Coeducation Investigated by Senate (Spring 1972)
"Around Campus, 1970s", Manhattan College Archives
In February of 1972, the Quadrangle reported that the Mount and Manhattan were in talks to expand their co-op program. In the same issue, the newspaper issued an editorial strongly in favor of coeducation rather than expanding the program with Mount St. Vincent, seeing admitting female students as a way to ease the college's deficit and admissions woes. "Manhattan College can and must become a co-educational institution" the editors stated, futher claiming that the co-op program was "more harmful than helpful."
Several letters to the editor were printed in response, a few from Mount St. Vincent proponents who took issue with how the school was portrayed, and one from a Jasper who wished to "go on record as being in favor of keeping Manhattan a single-sex institution" though as he goes on to suggest a "Jaspers Against Girls" club, this could be satirical.
Commentary in the both student newspapers throughout the spring semester made it seem like the Manhattan newswriters were worried that further agreements with Mount St. Vincent would destroy chances of Manhattan College going coeducational, with the Jasper Journal even printing a satirical piece describing a future student strike that would need to occur for coeducation to go through.
Notes for Speech to College Senate, Brother Gregory Nugent, March 28, 1972.
In the opening meeting to the College Senate on March 28, 1972, President Gregory Nugent devoted part of his speech to coeducation, letting the Senate know that he wanted a thorough investigation of the possibility before a decision was made, but that he would take whatever the consensus was to the Board.
In the next Senate meeting on May 2, 1972, the Senate took up the question of co-education whether it be from a merger with Mount St. Vincent, continuing the co-operative program or Manhattan College going co-educational on its own. Brother Francis Bowers presented the results of a report among the faculty finding that some had advanced reasons for desiring co-education such as its ability to prepare students for "the complex world of today", but to the majority of faculty it meant "the easiest and most obvious way of increasing our enrollment." The faculty requested a study to confirm those assumptions.
John Banks, representing the student government, stated that students were in favor of coeducation, but not a merger with Mount St. Vincent, claming that "a merger is an idea of the past, not a progressive thought for the future."
Senate Meeting Minutes, May 2, 1972.
The Senate wound up adopting a resolution to begin a committee to study the feasibility of coeducation at Manhattan College over the summer, to report its findings at the beginning of the fall 1972 term.