Coeducation at Depth — the Merger, the Decision and the Fifty Years After

1917–2026 · women at Notre Dame, whole

Women were here long before 1972. The base fragment opens its coeducation entry with the fact, and the depth begins by enlarging it: women had taken Notre Dame degrees every year since 1917, when two women crossed the commencement stage in the Scholastic's 1917 commencement issue's record; the summer school that opened in 1918 admitted men and women from the start; and the archivist Elizabeth Hogan's research, reported in the university's own Scholastic in 2026, estimates that about 380 women earned bachelor's degrees at Notre Dame before 1972 alongside the better-known stream of sisters and teachers taking graduate work — the figure is Hogan's estimate, printed as hers. Lewis Hall, built in 1965, housed the women graduate students and religious on campus. What changed in 1972 was therefore precisely bounded: the undergraduate college, in term time, for laywomen as a class of students. Everything before that sentence is prelude; everything after it is this article.

The road through Saint Mary's. The co-exchange program of 1965 — 200 students crossing between the campuses in its first year, more than 2,000 by 1971, 850 from Saint Mary's and 1,200 from Notre Dame in Father Thomas Blantz's accounting — made the two schools functionally interlocked: joint departmental appointments, merged speech and drama, a shuttle bus. On 2 May 1969 the two schools issued a joint Statement of Principles announcing initial steps meant eventually to make them co-educational with each other. Consultants Rosemary Park and Lewis B. Mayhew reported in January 1971 in favor of cooperation short of merger — the base carries the report — and the boards went past it anyway: on 14 May 1971 the two institutions signed an agreement to unify fully within four years, announced publicly on 15 May, promising one co-educational institution by 1975, with Saint Mary's acting president, Sister M. Alma Peter, made a vice president of Notre Dame. The halt stands at pointer size here, its facts in the base: through the summer and fall the negotiations failed on the division of the Saint Mary's campus property between college and sisters, on the two institutions' different finances, and at the core, on Saint Mary's name and identity; Hesburgh brought the differences to a head at a meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, by his own later account; and on 30 November 1971 the two board chairs announced the termination jointly — complete unification was not possible at this time, the financial and administrative problems unsolved. Saint Mary's students answered with a convocation of some 1,300, a class boycott and withheld tuition. The merger's whole documentary course is the base entry's; this article does not retell it.

The decision and the first fall. In the same announcement season Notre Dame declared it would admit its own women undergraduates the following fall, merger or none — the decision dated to November 1971 in the university's retrospective accountings. An Advisory Committee on Coeducation was created in March 1972, and the university followed nearly every one of its recommendations. The plan, on Blantz's account, was 325 women the first year: 125 first-year students and 200 transfers. The arrival itself is carried two ways in the university's own record, and both stand: the Hesburgh accounting gives 365 women enrolled in the fall of 1972 — 125 freshmen and 240 transfers — while the university's fiftieth-anniversary history counts 265 transfers, 211 of them from Saint Mary's, beside the same 125 freshmen, an implied 390; the enrolled total is printed here unresolved between the two university accountings, at 365 in the key-events record and 390 by the anniversary history's parts. Two men's halls, Badin and Walsh, were converted for the women at an estimated cost of 140,000 dollars, and the first women moved into the South Quad dorms on 2 September 1972. The undergraduate ratio that fall was seventeen men to one woman, and an irony the Hesburgh portal preserves: because the Saint Mary's exchange was cut back in the same season, there were actually fewer women on the Notre Dame campus in the first coeducational year than in the years before it. The first class's documented distinctions are carried plainly: the first women averaged a higher grade-point average than the men, in the portal's accounting of that first year. Mary Ann Proctor, a Saint Mary's transfer, had already become the first woman undergraduate in 1971, ahead of the formal opening, and the question of the first woman to receive a Notre Dame bachelor's degree in 1972 stands exactly where the base leaves it — Mary Davey Bliley in one account, Angela Sienko in another, both in marketing — with Bliley's own later account adding her mechanism: her Notre Dame business credits, earned under the merger plan, would not complete a Saint Mary's diploma when the merger failed, and Hesburgh and the business dean Vincent Raymond intervened to give her the Notre Dame degree. Both names and the conflict stand; this record does not pick. The first coeducational class graduated in 1976.

The decades after. The growth was steady and its mechanism was housing: over the next few years three more former men's dorms — Breen-Phillips, Farley and Lyons — were converted to women's residences; Lewis Hall opened to laywomen in 1975, by which point women made up about 20 percent of the student body; the first purpose-built women's halls, Pasquerilla East and Pasquerilla West, were added in 1981, at about 25 percent. The share climbed more slowly thereafter — about 37 percent of undergraduates by 1990 — while admissions has operated, in its own description, gender-blind since 1997. The fiftieth anniversary was marked across 2022. The present state, dated November 2026 on the latest published figures: the university's Hesburgh accounting gives about 47 percent of students as women, and the federal enrollment data for 2024–25 counts women at 47.5 percent of all students and 48.75 percent of undergraduates, against the seventeen-to-one ratio of 1972. Hesburgh's own retrospective judgment, given in a 2007 interview and printed as his, was that the university had become a healthier, more intellectual and more cultural place because about half its students were women; it is attributed accordingly, not adopted as this record's.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame, "50 Golden Years" coeducation history (50goldenyears.nd.edu) — the 2 May 1969 Statement of Principles, the 14 May 1971 signing, the Palm Beach meeting in Hesburgh's account, the 30 November 1971 termination, 125 freshmen and 265 transfers (211 from Saint Mary's), the 2 September 1972 move-in; facts summarized, no text lifted.
2. Hesburgh Portal, "Coeducation: The Beginning" and key-events accounting (hesburgh.nd.edu) — 365 women enrolled fall 1972, the Advisory Committee of March 1972, Badin and Walsh converted, the 17:1 ratio, the exchange cutback irony, Breen-Phillips/Farley/Lyons converted, Lewis Hall 1975 at about 20 percent, Pasquerilla East and West 1981 at about 25 percent, about 47 percent women at present; Hesburgh's 2007 reflections attributed to him.
3. Thomas E. Blantz, "Going co-ed," Notre Dame Magazine — the co-exchange growth (200 in 1965; 850 and 1,200 by 1971), the plan for 325 women (125 first-year, 200 transfers), the merger's announcement and fall.
4. Scholastic, "Comely Coeds" retrospective (2026), University of Notre Dame — the 1917 commencement record, the 1918 summer school, archivist Elizabeth Hogan's estimate of about 380 women's bachelor's degrees before 1972, Lewis Hall 1965, the $140,000 conversion figure; described factually, no text reproduced.