Coeducation 50 Years On: Why Did CMC Begin Admitting Women?
You've heard a lot about CMC's 50 years of coeducation. Where did it all begin?
Half a century ago, in 1976, just under 60 women arrived on campus as the first class of female students admitted to Claremont Men’s College.
If the name didn’t make it obvious, one of CMC’s earliest defining features was its prominent male student culture. Of the 86 students and seven faculty members who constituted its first cohort in 1946, many were veterans returning from service during the Second World War. With the early campus’s military aesthetic and single-sex student body, it isn’t hard to see why former CMC First Lady and Scripps alumna Jil Stark ‘58 GP’11 described the school as a “male’s world” when I asked her about her experiences on campus.
Why, then, did Claremont Men’s College decide to admit women? According to Jack L. Stark ‘57 GP’11, CMC’s third and longest-serving president (under whom the college received its first female students), coeducation was a sign of the times.
“We weren’t the first to go co-ed, but we certainly weren’t the last,” President Stark told me over the phone.
Indeed, the women’s rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s brought about a societal shift that made denying higher education to women seem archaic. Many schools that had previously been all-male opened their doors to women students in the 1970s. The Equal Rights Amendment, passed by Congress in 1972 and sent to the states with a seven-year ratification deadline, was another key consideration for universities. Though Title IX allowed single-sex exemptions for private schools, administrators feared the ERA would override this safety net, making continued operation as an all-male institution potentially difficult. To President Stark, it was clear CMC needed to change with the times; not doing so would have immensely disadvantaged the young institution.
Although President Stark believed coeducation was the right decision for the college’s future, he felt careful consideration within the CMC community was the smartest approach to ensure a smooth transition. The Board of Trustees began discussing the prospect of CMC becoming coeducational in mid-1972, coinciding with the passing of Title IX. Shortly after, the school formed a coeducation committee—composed primarily of trustees, but also students and faculty members—which evaluated three options for the college’s future: remaining men-only, admitting women as well as men, or forming a collaborative program with Scripps College, according to President Stark. The third option was ruled out almost immediately, he told me, as Scripps trustees were not interested in this arrangement.
While tracking the progression of the women’s rights movement, the committee sought input from other institutions on multiple sides of the coeducation debate. In 1974, they consulted representatives from three colleges: one that had recently voted to become coeducational; one that was still men-only; and one that was still deciding whether to admit women, according to President Stark. They also gathered opinions from faculty, donors, and students to assess the major arguments for and against allowing women to attend CMC. Now-public documents shed light on this discourse.
Specifically, those opposed to coeducation worried that admitting women, who seemed to “increasingly prefer the other social sciences and humanities”—that is, non-public affairs disciplines—would change the character of the college into “merely another liberal arts institution,” thereby compromising the intent of the founding trustees to keep the CMC curriculum centered around public affairs. They also wondered whether the trend of women moving into law offices and executive suites would be “of minor importance” compared to their male peers’ career prospects. On the messaging side, opponents felt that the college could distinguish itself by remaining all-male, which would enhance its public image. They also argued that women would not lose the benefits of the college, since female students could already take courses at CMC through the other Claremont Colleges. (Later that year, parents and wives of students were also permitted to audit CMC courses free of charge.)
On the other hand, supporters of admitting women questioned why CMC should limit access to the curriculum on the basis of sex, especially as more women began seeking professional careers in public affairs and business. They highlighted the “social and extracurricular” benefits that women’s added perspectives could bring to campus. They also recognized that admitting women would allow CMC to affirm its support of equal opportunity, and that permitting female students to enroll would bring both a larger pool of qualified applicants and more women donors. One of the exact reasons the dissenters thought the school should remain men-only justified the proponents’ support: Unlike other men’s institutions, it was “easier for CMC to go co-ed because there had always been women on the campus,” said President Stark. Indeed, Jil Stark told me that she took classes at CMC when she attended Scripps in 1954.
Despite some opposition to coeducation, student and faculty polls largely supported the change. The Trustees’ decision to go co-ed required a two-thirds majority, which ultimately passed with one vote over that threshold on April 24, 1975.
Still, the college’s name was the elephant in the room. President Stark believed it was important to separate changing the name from the coeducation issue, so “Claremont Men’s College” remained for another half-decade after coeducation began. However, keeping that name was “clumsy,” “misleading,” and “even absurd.” It was in October 1981 that the school decided to adopt “Claremont McKenna” to honor founder Donald McKenna, which also allowed CMC to keep its initials. Although President Stark told me that the overwhelming majority of male graduates changed their diplomas to read “Claremont McKenna College,” the female graduates kept “Claremont Men’s College” in commemoration of the glass ceiling they’d broken.
President Stark remembers the trailblazers fondly, pointing out Meredith (Uhlmann) Brenalvirez ‘80 P’22—the senior class president and a member of the first co-ed class—as an example of the resolve of early female CMC students. “Those women were really tough,” he told me. “They were pioneers, and they were terrific.”
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Georgia Evrigenis '27 studies History and researched the impact of coeducation on CMC's curriculum this summer. This article is the culmination of her findings and its production was overseen by CMC officials. She moderated the "Coeducation and the Curriculum" panel at ImpactCMC on Friday, September 25.
