986 there were 211 first-yearstudents; this year there are nearly 400. Over the years, the college has also grown to include 10 graduate programs, instituted a mandatory study abroad requirement, and codified its commitment to social justice with programs like the Office of Community-Based Learning and the Goucher Prison Education Partnership.<\/p>\n![\"Shirt_1\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/files\/2015\/10\/Shirt_1.jpg\")
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\nP<\/span>sychology Professor Rick Pringle came to Goucher from the coed University of Kansas in 1979. Initially unsure about the idea of single-sex education, Pringle came around with the zeal of the converted.<\/p>\n