Apprehensively walking to her mailbox, 18-year-old Andrea Solomon has a nervous smile spanning across her face. Pulling out a large white envelope, Solomon gently opens the letter. Congratulations! With a sudden jolt of excitement, Solomon continues to skim the remaining paragraphs, finding that buried within the third verse is the key information that she has just been accepted into Columbia College’s first coed class. As an exciting new twist on her acceptance, Solomon has the opportunity to be the first in something: a member of the original pioneering women to attend Columbia College.
It comes as a shock to many that the renowned and prestigious Columbia College only transitioned to coeducation in 1983. Significantly later than most schools, the process for Columbia’s transition was a complicated one, as they were closely related to the neighboring women’s Barnard College.
Although long-overdue, the shift to coeducation was still a monumental change. “Feeling like I had the opportunity to be the first in something was way more exciting than just getting into college,” Solomon (CC ‘87 and Vice Dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences) said.
Prior to Solomon’s acceptance to the College in 1983, there was a longstanding desire at Columbia for coeducation. Columbia College, first known as King’s College, was an all-male institution from 1754 until 1983. As a strong university, with a neighboring women’s college from 1889 onward, the all-male institution was able to thrive for a significant period of time.
During the Gilded Age, however, there was a creeping belief that women were entitled to better education–– the same education as their male counterparts. This brought public attention to the concept of women’s colleges, as well as the possible integration of women into male colleges.
Once the spark was lit, it burned, and in the early 1870s, a group of affluent New York City women petitioned the Columbia University Board of Trustees to allow the application of women into the undergraduate program at the College. They argued that for education to be equal between the sexes, they must study alongside one another. The board, however, disagreed with their fundamental claim, responding that it’s not necessarily advantageous for men and women to learn in the same classroom. In 1883 the board voted against coeducation.
This rebuffing decision received bad publicity for the College, framing them as an anti-progressive quasi-sexist institution, so in 1883 the Collegiate Course for Women was established. If accepted into the program, women could enroll in Columbia courses, but not attend lectures. It was the board’s way of compromising and unsuccessfully trying to satisfy the craving for coeducation while continuing to uphold the norm of separate learning. This program quickly proved to be an inadequate and disadvantageous solution for women’s education.
The Collegiate Course for Women was make-shift and not on par with the desires of the community, prompting the establishment of the all-female Barnard College in 1889. With a high-performing women’s college a few blocks away from Columbia, some of the immediate pressure to shift to coeducation was diluted. Additionally, Columbia had begun to integrate women into some of its graduate programs.
Just before the establishment of Barnard, Columbia University awarded its first graduate degree to a woman. In 1886, Winifred Edgerton graduated cum laude with a Doctor of Philosophy in Astronomy. This marked a new era at Columbia University, with every graduate school thereafter admitting women.
This achievement was exciting but still didn’t fulfill the complete goal of coeducation. When the second major wave of feminism arose in the 1970s, Columbia College’s academic level and enrollment faced negative impacts, as an all-male institution no longer reflected the status quo, but rather a bygone era. This marked a turning point in Colombia’s history, presenting the administration with the option to admit women or to accept that the College would be headed for decline and cease to be a leading institution.
By then, most administrators acknowledged that the only rescue plan for the College was to admit women. Yet, there still was one obstacle in the way: Barnard. Columbia was largely in favor of merging with Barnard, yet Barnard wanted to remain female and keep its current identity.
Patricia Brett (CC ‘87) said, “All the other Ivies absorbed their female counterparts (Radcliffe, Pembroke, etc.), but Barnard refused to be absorbed.” They wanted to keep their established structure and believed that they had enough opportunities for their students to thrive.
As said by Kathryn Yatrakis (Columbia University Political Science Professor and former Dean of Academic Affairs at Columbia College from 1989 – 2017), “Barnard felt that if they had gone coed, they would have been subsumed by Columbia and they would not be able to maintain their good reputation as a strong women’s college.”
Barnard also kept in mind the potential downside of Columbia admitting women, fearing that their application numbers could potentially drop.
Barnard’s continued persistence, and success, in preserving their all-female institution demonstrates its importance in society and its demonstrated need among the student body, faculty and alumni. As said by Robert Pollack (former Dean of Columbia College), “Barnard is a symbol that an all-female college has a place in society and an all-male college doesn’t.”
Two large advocates for combining the neighboring colleges, Carl Hovde (Dean of Columbia College from 1968–72) and Peter Pouncey (Dean of the College from 1972–76) had been pushing to partner with Barnard and link the two schools in some manner. However, even with the pressure from Columbia, Barnard remained hesitant. The schools stayed entirely separate entities until 1973 when cross-registration for many courses was allowed, with the exception of the core curriculum. The two schools now had slight crossover in older grades, although freshmen of the opposite sex were rarely integrated with one another.
Approaching the late 1970s, the two schools entered into negotiations as Columbia continued to push for coeducation yet was barred from doing so by a contractual agreement with Barnard. Columbia persisted in their efforts to reach a compromise, yet tensions grew between the schools.
In the early 1980s, a series of faculty resolutions and student surveys came out, showing that single-sex education no longer was a mainstream norm and was, quite frankly, undesirable.
Additionally, Columbia College was failing to compete with the other Ivy League Schools. They found that their admissions pool was getting smaller and that the academics were beginning to suffer. This was the final straw for Columbia and they decided to break their agreement with Barnard.
In 1980, Dean Arnold Collery assembled a committee of faculty and alumni to research making the institution coed. Chaired by Ronald Breslow, a University Chemistry Professor, one key component the committee researched was formerly male colleges that had gone coed while neighboring female colleges stayed independent. One example included Notre Dame (which went coed) and Saint Mary’s (the women’s college).
The committee also considered their potential applicant pool, probing to see if their applicants would be competitive with the other Ivy League Schools. The applicant pool was the leading determinant in deciding if Columbia could succeed as a coed institution while Barnard existed as a women’s college. Not surprising, a key factor for Columbia was maintaining and improving the quality of their applicant pool.
Barnard had for years resisted merging with Columbia. As said by Yatrakis, “[this was] one reason why Columbia was so late [in the shift to coeducation]. Barnard was so strong and Barnard saw what happened to the other women’s colleges that were taken over by the male institution when they went coed.”
The Board of Trustees approved the decision to make Columbia College coed in December of 1981 and then embarked upon the transition. There were multiple steps to incorporating women into the university. From expanding and updating the physical campus to student recruitment, the administration had a fair amount of work cut out for themselves.
Helping to lead the charge was Dean of Columbia College, Professor Robert Pollack. Pollack had been at Columbia since 1978 as a tenured Biology Professor and was asked to be Dean of the College in 1981, therefore making him responsible for the transition to coeducation.
One of the first, and most fundamental, decisions to be made while transitioning was whether to increase the size of the class or maintain the size but cut back on the male applicants. Pollack decided not to double the size of the College, but decrease the number of males accepted, and not all alumni were elated by this change.
As Dean of the College, Pollack dealt with alumni, or “tenured students” (as he called them), which occasionally presented difficulties since the alumni body lacked a female voice. When Pollack made the decision to keep the class size, he oftentimes would be asked the question: “why didn’t you increase the size of the class when you admitted women? You’ve made it twice as hard for my son to get in.” Yet Pollack’s vision expanded beyond the male education. He would respond, “Yes, but I’ve made it infinitely easier for your daughter.”
As a father, part of taking the position of Dean of Columbia College in the midst of coeducation was inspired by his daughter, a member of the class of ‘87. And because of his background in biology, Pollack thought about coeducation in simple, yet fundamental, terms. He said, “Take advantage of the fact that at least half the smart people in this world are women.”
In order to create a class of intellectually curious and diverse students, Pollack went to schools all over the country looking for kids who were self-aware and would thrive at Columbia. But not only did Pollack focus on balancing gender, he wanted diversity of all kinds. Pollack, who was decades ahead of his time, was an advocate for looking at the individual and their unique impressive qualities as opposed to the larger system.
1987 marked a change in the focus of Columbia College, pushing away from looking for the ‘ideal’ student and pivoting towards diversifying the student body.
“Diversity is a biologically grounded quality that improves the health and the intelligence of a group. A group all the same is not as likely to survive a sudden change of ideas as a diverse group, some of whom will figure out what to do,” Pollack stated.
However, it’s important to note the different meanings diversity carries at the time. Was Columbia a perfectly diverse community? No. But was it improving? Absolutely.
Under the guidance of Pollack, the percentage of Black students at the University was brought up to 5%, and there was a significant amount of scholarship money raised. Through the money of wealthy alumni, Pollack was able to raise $40 million for the Columbia endowment. 15% of that amount per year would be added to scholarship funds and Columbia could now begin to award full financial aid, beginning the era of need blind admissions.
This was a large step for the University, as it was now a place where anyone could attend, prosper and learn. Money was being invested into the education and the future of students.
Increasing diversity was not the only step required in transitioning. There were larger structural and course changes that needed to be implemented so that women could feel welcome on campus. One such change included Carman Hall, where most of the new female students were housed, which had undergone a $1 million renovation over the summer. There was also a new Women’s Health Center, more College Counseling services and programs in place to address the issues of sexual harassment and campus safety.
The funds for these large projects were not easy to come by, but Pollack had a clever strategy to make it happen. “I used that [gender] prejudice to dramatically upgrade the quality of the residence halls, the counseling service, and the dining halls.” Pollack went to people in the administration and used their own prejudice against them to upgrade the weathered facilities, based upon the notion that girls should have nicer things. Through this tactic, Pollack received a large sum of funding to fix up facilities that should have already been restored for men.
Another large part of transitioning was giving women access to top-tier athletics through the new Columbia-Barnard Athletic Consortium, which was made as part of upholding Title IX. Pollack used Title IX as a reason to work with the president of Barnard in making sure that athletics included women from both colleges so that coeducation could start with first-class athletics. They were folded together to make a strong program and were a wonderful example of “doing it right and not political,” as Pollack stated.
An additional area of transition was the faculty and curriculum. Before 1983 the number of female professors in each department had been heavily outnumbered by males. Addressing this disparity was a slow-going process, but one that the University began to gradually tackle. In the curriculum, there was eventually a major added in Women’s and Gender Studies as well as the Institute for Research on Women and Gender established in 1987.
Within Columbia’s Core Curriculum, arguably one of the most defining aspects of the school, at the start of coeducation in 1983 there had not been a single female author in the required reading list. As Irene Tucker (CC ‘87) mentioned, in her junior year Columbia began adding female authors to the reading list, starting with Virginia Woolf. Additionally, as a marker of the shift in curriculum, in 1987, the Butler Library put up a banner with female authors.
Aside from curricular and structural changes, the transition was overall fairly smooth. A large portion of this can be attributed to the fact that Columbia already had women on campus, making the change less drastic when the school became fully coed. Another reason might be because, as stated by Tucker, “the transition was so belated.” Since coeducation was no longer politically controversial, Columbia was able to move faster in their transition and start the first year of coeducation with a class close to 50% male and 50% female.
For Solomon the transition was smooth, but there were still changes to be made. She said, “being a part of a coed class I would see a lot of gaps of what wasn’t there yet because there had never been women in the College. For instance lots of student clubs and activities [were male dominated].”
Solomon noted that she would often storm into the Dean of Students Robert Leheka’s office, demanding changes. As an ignorant 18-year-old, some of her requests were pure emotion while others were substantial revisions to be made.
One such issue she noted was that in her higher-level courses, she tended to be a part of a minority. As a student in Contemporary Civilization and someone who took a lot of science classes, Solomon was often in a radically small portion of the class-size. Since as Solomon pointed out, “[women] were technically ⅛ of the school, having 3 years of Columbia College men above.”
Solomon also noted that “In certain classes, I felt like I was representing womanhood in a way that I wanted to make sure that we were taken seriously even if we weren’t there in number in particular classes.”
Tucker had a similar experience recalling her upper-division English course during her freshman year. She was an English major at Columbia which had extremely different requirements than that of Barnard, so she ended up as one of two women in a class of 50.
Tucker said, “I remember that felt a little weird and awkward to manage. It wasn’t because anyone behaved badly, it was just because I was a first-semester student and I felt visible in ways I was ambivalent about.”
As Tucker and Solomon highlight, there were moments of uncomfortable visibility but not of explicit educational disparity. After spending hours talking with numerous women from the class of ‘87, no one mentioned any educational disparity or unfair treatment that they experienced as students.
Alissa Burstein (CC ‘87) had a different college experience, growing up as an Orthodox Jew and defying her familial tradition by being the first woman in her family to attend Columbia as opposed to Barnard.
Burstein states, “I wanted to be different and go to Columbia, and I don’t think I even applied to Barnard.” She was an ambitious teenager ready to pursue her education to the fullest extent, yet was quite naive coming from a very protective background.
When prompted about whether she experienced educational disparity due to her female identity Burstein responded, “I never even considered the possibility of inequality between the sexes. Of course in Judaism, there is and was inequality, but it never even dawned on me that I would be treated any differently in the ‘real world,’ especially not in academia.”
Burstein, though, attributes some of this to her limited mingling with non-Orthodox people and her guarded interactions. Attending Columbia as an Orthodox Jew also had its difficulties, often out-waying any sexism she might have experienced and replacing it with anti-semitism.
On the other hand, Brett felt the opposite of hostility. She said, “I found the campus – both the male students and the faculty – to be incredibly welcoming…. In fact – the opposite of hostile – I think everyone was just so happy to finally have more young women on campus!”
In addition to the strong efforts made to make the transition to coeducation as seamless as possible and to limit educational disparity that women faced, there was a natural camaraderie between the women from the class of 1987.
Solomon added, “I felt like we were all in this super cool experiment together. I definitely felt a connection and closeness between my fellow Columbia College women.”
This connection extended to clubs, such as the Columbia Spectator. During Tucker’s junior year, the Editorial-Board of the Columbia Spectator had been primarily female while just a year before, in 1985, there was the first-ever female Editor-in-Chief in an otherwise all-male editorial board. Sophomore year, Tucker was asked if she wanted to be editorial page editor. She stated, “I said no because I thought it would be fun to come up with the whole group of us (the women).” So instead, junior year, Tucker had the position of Bureau-Chief and the responsibility for a certain area of coverage. “That was an experience of being in that cohort,” Tucker shared.
As the first women in the College, the females from the class of ‘87 had the chance to pave their own path. Part of this included filling in the gaps of missing activities on campus, such as Sororities. Solomon’s Texan roommate was the founder of the first Columbia Sorority, Alpha Phi. She contacted people and national organizations to find out about chapters and eventually founded her own branch. Reflecting on that experience Solomon states that “it was so cool to see what it’s like to begin something from scratch.”
Solomon also had her own experience of creating something new, through the Metrotones, the first Columbia College Acapella group for women. “I can imagine a little bit what it’s like when you start a new nation. There’s nothing before. We’re going to write this constitution and actually think from scratch with nothing to base it on. What do we want this to be? To write into existence your own demise. To keep your eyes on the bigger picture of what you want to leave as a legacy,” said Solomon.
The Metrotones showed the strength and freedom that the women of ‘87 had within the school, as well as symbolized the possibility. Part of this possibility circles back to the diversification of the study-body and the school.
Through the funds raised by Pollack for financial aid and the increased diversity, the class of ‘87 was a strong group of students that set a new thriving precedent. Pollack stated, “I think that diversity was a positive feedback loop inside the residence halls and inside the classrooms that gave the women of that first class a richer experience than any guy had in previous years. There was more money invested in the quality of their minds than in the pocketbook of their parents.”
The class of ‘87 and the accompanying change created a richer experience for the students and a lasting legacy for the College. The legacy, and the change, was made clear when the class of ‘87 joined the alumni which had previously consisted of solely men. One moment that highlighted this fact was when Solomon was asked to be a part of an alumni panel representing the class of ‘87 and was the youngest member of the panel. By definition, her fellow panelists were all male and were accompanied by an all-male alumni audience. The men asked a few questions concerning coeducation and held a sense of nostalgia while reflecting upon their previously male institution, yet held no hostility towards the new members of the Columbia College community.
Although the all-male alumni didn’t outwardly oppose the new members of this coed graduate group, there was slight inhospitality when women entered the alumni network. As an issue that has since disappeared, the networking strength of women was not nearly that of men.
The legacy of the class, though, was stronger than the changing alumni network. In 1987, approximately 70% of the awards given at graduation went to women. Tucker attributes this to “a kind of self-selection that went into choosing more adventurous women. The population of women who were willing to be a part of the first class of men and women selected for a kind of assertiveness and adventurousness in ways that being the 200th class of men didn’t call for.”
Solomon added that “the valedictorian was a woman, the salutatorian was a woman, the class president was a woman and the heads of all these groups and societies were women.” Admitting these high-performing women into the College was a drastic turning point for Columbia academically and allowed them to make a large pivot to become the type of school that they had been striving for.
Brett said, “In the 70’s – they were the worst Ivy…. today they are arguably among the top 3.”
Accepting women was one of the best decisions Columbia College could have made in order to revive themselves. Pollack stated, “The best legacy is that we became a more competitive college and could select from the very best of a diverse population of bright kids from all backgrounds and we never went back from that. The legacy is the current diversity of Columbia College.”
Brett agrees and takes great pride in being a member of the first coed class. She stated, “I think in the years since [the transition to coeducation], Columbia women have really become a force to be reckoned with.”
And they will continue to be. Tucker stated, “We just came in and succeeded.” Since the transition, numerous women’s groups and mentoring programs have been created to continue the strength of the Columbia College community. One such program includes the Columbia College Women (CCW) which was created by the Alumni office in 1989 and runs a mentoring program for students as well as funds scholarships.
There are also regional women’s groups such as the Columbia College Women Group of Southern California that Tucker is involved in. Hosting numerous events with speakers such as Jodi Kantor (CC ‘96) (the Harvey Weinstein story breaker), the group is a great way to bring together women from various classes. As Tucker reflected back she stated that “it is a little strange because I was in the first coed class so I know when I go to those [women’s] events I’m always going to be the oldest person there.”
Although a true fact, age is a small factor when reflecting upon the history that has been made with Columbia College going coed. The transition is a story of success: one that has shaped the University for the better and has impacted every faculty member and student. By incorporating women, the once declining institution was able to redefine itself and create a university that gives students the tools to forge their own paths.
As Solomon walked up to the podium on graduation day, she reflected back upon her experience at Columbia College and recognized that she was a part of a memorable and pioneering group of women.
