New Haven, Here We Come

Officials of women's colleges sometimes shy away from the fact that most girls like to be near boys. How much they like it was proved on the thoroughly boola-boola reception that Vassar students gave the news that their all-girl institution along the Hudson in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., might some day move to New Haven and affiliate with mostly male Yale.

When the word first leaked out, Vassar students romped up the stairs to clang the bell atop Main Hall, a gaiety normally permitted only once a year, on the day when juniors turn into seniors. Some girls draped a FOR SALE sign on a dormitory; others scrambled into T shirts and sweatshirts with blue Ys on their chests. Amid signs reading NEW HAVEN HERE WE COME and YALE, WE THINK WE LOVE YOU, 200 seniors donned caps and gowns to join the cheering. Even though Vassar President Alan Simpson tried to calm his normally cool girls with the reminder that "as of right now, nobody is going anywhere," he nonetheless called the proposal "breathtaking, imaginative and exciting."

Squeeze on Resources. Although any move to New Haven cannot possibly take place until a year or more after this year's freshmen have taken their degrees, officials of both colleges think the affiliation makes good sense. Since Yale, in the words of President Kingman Brewster Jr., believes that it might be able to "make a contribution to the education of women," the university has long been toying with the notion of either creating its own women's college or affiliating with an existing one. Vassar has even more cause to welcome the move. Except for suburban Boston's Wellesley, which is on intimate if informal terms with Harvard and M.I.T., Vassar is the only one of the "seven sisters" that does not have some tie with a predominantly male institution. As a result, it faces the kind of squeeze on money and resources that led Vassar's former President Sarah Blanding to predict that within another century 90% of the nation's separate women's colleges will disappear.

Like most other girls' schools, Vassar has found it increasingly hard to attract and keep topflight faculty members. Girls' schools pay well, but they carry less academic prestige, cannot offer the facilities and scholarly fellowship that major universities do. First-rate math, economics and science teachers, in particular, tend to shun the women's colleges out of a notion that these are not feminine interests.

Affiliation, in varying degrees, is an answer that Vassar's collegiate sisters have found satisfactory. Radcliffe solved its problem by becoming an integral part of Harvard, no longer even offering any courses of its own. Although Barnard maintains a separate institutional identity, its girls take about 20% of their courses at neighboring Columbia University, and all earn a Columbia degree. Smith and Mount Holyoke exchange students, share courses and a research library with each other and with Amherst and the University of Massachusetts. Bryn Mawr and nearby Haverford are co-owners of a computer; the two mesh their curriculums in order to avoid needless duplication and afford students of each a wider range of subjects.

A Rolling Stone? Obstacles to Vassar's move are many. Founded by an endowment from Poughkeepsie Millionaire Matthew Vassar in 1861, the college has strong emotional ties to the town, which depends heavily on its $7,000,000-a-year payroll. Vassar would have to find a suitable buyer for its 950-acre campus, including 77 buildings and two lakes, acquire enough cash to finance new lodgings in New Haven. Chartered as a New York institution, Vassar would also have to fight through the legal red tape involved in getting re-established as a Connecticut college.

Then, of course, the college must take into account the views of the vociferous Vassar alumnae, many of whom are convinced that the idyllic isolation from male distraction is good enough for their daughters if it was good enough for them. "I would hate to see this rock of permanence become another rolling stone," says Mrs. Robert Sloane of New Haven, a member of the class of '58. On the other hand, one of Vassar's best-known living graduates thinks that the connection with Yale is just dandy. "They deserve each other," said Novelist Mary (The Group) McCarthy.

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