The Decision to Admit Women (1869)
Northwestern University began the 1868–69 academic year at its original location, the frame building at Hinman and Davis, but construction of the imposing brick and stone University Hall—the first University building on campus—was well under way. (The frame building, renamed Old College, would later be moved onto the campus near the lakeshore.) Seventy-one students were enrolled, and in June 1869, the commencement program announced the awarding of ten bachelor’s and four master’s degrees.
University Hall, Harper’s Weekly, September 20, 1873
The position of University president had been vacant for years; since 1860, faculty members had served as interim presidents. Finally, at the June 23, 1869, Board of Trustees meeting, a new president was unanimously elected: Erastus O. Haven, who had been president of the University of Michigan for the previous six years. Well respected for his teaching, educational administration, and service to the Methodist Episcopal Church as a minister, Haven was also a known advocate of coeducation. The meeting minutes show that the resolution confirming his election was immediately followed by a unanimous resolution that Northwestern University would admit women on the same terms and conditions as men, starting the next academic year.
But a thorough report of the entire meeting, published the next day in the Chicago Tribune, reveals a more contested process. Although the Tribune noted that one trustee moved that a resolution be considered to admit women on the same terms as men, it reported that the Board (composed of ministers, judges, faculty, and businessmen) only reached unanimous agreement after considerable discussion. One trustee pointed out that it was well known that some of the faculty were opposed to admitting women. Members in favor spoke about women’s rights and the advantages of offering coeducation in light of the growing number of women’s colleges. Those opposed, including English professor and former interim president David Wheeler, expressed concern about the difficulty of providing the additional supervision women would need to keep them out of mischief and about potential damage to the University’s reputation. These issues—-women’s need for supervision and the dangers of young women and young men in close proximity—would continue to affect coeducation’s progress for years to come, at almost every former men’s institution.
Northwestern University Board of Trustees minutes, June 23, 1869
Trustee Grant Goodrich, who had nominated Haven for president, suggested that Haven take care of the details, as he knew more about the subject because of his prior work. Eventually, a revised -resolution, effectively transferring responsibility for women away from the Board of Trustees, was unanimously approved:
Resolved that we approve of the admission of young women to the classes of the University upon the same terms and conditions as young men, and we refer the question of details and plan to the President and Faculty and the Executive Committee of this Board and that so far as may be, young women be admitted to said classes at the opening of the next collegiate year.
Haven was inaugurated as Northwestern’s president on September 8, 1869, the same day the magnificent University Hall building was dedicated. Several hundred attendees heard Haven’s inaugural address—transcribed in full in the following day’s newspapers, including the Chicago Republican—in which he made clear his stand on women’s education:
I cannot doubt that she [woman] has an equal claim with men to all the advantages of our universities. Universities cannot be duplicated for the accommodation of the sexes any more than churches . . . . If there are peculiar difficulties growing out of the time of life usually devoted to study in the University, these difficulties ought to be met and removed on the free system of self restraint and the highest level of Christian cultivation. I doubt not that before the nineteenth century shall close, all the best universities in Europe and America will educate both men and women . . . . I am glad that in the Northwestern University the doors are open to all who are mentally and morally prepared to enter.
Program cover from the September 8, 1869, inauguration of Erastus O. Haven and dedication of University Hall
Haven’s next words, however, reflected the equivocal nature of his views on coeducation and offered a potential compromise to defuse objections:
I am glad that the provisional steps have been taken to establish a separate college for ladies, which I hope will be made a department of the University. Let a good building be erected that shall afford convenient rooms for a suitable home of all the ladies from abroad who wish to avail themselves of the advantages of the University, and let several teachers be employed to furnish the special instruction [art and music] demanded by them, and at the same time let the general library and museum be open to all, and let such women as desire it pursue any of the courses of study provided for in the University, and also let the special instruction provided to them be given to any men that may desire it. In this way the University may be impartial in its benefits, and at the same time the inconvenience and evils which many dread may be avoided.
Haven’s mention of a separate college for women referred to the Women’s Educational Association of Evanston’s ongoing plans to establish a degree-granting college for women. The paths of Northwestern and the proposed women’s college would intersect—sometimes -unexpectedly—over the next few years, during which time the interpretation of coeducation hung in the balance: would it be the two-headed relationship of a coordinate school or complete integration into one school?