Word: haverford
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Should single-sex colleges turn coeducational? During the years of controversy over this issue, all-male Haverford College and neighboring all-female Bryn Mawr outside Philadelphia seemed to have worked out an admirable solution: a flourishing exchange program. In what Bryn Mawr billed as the "best of both worlds," the program offered a choice between traditional single-sex education and enrollment in any course at the other college. Up to 150 women and an equal number of men could live on the other campus...
...Haverford became restless. President John Coleman, 55, felt that his Quaker school was violating the sect's egalitarian views by refusing to admit women. He also believed that Haverford, worried about its financial wellbeing, would do well to expand from 750 students to about 1,000 by recruiting females. Last November the Haverford faculty voted almost unanimously to admit women, and the student body backed them...
Bryn Mawr, however, saw Haverford's decision as a direct threat to its single-sex future. Officials and students felt that if Haverford went coed, the mix of students in the exchange program would change from a roughly fifty-fifty male-female ratio to two-thirds or more women. Thus, in a time of increasing competition for bright female students, Bryn Mawr's special situation would no longer look so attractive...
Whitehead added that the compromise should not be viewed as a transition step towards either full coeducation at Haverford or a merger between Haverford and Bryn Mawr...
While students at Haverford were disturbed by the decision, students at Bryn Mawr were quite happy with...