Trinity officially became a coeducational institution in September 1969. Prior to the switch, the school did however teach a few generations of women, including female graduate students as early as the 1920s. More proximately, the Vassar College Exchange Program was established the year prior to the coeducation announcement, and it had 25 students from the all female college come to live and study at Trinity for a semester.
President Theodore Lockwood took office in 1968 and one of his primary concerns was asking if “Trinity [could] afford to be a men's college any longer.” Debate and talk about a potential switch to becoming a coeducational institution was rampant on campus by the late 1960s. Other colleges and universities were also starting to consider becoming coeducational institutions, and some staff members worried about Trinity falling behind. Faculty and administrators wanted to secure Trinity's place as a unique and innovative college by becoming one of the first along the East coast to accept women.
In October 1968, President Lockwood announced the official implementation of the Vassar Exchange Program, voted on unanimously by the Board of Trustees. The program would serve as a way to “test” coeducation at Trinity. Soon after, an ad hoc committee of faculty, administrators, students, and trustees was put together to study coeducation and consider its implementation at Trinity; they were aptly named the Committee of Coeducation.
The establishment of the committee was partly done by the work of Dean of Students Robert W. Fuller, who had made an extremely thorough case to President Lockwood in defense of coeducation. Some of the reasons Fuller listed were that students were already attending primarily coeducational schools before college, it would widen Trinity's declining applicant pool, a female point of view would be heard in the classroom, and it would move Trinity to match the “changing social patterns” of the outside world.
The committee submitted their report in January 1969, recommending the college to become coeducational and to do it quickly, by the fall of 1969. Swift action would ensure that Trinity would take leadership amongst other colleges considering the implementation of coeducation and that the College could utilize the momentum and knowledge that resulted from the Vassar Exchange Program. The report cited the results of a poll that was sent out to the student body via the Tripod about coeducation. The majority of undergraduates agreed that becoming coeducational would better both themselves and Trinity as a whole.
On January 11, 1969, the Board of Trustees voted to “approve the admission of qualified women to degree status, effective September, 1969.” Recruiting of female applicants was carried out immediately by admissions staff, and 106 women entered the college as undergraduates of the Class of 1973 later that fall.
The administration prepared for the arrival of female students by taking what they had learned from the Vassar program and establishing anticipated support services and infrastructure. The first women lived in the South Campus complex, which had been designated as a coed dorm for the 1969-1970 academic year.
Social life on campus was changed by the presence of women on campus. For example, the tradition of male students leaving campus on the weekends was largely ended. Fraternities approached the announcement cautiously, inviting women to only join some social events. The exception to this approach was the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi, which accepted women as pledges in 1971. The late 1970s saw the administration urging more fraternities to become coed, but was mostly met with resistance. The first two sororities on Trinity's campus were established in the early 1980s, and St. Anthony Hall accepted female pledges starting in 1984.
The overall female student response to fraternities was not a pleasant one. In a survey conducted in the spring of 1990, many female alumni stated that fraternities were unpleasant, yet dominated the social scene on campus. Others were quoted as saying the treatment of women by fraternity men was “appalling,” a reaction which led some women to suffer from social isolation.
Some faculty also presented issues for female students. In the same 1990 survey, a former Trinity student recalled a professor telling her that no women would ever receive higher than a C in his course. Others stated the struggles they experienced as the only female students in their major, and remembered the misogynistic comments they had received from teachers while in class. There was a feeling amongst some graduates, mostly from the classes of the 1970s and 1980s, that Trinity had not been ready for female students. For much of the quarter-century after coeducation came to Trinity, the voices of women often were not heard and their perspectives were ignored.
Not all female students shared quite the same post-graduation assessment of Trinity as a coeducational institution. Many female graduates were thankful for the opportunities Trinity had provided and felt that Trinity had placed female students on an “equal footing” with the male students. The 1970s saw the emergence of groups on campus specifically for female students, among them The Trinity Women's Organization (TWO) and The Trinity Coalition of Black Women Organization (TCBWO).
Women's sports at Trinity began informally in the 1970s, with female students forming their own club teams. First among these informal teams were field hockey and tennis. In 1971 the Athletics Department hired its first female coach, Jane Millspaugh. Millspaugh was tasked with overseeing all women's sports as well as coaching squash, field hockey, tennis, and lacrosse. She was later joined in 1973 by Robin Sheppard, who went on to become Assistant Athletic Director in 1991.
Even though Title IX had been passed in 1972, women's sports teams did not receive equal treatment at Trinity in comparison to men's sports teams. The women's team uniforms were old and ill-fitting, their playing fields were torn up, and their scheduling was poorly planned. A female athlete who participated on both the basketball and swim teams reported having been subbed out of her basketball game to swim a race for the swim team, and then returned to the basketball court “still damp.”
Women sport's persevered despite the inequality, and the 1980s brought positive change. Track and field, soccer, and volleyball were added, along with others, and multiple women's sports teams made the transition to varsity status. By 1998, there were 13 varsity women's teams. Rosters were expanded, scheduling was improved, and more coaches were hired. End of season awards and ceremonies were also established. The first female athlete was honored in 1978 with the Susan E. Martin Award.
Despite the progress, female athletes continue to cite disparities between their treatment and that of the male athletes. In 2021 the Trinity College Women's Athletic League, a group of representatives from the various women's sports teams, created a petition drawing attention to the differences in treatment. The immediate cause of the petition was the poor condition of the Robin L. Sheppard field and amenities. This field, used by the women's field hockey and lacrosse teams, was supposed to have undergone renovations during the summer of 2021 alongside the Jessee/Miller field. Only the Miller fields, used by the men's lacrosse and football teams, had been renovated by the start of the next semester. Female athletes cited this as a violation of Title IX and called for a compliance assessment.
Female students and faculty who made history at Trinity, both before and after Trinity went coeducational:
Organizations both past and present, that work to benefit the lives of female identifying students at Trinity:
Establishing Coeducation
Trinity College in the Twentieth Century (2000) by Peter and Anne Knapp, pp. 366-376.
Coeducational Trinity
Trinity College in the Twentieth Century (2000) by Peter and Anne Knapp, pp. 377-382.
Women's Sports
The Trinity Tripod, 10/05/2021.
Trinity College in the Twentieth Century (2000) by Peter and Anne Knapp, pp. 377-378.
The Trinity Reporter, Winter 2019.
The Trinity Reporter, Fall 2011.
The Trinity Reporter, Winter 2010.
Notable Female Students and Faculty
Trinity College in the Twentieth Century (2000) by Peter and Anne Knapp, p. 378.
The Trinity Reporter, Winter 2019.
The Trinity Reporter, Fall 2016.
Coeducation at Trinity College: A Fortieth Anniversary Exhibition, 2009.
Women's Organizations
Trinity College in the Twentieth Century (2000) by Peter and Anne Knapp, p. 382.
The Trinity Tripod, 11/12/2019.