Coeducation — the Merger That Failed and the Doors That Opened

1965–1976 · women undergraduates

Women had taken Notre Dame graduate degrees every year since 1917; the undergraduate door opened through a merger that collapsed. The co-exchange program with Saint Mary's College began in 1965 with 200 students crossing between the campuses and grew to more than 2,000 by 1971 — 850 from Saint Mary's and 1,200 from Notre Dame, by the account of Father Thomas Blantz, then vice president for student affairs. A joint committee gauged faculty sentiment from 1966; consultants Rosemary Park and Lewis B. Mayhew reported in January 1971 in favor of cooperation short of merger; nevertheless, on 14 May 1971 the two institutions signed an agreement to unify fully within four years — in substance, a single institution with a common board of trustees and a common budget — with Sister M. Alma Peter, Saint Mary's acting president, made a vice president of Notre Dame. The public announcement followed on 15 May, promising one co-educational institution by 1975. Through the summer and fall the negotiations collapsed, in Hesburgh's later characterization, completely.

The stated difficulties were the division of property on the Saint Mary's campus between the college and the sisters, the two institutions' different financial situations, and the preservation of Saint Mary's name and identity; Hesburgh's own account locates the core of it in identity — the sisters, in his telling in substance, did not want to lose an identity they regarded as very much their own. On 30 November 1971 the chairs of the two boards announced the termination in a joint statement which said, in substance, that complete unification was not possible at that time, the schools being unable to solve their financial and administrative problems. Saint Mary's students answered with a convocation of some 1,300, a class boycott, and hundreds withholding spring tuition or planning transfers, all carried in The Observer's December pages. Notre Dame, in the same announcement season, declared it would admit its own women undergraduates the next fall, merger or none. The plan, on Blantz's account, was to admit about 325 women the first year — 125 first-year students and 200 transfers — and to grow the number gradually; the university's own key-events accounting puts 365 women enrolled in the fall of 1972, among them 125 new freshmen who moved into the South Quad dorms on 2 September 1972. The university followed nearly every recommendation of its Advisory Committee on Coeducation. Mary Ann Proctor, a Saint Mary's transfer, stood as the first woman undergraduate in 1971, before the formal opening; the first woman to receive a Notre Dame bachelor's degree in 1972 is carried in one account as Mary Davey Bliley and in another as Angela Sienko, both in marketing, and both names stand here as the record gives them. The first coeducational class graduated in 1976, and the university marked the fiftieth anniversary of the decision and the arrival across 2022.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame, "50 Golden Years," coeducation history; Hesburgh Portal, "Coeducation: The Beginning" — Hesburgh's phrases and characterizations are summarized in this article, not quoted.
2. Thomas E. Blantz, "Going co-ed," Notre Dame Magazine (panel address, 2012).
3. The Observer and Scholastic, student-media coverage of 1971–72, as surveyed by Scholastic, 2022. The two boards' joint statement of 30 November 1971 is summarized, not quoted.