Dissertation fall 2018

The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of Education INTERSECTIONS OF ATHLETICS AND INSTITUTIONAL IDENTITY IN WOMEN’S COLLEGE TRANSITIONS TO COEDUCATION A Dissertation in Higher Education by Danielle Barney © 2019 Danielle Barney Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2019 ii The dissertation of Danielle Barney was reviewed and approved* by the following: Roger L. Geiger Distinguished Professor of Education Dissertation Advisor Professor-in-Charge of Higher Education Program Mark Dyreson Professor of Kinesiology Jaime Schultz Associate Professor of Kinesiology and Women’s Studies John J. Cheslock Associate Professor of Education *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. iii ABSTRACT The history of the intercollegiate athletics programs at Elmira College and Vassar College in the time frame of the 1960s and 1970s, when both historical women’s colleges went coeducational, illustrates that attitudes and beliefs about collegiate sports in formerly single-sex women’s colleges were not entirely homogeneous.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the national structure of and assumptions about college athletics in the United States for men and women were remarkably different. The women’s collegiate sports world particularly experienced significant transformations of its own during the time frame. This overarching history, played out on an institutional level that had no past tradition of providing such athletics opportunities for males, placed the unique choice of athletics representation into the hands of the colleges themselves. Not only were the Vassar and Elmira coeducation transitions unique, but their interpretation of the role of athletics within that transitional identity was pioneering.

College archival and other publications demonstrate that at Elmira in 1969, men’s intercollegiate athletics was a purposeful and important component to its coeducation. The spectacle of intercollegiate athletics was to be a celebrated focus of student life and an example of the college’s prestige. Intercollegiate athletics, first mainly for men and more inclusively for both genders only later, developed with an urgency that made such sport programs appear as a rite of entrance into male education. By initially administratively separating the greater part of the men’s and women’s programs, Elmira supported stereotypical gender norms with an athletics nexus and therefore reinforced a status level differential between its men and its women from the start of coeducation.

For Vassar, student and university publications and archives materials show that athletics for men was a common discussion topic as coeducation progressed, yet a large-scale athletics program was not how the college wanted itself represented. By keeping intercollegiate athletics housed within the Physical Education Department, the college reinforced the process of socializing students into a structure which favored neither gender nor any particular concept of athletics. Development of the intercollegiate program occurred slowly, though not without criticism, throughout the 1970s. While the college insisted on its uniqueness, simultaneous fears of the “jock” mentality and of association with homosexuality riddled efforts to establish any type of intercollegiate sport, and only reflected prevailing gendered archetypes.

True to Vassar’s historical character, despite the fall back to norms, the treatment of men and women was more equivalent and harbored intentions of maintaining equality. Ironically, admissions selectivity, one of the main reasons the college rejected a big-time athletics program, actually suffered in the years following coeducation even with minimal emphasis on athletics. The progress of intercollegiate athletics at Vassar manifested the ability of sport program structure to reflect and promote the institutional mission, even if institutional identity was still being reformulated. At Elmira, in contrast, the early developments of sport during coeducation served as a reminder of the cultural influence of athletics.

The significance of such institutional histories as those of Vassar and Elmira add to the body of knowledge about the diversity of institutional change, demonstrate the potential utility of sport during such change, and contribute a foundation for analysis of the influence of status and prestige on institutional-wide change and more specifically on the development of intercollegiate athletics. Finally, such histories isolate gendered patterns of change which can be influenced by or profoundly shape intercollegiate athletics. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables. vi Chapter One.

1 Introduction of Inquiry. 5 Significance of Study. 6 Overview of Chapters. 10 Liberal Arts Colleges in the 1960s and 1970s.

12 Sports and Higher Education. 19 Women in Higher Education in 1960s and 1970s. 20 Coeducation Trend at Men’s Colleges. 23 Impact of Coeducation on Women’s Colleges.

26 The Gendered Dimension of Coeducation. 30 Elmira College and Vassar College Prior to Coeducation. 37 Historical Elmira College. 38 Historical Vassar College.

39 Intercollegiate Athletics and Physical Education. 41 Development of Intercollegiate Athletics Through the 1970s. 41 Physical Education at Elmira College. 49 Physical Education at Vassar College.

62 Units of Anaylsis. 71 Historical Origins and Coeducation Transition. 71 Vassar Roots and First Decade of Coeducation. 73 Elmira Roots and First Decade of Coeducation.

105 Athletics Developments During the Coeducation Transition, 1969-1980. 105 Athletics at Vassar: Coeducation Transition through 1980. 105 Vassar Women's Athletics (Post-Coeducation). 118 Athletics at Elmira: Coeducation Transition through 1980.

122 Elmira Women's Athletics (Post-Coeducation). 145 Analysis of Research Findings. 145 Role Athletics Played in Coeducation Strategies. 146 Changes in Women's Athletics at Vassar and Elmira at the Beginning of Coeducation.

152 v Connection of Athletics Development to Institutional Identity and Contemporary Trends. 159 Consistency at Vassar College. 160 Ebbs and Tides at Elmira College. 163 Long Term Implications.

170 Recommendations for Future Research. 175 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Yield on Spring 1973 Offers of Admission at Vassar College .81 1 CHAPTER ONE Introduction of Inquiry The 1960s and 1970s were revolutionary decades in American higher education. Social change influenced vast transformations in colleges and universities during the two decades, and the rapidly expanding collegiate enrollment and career interests of women were at the root of many significant changes. For the 261 men’s colleges operating in 1960, competition for the brightest students along with a downward demographic trend led many to take advantage of the enrollment opportunities an additional population offered by opening their doors to women.1 Women, in turn, enrolled in overwhelming numbers, and from 1948 to 1970, jumped from 29- to 41-percent of the college-going population.2 This growing collegiate female contingent was, moreover, largely attracted to coeducational institutions.

Such developments placed severe strains on women’s colleges, which were threatened by academic, financial, and prestige issues such as narrower applicant pools and drift of young faculty to coeducational institutions, along with the questioning of social and academic relevance of single-sex education for women. Thus, many historical women’s colleges were impelled to make strategic and at times difficult decisions about their status and viability. Significant developments in intercollegiate athletics occurring at the same time influenced changes in co-curricular activities at colleges and universities. The predominant men’s intercollegiate athletics organization, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), grew larger and more comprehensive in membership.

Meanwhile, an even greater shift in collegiate sports occurred for women in the 1970s. A more focused awareness of disparities in extracurricular sport offerings was prompted by the pairing of gender equity and intercollegiate athletics in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.3 Further, the 2 Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) was formed in 1972 to provide championship opportunities and a national governing structure to intercollegiate athletics programs for women. Both developments added to the expansion of sports opportunities, legally and structurally, for on-campus activities as well as nationally-organized intercollegiate competition. Partnered with the changing collegiate demographics, these two historical changes inspired, and even required, colleges to reinvent themselves in the face of profound institutional change.

Women’s colleges, in particular, were forced to contemplate serious institutional changes. These colleges addressed the trend towards coeducation by closing, merging with a nearby men’s college through a coordination process, starting new academic programs such as weekend schools to compensate for insufficient revenue, or admitting men. At Vassar College and Elmira College, two small liberal arts women’s colleges in upstate New York, these developments converged when both made the momentous decision in 1969 to end over 100 years of single-sex education and become coeducational. This study examines decisions made on intercollegiate athletics programs throughout the 1970s while they were transitioning to coeducation.

Interpreting the coeducation transformation through the microcosm of intercollegiate athletics reveals a relationship centered on gender expectations and notions of equality. It helps define the colleges’ traditional, and emerging, institutional mission and identity. As a result of coeducation, long-standing Elmira and Vassar traditions of pioneering opportunity for women’s education, as well as leadership in promotion of women’s health, exercise, and sports opportunities, required reevaluation and potential reformulation. At Elmira, coeducation was “compatible with [the college’s] tradition of meeting the contemporary needs of society as it did in 1855 when the College enrolled young ladies in an effort to offer equal 3 educational opportunities for women.”4 Administrators believed that coeducation at the “New Vassar” must maintain the strengths of the traditional Vassar, and must “be the first woman’s college in [the] league to face the new world” by promoting the equality and partnership of men and women in learning.5 In the change to coeducation, these colleges ultimately sought to lead the way in providing a more culturally, socially, and academically relevant education for their students.

But simply admitting men or women does not necessarily yield a relevant education for either gender. In addition to noting curricular changes such as the development of women’s studies majors or co-curricular additions of women’s centers on campus, the social life and culture students experienced was an area of higher education historians Leslie Miller-Bernal and Susan Poulson examined in their case studies of women’s experiences at newly coeducational institutions.6 In men’s colleges that went coeducational they looked for signs of institutional attitudes towards gender in the educational environment by examining the percentages of representation in honors programs and societies, certain majors, and in the composition of the faculty and administration. An area of campus life Miller-Bernal and Poulson reported as being indicative of institutional attitudes towards gender, but provided little detail about, was the athletics programs. Yet a traditionally entrenched gender binary exists in athletics more than any other campus activity.

Sport has been regarded as a “crucial arena of struggle over basic social conceptions of masculinity and femininity, and as such has become a fundamental arena of ideological contest in terms of power relations between men and women.”7 Consequently, athletics is an important location for the study of the new coeducational collegiate missions and their consistency in promoting equal opportunity for the student body. Higher education historian John Thelin viewed intercollegiate sports as a “conspicuous and useful” topic for 4 understanding colleges and universities.8 The structure and the values athletics programs promote can reveal much about an institution, especially in times of transition. Given the strong institutional histories of women’s physical education and sport participation, along with emerging opportunities for women’s intercollegiate athletics in the 1970s, it is paradoxical that at Elmira and Vassar, the groundbreaking changes in 1969 led to more narrowly focused drive to attract and accommodate the new male students. For Vassar, “[a]thletics became another integral ingredient in the development of Vassar’s unique coeducational atmosphere.”9 Administrators stressed the athleticism of its new male students in admissions material, but promoted the perception that big-time college athletics was not essential for a student body that ranked above average in traits such as “peer independence…and cultural sophistication.”10 Vassar allowed for what it considered to be a natural evolution of its athletics programs, and therefore provided only minimal additional material support to the Physical Education department where athletics was housed.

Even within such an atmosphere, Vassar’s social, student, and institutional culture primarily focused on and privileged male teams early during coeducation. Elmira used a concerted effort in men’s athletics as an attraction for the new male student population and a way to promote its new coeducational identity.