The Woman Question: The Lasting Legacy of Coeducation at Texas A&M University

Abstract

The history of women at Texas A&M is relatively unknown both within and beyond the university. Stories that do recount this history focus on the maternal nature of women as wives of faculty and students and their contribution to the university as members of wives’ clubs. The slow trickle of women into the university is a subject worth examining-- not just for the posterity of university history but because it tells a different yet important story of the 1960s. While students at other universities embraced the free speech movement, protested the Vietnam War, and battled segregation, A&M’s student movement took a distinct form of anti-coeducation. While this student movement may not have been noteworthy in comparison to the other student activism movements in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, it would have lasting effects on Texas A&M. Arguments against women’s admission into Texas A&M University are part of a bigger story that shows how essential the movements for coeducation were changing the social fabric of the United States. Many other universities in the United States went through a sexual revolution or student activist movements in which many traditional policies were removed to allow for a more inclusive university. However, Texas A&M never had a progressive movement. Consequently, without this upheaval, many male-centric traditions and policies remain in place at the university and women sit on the sidelines to traditions they were never meant to be a part of.