History & Legacies of UVA’s Path to Coeducation

Mar 25

UVA’s coeducation story began long before President Nixon signed Title IX into law in 1972. Like many threads of UVA history, the story begins with Jefferson himself. In honor of Women’s History Month, the Law Weekly takes a look back at UVA’s embattled history with coeducation. As the last state in the Union to provide post-secondary education, [1] it is fitting to spend a few minutes reckoning with the vestiges of UVA’s coeducational reticence.

Thomas Jefferson had three daughters: Martha Jefferson, Maria Jefferson, and Harriet Hemings. While Harriet was consigned to enslavement, Jefferson bestowed a rich education upon Martha and Maria, devising lesson plans for them and enrolling them at a prestigious convent school in France. [2] Despite his investment in his daughters’ education, when asked by a fellow planter about making UVA coeducational, Jefferson responded that such a notion had never “been a subject of systematic contemplation with me”—presumably even for his white daughters. [3]

Roughly seventeen years after Jefferson shared his indifference to coeducation, Oberlin College in Ohio admitted women and black students. [4] Eight years later, Baylor University in Texas was chartered as a coeducational institution, though it later split into separate men’s and women’s departments, ultimately reuniting in 1887 to once again become coeducational. [5] Meanwhile, in 1880, UVA’s Board of Visitors voted against admitting women under any conditions, though women were allowed to enroll in a non-credit summer program for primary school teachers. [6]

By 1900, 71% of colleges and universities were coeducational. [7] By this time, UVA had granted the petition of Caroline Preston Davis, the daughter of a faculty member, to sit for bachelor 's-level mathematics exams. [8] Two years later, though, the Board of Visitors once again voted against coeducation, citing concerns that admitting women would “physically unsex” them. [9]

With the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment came a vote by the Board of Visitors and UVA faculty to admit some female students to graduate and professional schools. [10] Somewhat like the racial desegregation of UVA by LL.M. student Gregory Swanson, coeducation began in UVA’s graduate programs—albeit without a lawsuit. Elizabeth Tompkins, an alumna of Westhampton College, the University of Richmond’s women’s college, became the first woman to graduate from the Law School in 1923. [11] Tompkins went on to become the first woman admitted to the Virginia State Bar. [12]

Interestingly, the Board of Visitors had admitted Emilie Watts McVea, its first female member, approximately a year earlier, in 1922. [13] McVea served on the Board from 1922-24, having been appointed during the tenure of Governor Elbert Lee Trinkle (law, 1885). [14] Gov. Trinkle, though perhaps a maverick in appointing McVea, also “signed some of the most pernicious Jim Crow laws in Virginia’s history. [15] In 2020, William & Mary removed his name from what was formerly Trinke Hall, which was built in 1929 for female students. [16]

Despite UVA’s partial admissions of women into its summer and graduate programs, as well as the Board, it was not until 1969 that the University officially opened its doors to women at all levels, including undergraduates. [17] It was probably within a number of our parents’ and professors’ lifetimes that UVA became coeducational. In 1980, the number of first-year female students for the first time outnumbered male students. [18]

These days, we may have to look a little more closely to find gender imbalances at UVA. While the University’s admissions statistics show a female majority, [19] we may not be particularly exemplary in terms of female leadership. Teresa Sullivan, our first and only female University president, served from 2010 to 2018. [20] The Law School similarly appointed its first female dean, Risa Goluboff, in 2016. [21] Harvard, in contrast, appointed its first female dean, Elena Kagan, in 2003. [22] Duke Law appointed its first female dean in 1988. [23] That is not to say that female leadership is the norm at other universities. A Forbes article examined thirty elite universities, finding that governing boards were primarily male. [24]

We as students likely have little ability to impact the gender balance at the highest echelons of university leadership. Even the rare student appointed to a selection committee or board is one voice among many. What we can do is pay attention to gender diversity within our own student organizations. My own experience in my undergraduate student organizations was that even when a board was numerically balanced by gender, it was more typical for male students to hold the higher-level roles, or to be listened to in meetings. I hesitate to even make these observations, given how commonplace such dynamics are—but the fact that they are so quotidian perhaps makes them all the more worth amplifying.

Emily Becker ’27

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