The Merger That Was Signed and Unmade, 1971

1965–1972

Co-exchange first. Saint Mary's and Notre Dame had been drawing together for years before anyone said the word merger. A co-exchange program began in 1965 with some 200 students crossing the road to each other's classes; by 1971 it carried 2,000. On 2 May 1969 the two schools issued a joint Statement of Principles announcing initial steps to become, in its phrase, co-educational with each other. Consultants were engaged — Rosemary Park, the former president of Barnard, and Louis Mayhew of Stanford — and their report of January 1971 recommended cooperation, not entire merger.

Signed 14 May 1971. The trustees went past their consultants. In March 1971 the executive committees of the two boards recommended unification, and on 14 May 1971 the agreement was signed — by Father Hesburgh for Notre Dame, by Mother M. Olivette Whalen, the sisters' superior general, by Edmund Stephan, chairman of Notre Dame's trustees, and by Sister M. Alma Peter, Saint Mary's acting president — to fully unify the two institutions within four years, by 1974–75: one faculty, one extended campus, women admitted through Saint Mary's to receive Notre Dame degrees bearing a Saint Mary's notation. Within two weeks, in Hesburgh's own later word, the negotiations had crashed in flames over the work of implementation; through the autumn the difficulty settled where it had always lain, on identity and finance — Saint Mary's would cease to exist as a college, and the terms of its ceasing could not be made to work.

Unmade 30 November 1971. On 30 November 1971 the two schools called the merger off: it was not possible, the announcement said, to accomplish complete unification at this time. Saint Mary's students revolted against the unmaking as fiercely as any party had pressed the making — a convocation of some 1,300 students agreed to boycott classes, under a photographed sign reading "Welcome to Screw U," and the student body president, Kathleen Barlow, put demands to the trustees to justify the decision and reverse it. Mother Olivette, who as superior general had signed the agreement and who chaired Saint Mary's board, told a convocation on 6 December 1971 the sentence the episode is remembered by: Notre Dame was not prepared for women. Notre Dame admitted its own first women undergraduates in the fall of 1972 — 125 freshmen — and Saint Mary's remained what it had been since 1855: an independent women's college on its own ground across the river. The road not taken is the college's defining modern chapter, and it is documented at this size because the papers were actually signed.

Sources

1. University of Notre Dame, 50 Golden Years, the university's official history — the co-exchange of 1965, the Statement of Principles of 2 May 1969, the Park–Mayhew report of January 1971, the signing of 14 May 1971 and its terms, the calling-off of 30 November 1971.
2. Hesburgh Presidential Portal, University of Notre Dame — "crashed in flames."
3. The Observer, 25 March 1971 and 1 December 1971 — the trustee recommendations; the convocation, the boycott, and the sign.
4. Scholastic magazine, account of December 1971 — Mother Olivette's convocation sentence of 6 December 1971.