Women at Washington and Lee: Celebrating 20 years of co-education
By Cara Burton
Adorned in the traditional black caps and robes, 105 women walked the path from Washington Hall to Lee Chapel to become the first co-educated class to graduate in the university's history. Photo courtesy of women.wlu.edu.
As Washington and Lee University commemorates two decades of co-education this year, issues from the past and present regarding women are pushed to the forefront of conversation and debate among students, professors and administrators.
A female student reacts
"Coming in as a student at W&L I had known
that it was an all-male university in the past, so that was definitely
something I thought about before I came here," Casie Pedroza said.
A junior neuroscience major, Pedroza said
over the course of her past three years at W&L she hasn't faced any
hardships because of her gender.
"I've never had an experience to where I
felt I was less of a student at this school because I was a woman and
because it was [once] all-male," she said.
"I don't feel that any of that has been
debilitating in any sense of the word. If anything I've gotten more of
the old gentlemanly courtesy ways."
Though Pedroza says that the university's
male-female relations are mostly healthy, she did mention one aspect
that she thinks needs improvement.
"I personally think that with the sexual assault statistics being what
they are I think it is a huge issue for women on campus," Pedroza
said.
"It takes a lot to come forward and speak
about that and feel as though you're still going to have the advantages
that you had and be able to excel in the way you are," she said.
The word from Washington Hall
Dr. Ellen Mayock has served as both associate
dean of the College and Spanish professor at Washington and Lee, and
offers the perspective of both an administrator and educator.
"My experience at Washington and Lee has
genuinely been wonderful, and it's primarily because I really love
working with the students," Mayock said.
"I do think that it would be easier to be a
female administrator here if there were more [female administrators].
It's not that anyone is being purposefully unmindful of women, it's that
if you don't have women at the table a lot of the times specific issues
don't come up," she said.
"What we need to do is hire more women in
the upper administration. Then I think there will be more of a balance," Mayock said.
Before, during and after
History Professor Holt Merchant experienced the evolution of co-education at W&L. Not only did he attend the
university, he also taught before, during and after the school's
admission of women.
"I really favored all-male when I was an
undergraduate, and when I first came back [to teach] that's what I
expected," Merchant said.
Merchant noted that as a student "you
weren't distracted during the week. You could think about dates and
young women on weekends and work real hard during the week and that
seemed to work out just fine."
He also confessed that before women, "it
wasn't nearly as interesting."
But when women were first admitted to W&L,
Merchant noticed a drastic improvement in the university's student body.
"The quality of the students when we began
admitting women in 1985 absolutely skyrocketed," he said.
This change not only benefited Washington
and Lee's scholastic reputation but also the classes themselves.
"It's especially useful [to have women] in
seminars. The quality of the conversation went way up right away. [There
were] different perspectives, different points of view," he said.
Merchant mentioned that after 35 years of
teaching at W&L, he's found his best student.
"And she's a girl," he said.
Watch: W&L junior Casie Pedroza talks about the progress of female students
Photos courtesy of wlu.edu.
Listen: Professor and former student Holt Merchant reflects on the first year women attended W&L
Produced by Washington and Lee journalism students.
Lead supervisor: Prof. Claudette Artwick
Reporting supervisor: Prof. Doug Cumming
Editing supervisor: Prof. Pamela Luecke
Technical supervisor: Michael Todd