Education and Discrimination in Virginia

Virginia abandoned its last separate-but-equal effort in 1997, when official gender discrimination ended at Virginia Military Institute (VMI). Excluding women from state-supported colleges, other than "normal schools" to train teachers, had been a long tradition in the state. Thomas Jefferson once wrote " A plan of female education has never been a subject of systematic contemplation with me. It has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters occasionally required."¹

The University of Virginia in Charlottesville admitted women as first-year students in 1970, leading to the end of the formal arrangement since 1944 that women would attend Mary Washington College and men would attend UVA. Virginia Military Institute in Lexington admitted women as "rats" in 1997. Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg (formerly "Mary Washington College") is the only public university in Virginia named for a woman. The board considered changing the name of the school to Washington and Monroe University, before a public uproar led to the final decision to choose the Mary Washington University name in 2004.

Hampden-Sydney College in Farmville (a private school) is one of only a handful of accredited colleges in the United States that remain male-only. ("Hampden-Sydney: Where men are men and women are guests."²)

Links

• College of William and Mary
• "The Petticoat Invasion": Women at the College of William and Mary, 1918-1945
• General Assembly:
• HB 1029 - Mary Washington College; name changed to University of Mary Washington (2004)
• National Park Service - Thomas Jefferson's Plan for the University of Virginia: Lessons from the Lawn
• University of Mary Washington
• MWC Takes Next Steps Toward University Name
• University of Virginia - Breaking and Making Tradition - Women at the University of Virginia

References