As William & Mary celebrates the 100th anniversary of admitting women students as the first public college in Virginia to institute a co-educational system, this paper explores the life and times of the women who have shaped the College's legacy for future women students. In researching the first women at William & Mary, we have found…

In the current vernacular, co-education means the education of the sexes together within an institutional setting. Once a phenomenon, today, women enjoy nearly equal status on campuses that were at one time bastions of "maleness." Moreover, the counter-culture revolution of the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, ushered in a new…

The interrelated nature of gender and racial constructs in the culture of the southern United States accounts for much of the historical prejudice against coeducation in the region's institutions of higher education. This essay offers a historical perspective on gender discrimination on the campuses of Southern universities from the attempts to…

The Supreme Court of Virginia has ruled in favor of Randolph College in two lawsuits brought by students and alumnae donors upset that the institution, formerly Randolph-Macon Woman's College, went coed last fall. In one case, the court ruled against a group of students who argued that the decision to enroll men was a breach of contract. The…

Since the 1960s the higher educational system in the United States has steadily lost its single-sex colleges; and as of 2008 only 51 women's and four men's institutions remain (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2008). Many of the previous single-sex schools have admitted members of the opposite sex, giving in to the national trend of…