- August 9th, 2006, 11:23 am
#24182
Men at R-MWC?Those poor, poor helpless girls. What will they ever do?
By Janet Nguyen
jnguyen@newsadvance.com
Wednesday, August 9, 2006
After more than a year of study, the Randolph-Macon Woman’s College Board of Trustees will take a historic vote next month:
Should the college admit male students?
“While no decision has been made, that is the direction that we’re now headed in,” Jolley Bruce Christman, president of the board of trustees, said Tuesday.
The September vote comes after a recommendation this summer by the college’s Strategic Planning Steering Committee - composed of trustees, faculty, and staff - that the school move toward becoming a coeducational institution with a global honors emphasis.
“What the trustees and the Strategic Planning Steering
Committee feel is at stake is the future of the college,” Christman said.
R-MWC has admitted only women since it was founded in 1891.
“This is a very emotional decision,” said Christman, who graduated from R-MWC in 1969.
“There will be many people, myself included, who look at this decision with some sadness.”
If the 30-member board of trustees - with 22 members alumni of the school - votes to open enrollment next month, men will be allowed to attend R-MWC as soon as fall 2007.
“We hope - we intend - to remain very much the same character we are now, but we are happy to invite men to participate with us,” said interim president Ginger Worden.
Opening enrollment has been considered at many nearby single-sex colleges in recent decades. Sweet Briar College in Amherst and Hampden-Sydney College in Hampden-Sydney decided to remain single-sex schools, while Radford University, Longwood University, University of Mary Washington and others have not.
Faced with declining interest in all-women colleges, the R-MWC board of trustees commissioned a market research study last year to determine, among other things, whether becoming a coeducational institution would boost enrollment and help the college become a “financial sustainable enterprise.”
“We were having to work harder and harder to keep the same numbers,” Worden said.
“The demand for women colleges has weakened, even though we firmly believe that a woman’s college is extraordinary education.”
After the initial market research concluded that R-MWC’s best option would be to allow male students, the board of trustees commissioned further study to look more closely at a coed scenario.
That study looked at prospective students and how they might respond to some of the changes under consideration. Art & Science Group, the research firm hired by the board of trustees, conducted a blind telephone survey of high school seniors who had inquired into R-MWC.
The results, presented in June, showed that the young women interviewed showed interest in the global honors program, but a majority were not interested in attending an all-woman’s college.
The results also showed that they were more excited about the global honors college if the school became coed.
Young men also were interviewed about the global honors program. They responded enthusiastically about the program and about attending a former woman’s college, Christman said.
The emphasis on international studies is an extension of one of the college’s key strengths. It already has a diverse mix of students –– more than 11 percent of the student body is composed of international students.
“Every college says it’s global. Every college aspires to offer its students the opportunity to learn about other cultures, but this college actually offers students the opportunity to live with other cultures,” said Worden. “We want to build on that.”
An e-mail was sent out Monday alerting the school’s student body and alumni about the upcoming board of trustees vote. Tawnya Ravy, a rising senior and R-MWC’s student government president, said it is a decision that the student leaders on campus are not ready to accept. Ravy, along with several other students, are reaching out to influential women and other contacts to help come up with another solution to preserve their school’s tradition.
“Of course we want to work with the board of trustees,” said Ravy.
“We want to give them our support and our ideas for the future of the college at the moment and we are trying to pursue other avenues to secure financial stability to bring our college as a woman’s college into the 21st century.”
Ravy said although allowing men to attend R-MWC will not “be the end of the world,” she believes it will take away the educational advantages women get from attending an all-women school.
“I definitely know that there will be many very angry women by the time we get on campus - especially with underclassmen because, of course, they signed on to a woman’s college. By next fall that could be an entirely different experience than what they were expecting.”
Worden, a 1969 R-MWC graduate, said the school has received valuable input from its students, faculty and alumni. Earlier this year, members of the board of trustees and staff held open forums for alumni in 14 of the largest alumni chapters in the nation. The forums were held in cities including Lynchburg, Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Houston and Charlotte.
“As soon as students come on campus we’ll begin to have meetings with them - help them understand how the decisions work,” said Worden.
“We’re opting to go for a more vibrant student body that will increase the demand for the extraordinary education we offer. We believe - having done research on other woman’s colleges - that in the end we will be educating more women by going coed.”
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