The Co-Operative Program Begins (1963-1967)

"Two Mount Psych. Majors Interview", Quadrangle, February 11, 1965.

In the fall of 1963, Manhattan College began a co-operative program with the College of Mount St. Vincent, an all-female school that allowed undergraduate students to attend classes on each other's campuses. At first this looked like Mount St. Vincent students attending math, business, and engineering courses at Manhattan, and Manhattan students attending courses in sociology, elementary education, the arts at Mount St. Vincent, as well as biology and psychology as that college had more lab classrooms for those fields, though Manhattan did offer courses in that area too.

This was not the first time that Manhattan College had any dealings with female students. The school ran an extension program for nuns in the New York Archdiocese to earn mainly teaching degrees between 1928-1953, though this program was held off campus and the women in it didn't even attend graduation until the 1940s. The graduate program had begun admitting women in 1959. But this program with the College of Mount St. Vincent was the first time that female students were taking undergraduate courses alongside the male student body. 

The students of the two colleges were no strangers to each other, being only a short bus ride away. Student activities committees had been programming mixer events at the two schools, and cheerleaders at Manhattan sporting events had been Mount students since the 1950s. 

"Where the Girls Are", Jasper Journal, October 13, 1967

A 1965 article in the Quadrangle describing the experience of Mount St. Vincent students at Manhattan said punnily that “they became used to being the object of stares and they are getting conditioned to our multitude of stairs.” If the letters to the editor and articles in the student newspapers, the Quadrangle, and the Jasper Journal (which started in 1966) are to be believed, then the relations between the Jaspers and the MSV students which the Manhattan student newspapers called "the Mounties" were sometimes friendly and sometimes not-so-friendly. This despite the fact that the bi-weekly "Where the Girls Are" column indicated that socialization with women was a priority for Jaspers.

One of the Jasper Journal's other columns, "Camera Queries" where students were asked a survey questions, showed that while some Jaspers felt that the Mounties encouraged male students to be more respectul on campus though "it would be much more desirable if we had our own Manhattan Girls", other students saw the Mounties as prudish or old-fashioned. 

Not every Jasper was happy about the shots being taken at the MSV girls in the paper, one letter to the editor printed in the Quadrangle in 1967 complained those insults were giving Jaspers a bad name with the charming girls at the Mount.