The Coed Question
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a wave of “single-sex” colleges became coeducational. The question of whether Mount Holyoke should become a coed college was a big issue in the early days of Choragos. In an interview with The Mount Holyoke News in 1993, former editor-in-chief Julie Van Camp reflected on her opinions, sharing that although she advocated for Mount Holyoke going coed, she came to feel the opposite after graduation.
Other issues of interest were the Vietnam War, as many students supported anti-war movements; changing rules around parietals, or when students were allowed to have male guests in their dorms, and alcohol at campus events, especially as Smith College made their regulations more lax; reform to the grading system and the implementation of self-scheduled exams; drug use by college students; and the creation of a Black studies academic department and Black cultural center.
