I know I should know this, but help me out.

1971? I think...

71 is way too late. Per wiki it was 63, but there were VERY few until the 70s.

Biggest thing that kept my dad from going here...he would have been class of 72.

I doubt 63. Didn't they drop the Corps mandate in 69 or so? They didn't let women in before they dropped the corps mandade, I would think.

One of my profs was the first african-american woman to go to A&M. She said the hardest thing was finding the few women's restrooms on campus. That was worse than any flak she got for her race.

My mother-in-law says the same thing. She got her master's here in 76. My cousin went here, and started in '72. She said there were VERY few gals.

[This message has been edited by jkhughes95 (edited 11/26/2007 9:02p).]

Wiki linked a Beagle article that is now dead. It said that 63 was the year that the board, with Rudder leading the charge, approved expanding admission to women. It would stand to reason that there weren't masses of girls waiting to beat down the doors, especially in that day and age.

Contrary to popular belief, there were (almost) always a handful of girls enrolled. Typically professors daughters apparently.

Ok guys.....I believe you are right with the '63. That was also the year that they stopped making the Aggie sweetheart rings. I enrolled at A&M in the Fall of 1967. There were 600 women and 13,000 men. Many of my classes were all men except for one or two women. There were a number of professors who did not want women in their classes. They did their best to make it difficult for us. Even though the odds seemed in our favor as far as dates went, a lot of the women went dateless because the men assumed they didn't stand a chance.

With Rudder's three daughters, he HAD to work towards that goal. ;-)There's a local judge who tells the very best story about how and why it all came about.

But wait, there's more......When it first opened up to women in 1963, it was primarily for daughters, wives and spouses of faculty and staff. However, female vet students had been allowed to enter for quite some time because A&M was the only vet school in the region. Later, it was opened up to women from Brazos County.

I was a fish in the fall of '67. Very few women, and most were married.

My wife was class of 1977 and enrolled the fall of 1973. As I recall in 73 there were about 40% women on campus and by 77 is was close to 50 / 50. 1976 is when women were 1st in the corps, the 1st ones to commsission were class of 78 as I remember.

LTC77:

W-1 started my fish year in the fall of 74, that was when women entered the corps for the first time.

Your ratios of men to women by the various years are what I recall too.

[This message has been edited by BQ78 (edited 11/27/2007 12:17p).]

Boy, the memory is going. I frogged in my Junor year to M-1 as a contact cadet. After I posted 76 as the 1st womens year - I thought maybe it was 75. But you are right it must have been 74 the year before I joined M-1.

I would put forth that the de facto date of official co-ed status for A&M would be the fall of 1972 which was the opening of the first on campus housing (Krueger Dunn) for women. Prior to that females lived off campus and there weren't that many apartment complexes in CS back then. I would estimate female student population in 71-72 to be about 500 out of ~14K. Fall of '72 it upped to maybe 3000 out of 15K. I am guessing that within 5 to 6 years it equalled out.

I remember being able to walk between Cushing and the Academic Building as a fish and "speaking" to upperclassmen in my outfit as I recognized them. It wasn't that crowded and you could see folks. You had to....LOL.

"Recall.....Step off on Hullabaloo..."

I graduated from HS in '66 and was going out with a woman whose brother and dad were Aggies and who bled maroon herself (figuratively speaking, of course). She would not go to A&M herself because she felt a valuable tradition was being abandoned. She didn't think people like her should be allowed to be Aggies.

http://www.thebatt.com/news/2007/06/12/News/Blazing.Trails-2914081.shtml

Solari:

Don't you have some schemes to work up, recruits to recruit and help "Uncle Billy" Sherman hire some top notch position coaches on defense?

This exhibit that the Cushing Library put together should be of help to you young'uns. http://libraryasp.tamu.edu/cushing/onlinex/womenhistory/

There were plenty of girls (still <1000 out of 14,000) attending classes at A&M pre-1970, and there were many more in the summer, when teachers flocked in to work on Masters degrees, and they opened Fowler Hall for women (....only nuns lived on the ground floor)

It was a little hard for them since there were so few facilities on campus for them. Ladies restrooms were generally reserved for faculty or staff (except at the MSC), and girls in PE classes had to use the Visitors Dressing room at Jolly Rollie (Woe to you if A&M had a game scheduled that night and the visiting team showed up while you were in your class!) Most maintained pretty low profiles, and because of some hostility, let their grades get the last laugh. The whole school wasn't more than 15,000, so they didn't need the massive apartment complexes you have today.

Earl Rudder was their greatest advocate (as Sully Ross and President Bizzell had been before him), but he died suddenly in spring of 1970, but probably his greatest legacy to A&M was his getting women solidly ensconced for good on campus.

The Anti-Women-Aggie Die-Hards kept up their hope that it would all be reversed, until Krueger Dunn was opened in Fall of 1972, the Beginning of the End.

I was a soph in 1963 and I clearly remember the change to "officially" allow women to attend A&M. In reality, wives of students and daughters of professors were already allowed to take classes. The change to allow freshmen to be non-regs was approximately the same year.

The change didn't make much practical difference during the time I was there. You need to remember that virtually all studetns were in the corp at that time and the school was not large maybe 7,000. If I remember correctly, there was no on campus housing for women. Women students were called "maggies". (maybe they still are?)

Intersting question. Good to know a little more about our past.

The TAMU Course Catalogue back in the late 70's, early '80 had a few paragraphs regarding this question. It stated that in '63 it was approved to allow women to apply for admission to the graduate and veterinary colleges. It was also true what has been said regarding faculty wives and daughters. Even though there were many women at TAMU by '71, it wasn't until then that addmission as undergraduates for women was completely without restriction.

This timeline is also consistent with information from the Aggieland yearbooks of the '60's and early seventies.

The admission of the first woman to the veterinary college in '64 made all the state papers. It was such a novelty to see a woman as a TAMU student. Now the vet school enrollment is about 75% female.

The class of '77 allegedly came in as freshmen in 1973 at 50% female. I don't know if that is accurate, but it was the Aggie Urban Legend of the time.

My classs supposedly had a few more women than men to start. Based on my observations, it probably was 50-50 during most of my time on campus.

My recollection was that there were 18 men for every female in '72 and when I graduated it was like 4 men to each woman in '76. I believe it was in '74 when women were allowed in the Corps.

Yep, first women in the Corps, fall of 1974, two years before the service academies, one year behind VTech.

The dreaded double post.

[This message has been edited by CanyonAg77 (edited 12/10/2007 3:23p).]

quote:

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88% male in 1971
68% by 1976
63% by 1981
Fell slowly to 52% by 2002 - 2004, the last year of the study

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Thanks for the info and link. One of several legends while I was a student- every class, at least as early as '76, heard that their class was the first at TAMU to be greater than 50% female. Took quite a while for it to finally be true. Who knew that animal science and engineering degrees would take so long to catch on with women? Of course, the exponential growth of the College of Business probably has played a roll as well.

It was 36% female in 1985. I graduated HS in 1986 and recall that atop.

Fall of 69, I had 2 or 3 girls in my classes. When one saw a girl on campus, first thing we looked at was her left hand.

1965 Spring Enrollment: 7,646 students
7,330 men
316 Women

1969 Fall Enrollment: 14,042

1,100+ Women

2,449 freshmen, the largest fish class

1968-69 women enrollment: 979

They were not many women on campus my fish yr Fall 73/Spring 74. I had a friend looking for a date to the Roy Clark concert and called 16 girls before he found a date. Fortunately her roommate needed a date so I took her.

I think Kruger/Dunn was the first women's dorm built on campus around 1972. Correct? Anyway, that's when the female population started to increase.

I would love to read an account/history of women from the beginning to say, '80, about what it was like. You had your pick of dates, haha, but was there also discrimination? Would you have done it again, with 20/20 backwards vision? How the heck did you decide to pick A&M vs tu, Tech, etc? The "traditional college experience"?

I would imagine you would find that these were strong women. Pioneers.