Her Quiet Revolution

“GEORGETOWN BREAKS TRADITION, ALLOWS WOMEN INTO COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES” said the headline of the press release from the Georgetown University news service on Sept. 19, 1968. It went on to describe the circumstances leading up to the 179-year-old University’s decision to allow women into all of its schools, making the nation’s oldest Catholic university completely coeducational. But the two-page release wasn’t able to convey all of the implications that arose in the following years. Because women had already been engaged in the process of integrating themselves onto campus for several decades, the last domino to fall did so quietly and without much fanfare.
But beyond simply bringing more females on campus, the acceptance of women into Georgetown’s College of Arts and Sciences led to rapid changes in campus life. Ultimately, the decision to become completely coeducational amounted to a revolution—less for the women who attended and more for the University itself—that thrust Georgetown into the modern age.

First steps

Although John Carroll founded Georgetown in 1789, as “a national University rooted in the Catholic faith, committed to spiritual inquiry, engaged in the public sphere and invigorated by religious and cultural pluralism,” it was taken for granted that only men could attend the University. Consequently, it took nearly 100 years until the first woman was admitted, according to files in the University Archives. Two women, Jeannette Sumner and Annie Rice, enrolled in the Medical School in 1890, taking the first step in a 70-year journey from an all-male, tradition-bound educational institution to a balanced, contemporary university.
The next step was the creation of the School of Nursing in 1904, which afforded women the opportunity to obtain a diploma in nursing at first and then, beginning in 1943, a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing degree. The first undergraduate women on campus were the ones in the Nursing School, although the physical setup of the campus meant that they usually took classes, lived and socialized separately from the men.
Also in 1943, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences began to offer women Master’s in Arts degrees. The only reason attributed to this decision was the loss of male students to fighting in World War II. The Law School, however, did not accept women until 1951; its first three female graduates finished in 1954.
Fifteen years after its founding in 1919, the School of Foreign Service began to allow women to enroll in evening classes. The following year, 1946, the school allowed women to enroll as full-time undergraduates on track to obtaining a Bachelor’s of Science in Foreign Service degree. By 1951, the School of Business Administration had conferred its first Bachelor’s degree on a woman, and the School of Languages and Linguistics followed in 1952 with five women receiving Bachelor’s degrees.

Changing times

By 1961, the number of women on campus reached a level that necessitated an administrator to handle women’s issues. That year Dr. Patricia Rueckel, who was also a professor of psychology in the College and Nursing School, became the first dean of women. She said her position was created as a result of an evaluation from the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association that suggested that women’s needs were not being adequately met at Georgetown.
“It was a before the days of feminism, and the University was a very masculine environment … It was a very, very, very different time,” she said.
Rueckel fulfilled many duties as dean of women, including working to ensure that the women of Georgetown in the 1960s received the opportunity to participate in extra-curricular activities that were comparable to men’s. She recalled the numerous activities, from residence hall and student government systems to honor societies and athletic programs that she oversaw from her position.
“The women were very responsible and involved … Often times they did their jobs in a more organized manner and with more enthusiasm [than the men],” Rueckel said.
One of the outspoken proponents of coeducation within the University was Rev. Thomas Fitzgerald, S.J., who served as academic vice president for the University beginning in 1966. He pushed for the School of Foreign Service and the School of Business Administration to accept more women.
“In one case, one of the deans told me they were taking 150 freshmen, and I asked how many women they were taking. He said 10. I told them it should be more,” Fitzgerald recalled.
According to Charles A. Deacon, an associate dean of admissions in 1969 and current dean of undergraduate admissions, before 1969, the School of Foreign Service limited the number of women in each class to 25; the School of Business Administration had no limit on the number of women it would accept, but it did not receive many female applicants; and the School of Languages and Linguistics had just completed its transition from being an institute, so it was still going through developing stages in its applicant pool. But throughout, the College remained all-male.
Despite the fact that their role at Georgetown had been growing through the 1960s, the women at the University still felt as though there was something missing. Rueckel soon found that many Georgetown women were seeking a change.
“I remember counseling many of them, and they wanted to study something else, to transfer to the College into a liberal arts program, but they couldn’t,” she said.
According to Fitzgerald, Dean of the College Royden B. Davis, S.J. also received similar complaints from women who wished to follow a pre-med program, but who could only do so by enrolling in the School of Languages and Linguistics and taking pre-med electives.
What’s taking so long?
There existed several perspectives on why the College still remained single-sex for so long, but the concept of tradition remained a common theme.
Rueckel pointed to the foundational core that the College represented, as well as its Jesuit roots.
“The College was always the center of the institution, and the other disciplines didn’t have as much stature as arts and science. It was most central to what Georgetown considered its heritage to be … I guess being the oldest Jesuit college in the United States it was the most traditional,” she said.
Deacon also cited the Jesuit factor in the College’s reluctance to admit women but added that Georgetown was following somewhat of a nationwide trend to include women at the university level.
“There was a constituency of alumni from Jesuit male high schools [who had graduated from Georgetown] that resisted changing the tradition … But it was the circumstances of the times. There was a general discussion in higher education about allowing women in. Many major schools in that timeframe were becoming coed.”
Davis argued that it was not consistent to have parts of the University coed and other parts single-sex. “I think it was a matter of recognizing that we were an integrated campus and that we were going in the wrong direction in not being consistent,” he said. “Women changed the tone of the campus.”
In a press release dated Feb. 26, 1969, Davis also attributed the strain on University facilities as another reason women could not augment the number of students in the College.

The countdown …

On May 2, 1968, The Hoya broke the story that women might be admitted for the 1969-70 academic year with a headline proclaiming, “College May Admit Girls; Student Opinions Sought.” The article discussed how the College’s faculty had “informally agreed to the proposal” and what steps needed to be taken—such as gauging student and alumni opinions, as well as receiving approval of the Board of Directors—before it could be implemented.
The proposal was put forth by Davis and Fitzgerald. Both strongly believed that the time had come for the College to become coed but retained a concern for how the University community would react.
In the article Davis offered compelling reasons for his proposal, “I think that girls can add an awful lot to a university today. For instance, we can secure excellent students who wish to major in subject that are not overcrowded, such as theology and fine arts. Georgetown has been too strongly identified as a professional school. Girls in the College would add a new dimension.”
On its editorial page in the same issue, The Hoya expressed its support for the admission of women to the College, citing the “undergraduate coeducation” that already existed at the University and the “paradox that Georgetown can have girls in graduate biology but have no undergraduate female biology students.”
Bob Shullman (CAS ‘68) graduated the year before coeducation went into effect. He remembers discussing the topic with his male friend and agreeing that there would not be any real change by the addition of women to the College. He also regrets that he did not get to experience the coed College himself.
“Thirty years later I wish that the integration had occurred prior to my arrival in 1964.”

Tradition broken

“Women will be subjected to the same admissions criteria and standards as men,” Davis said in the Sept. 10 press release. He also “predicted about 50 freshmen coeds would be admitted each year, although that figure is still under study.” Other sources confirmed that number and reiterated that the 50 women admitted in 1969 would be in addition the number of men admitted in previous years. Five months later, a Feb. 26, 1969 press release reported that the University had “been besieged with 10 times as many coed applications as there are spots available.”
According to Deacon, there was a very large applicant pool right away, which led to a very competitive admissions process almost immediately. “Women were being labeled as hyper smart, but they weren’t revolutionary,” he said. “Mostly they were looking for liberal arts, as a reflection of what they had studied in high school, although even that changed as women’s high school became stronger in teaching the sciences. Those transitions led to a transition at Georgetown.”
There were also a number of transfers from other schools within the University—the aforementioned women who aimed to study pre-med or the social sciences. Daughters of alumni were also among the first to apply following the decision.
In the fall of 1969, the College enrolled 51 women from 500 applicants and 404 men from 2,550 applicants. Two years later, the number of women enrolled doubled, and it continued to grow until the male-to-female ratio in the College reached 50-50 in the late ‘70s.

They’re here

The men of pre-1969 Georgetown were fairly used to women on campus already, so the adjustment phase after women joined the College’s student population in 1969 was brief. However, the first women to arrive reported mixed experiences about male-female interaction on campus, as did professors and administrators.
Some women found that their presence in the classroom provoked strong reactions from men.
“I was told more than once that I did not ‘belong’ in the courses I was taking. I have a hunch that those same classmates are the ones who still keep the Old Boys’ Network going,” said Mary Perkins Riley (CAS ‘70) in a collection of reflections from female College alumni compiled by Associate Dean of the College Anne Sullivan.
Others, such as Jo Ann Berretta Tierney (CAS ‘71) wrote that she had problems connecting with women on campus because she was not offered student housing. “I really missed the camaraderie I had come to know from on-campus living,” she says, acknowledging that she may have been in the minority that “fell through the cracks.”
But not all stories were bad.
“I didn’t feel any bit like a second-class citizen; I felt very welcomed when I entered,” said Carol O’Brien Cooke (CAS ‘74), who entered the College the second year it was coed and also lived on campus for three years. “And it went from feeling like there were not a lot of women on campus to a whole lot very quickly … It always felt very comfortable for me and most of the other women there.”
Ironically, the qualities that attracted Cooke to Georgetown were both its Jesuit foundation and the fact that it was coed. “I had been in an all-girl school for 14 years, and I was ready for a coed experience … Once I got there, I found it was fun to go to school with boys. It was a different perspective … I never felt held back at Georgetown.”
The worst experiences Cooke recalls are slight discomfort in an 80-person business class that contained only two women and problems with the athletic programs available to women.
Men on the campus also reported mixed experiences of campus life for women. Economics Professor George Viksnins and Chemistry Professor Michael Pope did not notice immediate changes in their respective classes or hear of any major problems.
“Chemistry classes are not generally free electives and most students are science majors [or] pre-med oriented. It took a few years for women to filter in,” Pope said, noting that his department had already been teaching women in courses for the School of Nursing.
Both professors were in favor of admitting women to the College—they viewed the change as “perfectly reasonable”—and say that a majority of their colleagues felt the same way.
Professor Clifford Chieffo of the Art, Music and Theater Department, however, described how some of the faculty disagreed with the decision. His colleague, Professor Paul Hume, a specialist in music, had been conductor of the Georgetown Glee Club on campus for several years. Following the admission of the women to the College, it was decided that it was mandatory for the Glee Club to accept women. Hume objected so much to that prospect that he decided to quit.
On the whole, and compared to the experiences of other institutions, the full integration of women into Georgetown was not a difficult process.
“One of the reasons I believe the transition went very smoothly on the whole is that Father Royden B. Davis, S.J. was dean of the College, and he wholeheartedly embraced the change,” Sullivan said of her former colleague.
Viksnins believes it was probably due to the women themselves.
“The women who came here were very, very dedicated and determined to prove their intellectual ability. In many cases, they were truly outstanding students,” he said.
Rueckel agreed.
“I remember that very determined women came to Georgetown. It was not an easy environment for them. They just knew it wasn’t going to be an especially welcoming climate, and they just did what was required,” she said.

What it all meant

Change at the University after 1969 became much more rapid. There seemed to be an atmosphere conducive to change brought about by the College’s decision.
Cooke cited the “parietals” that existed in the dorms—rules that concerned when visitors of the opposite sex could be present and when residents had to be in the dorms at night. Although they had existed for many years in both male and female residence halls, by the end of her second semester, they had been eliminated.
“I think my time there was a period of quick change from year to year. By the time I graduated it was more like it is now,” she said.
Viksnins remembers well the change in dress that occurred once the female population had increased.
“I used to teach in a three-piece suit … The men in my classes wore blazers and ties to class. Shortly after the women arrived, that ended. Like today, things became more relaxed,” he said.
Administrative rules such as the attendance policy also disappeared shortly thereafter, according to Chieffo, and on a larger scale, the College changed its whole core program within a few years.
The University was so interconnected that just as the other schools nudged the College into accept women, they were in turn affected in many ways by the women in the College. According to Deacon, the School of Foreign Service received a great deal of pressure to increase its female enrollment, thereby improving the quality of applicants to Georgetown on an exponential scale.
The Nursing School felt a pressure unlike the other undergraduate schools because it specialized in a traditionally female area of study. As women discovered new career options outside of nursing and teaching, they applied less and less to schools in those fields. In fact, the Georgetown School of Nursing also became coed in 1969, opening its doors to men in the hope of attracting them into their empty spots.

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Georgetown got the best of both worlds from its dealings with coeducation. Since women had slowly but surely been making their way into the University for the course of several decades, by the time they entered the “last bastion of stag,”the College of Arts and Sciences, for the most part most people knew what adjustment to expect, and they understood that coeducation was a necessary and timely change. So rather than deal with protests and complaints, Georgetown was able to focus its energy on more substantial issues and changes that were going on in the world around it, leaving it better off than before.