The “Davidson Woman”: Student Media and Co-Education, 1965-1970
26 February 2025
To the Office of the Davidson College Archives and Special Collections–
My name is Sarah Tabor, and I am a student at Davidson College interested in utilizing your archive of the student publication, The Davidsonian, to investigate student media during the rise of co-education in American colleges between 1965 and 1970. Much of the research covering this topic focuses on institutional and political drivers of change, rather than the on-the-ground experience of students (Poulson; Goldin and Katz). Student newspapers like The Davidsonian have a unique capacity to display the everyday lives of students, and serve as a major source of campus-related news for students. In choosing to analyze student media, I hope to uncover deeper historical context for the massive reform of co-education beyond the institutional factors, into how the reform was interpreted and reacted to within the student body.
The overarching research question is, thus, how was the co-educational movement presented in student news media during the decade? What can we understand about the conversation happening on campus by comparing different pieces of news and their formats? How were female voices included in the news as compared to male ones? Taking inspiration from the work of David Diehl, who analyzed major new media framing of school integration, my research seeks, likewise, to uncover a deeper understanding of the on-the-ground perspectives of students toward co-education through analysis of published pieces of news.
An understanding of the historical context of co-education is incomplete without an understanding of the discourse of the student body at the time of change. Davidson College represents one of the few small, private liberal arts colleges in the Southeast which underwent this change in the decade I focus on. For this reason, and given the vitality of The Davidsonian as a student news source, it represents an essential campus to study amongst other liberal arts schools across the nation which integrated in the same decade.
Works Cited
Diehl, David K. “Framing School Integration: A Computational Analysis of Newspaper Discourse, 1990–2020.” Social Problems, vol. 71, no. 4, Dec. 2022, https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac052. Accessed 10 Dec. 2022.
Goldin, Claudia, and Lawrence F. Katz. “Putting the ‘Co’ in Education: Timing, Reasons, and Consequences of College Coeducation from 1835 to the Present.” Journal of Human Capital, vol. 5, no. 4, Dec. 2011, pp. 377–417, https://doi.org/10.1086/663277.
Poulson, Susan L. “”A Quiet Revolution”: The Transition to Coeducation at Georgetown and Rutgers Colleges, 1960-1975.” Order No. 9027671 Georgetown University, 1989. United States — District of Columbia: ProQuest. Web. 2 Feb. 2025.
Exhibit I – The Davidsonian 09-22-1972, Page 4
Exhibit II – The Davidsonian 09-29-1972, Page 5
Two excerpts of The Davidsonian, from Volume 64, Issues 1 and 2, demonstrate the significance of the Davidson Archives to my research. Exhibit I is a cartoon from the September 22nd, 1972 issue of the newspaper– the year women first enrolled as full-time, degree-seeking students at the College. The cartoon is signed with the last name “Balk” (or the initials “BALK”), but a cursory search of Davidson resources didn’t lead to any clues about the artist beyond the signature. The cartoon depicts a feminized cat (femininity, in this case, being crudely signalled by the addition of eyelashes and makeup, as well as breast-like details on the chest), in a lounging position, hands on its waist, casting a sly glance at the observer. The cat wears garters, its tail extending to hold up a top hat. The image, overall, feminizes and, in doing so, sexualizes, the wildcat mascot. The caption reads, “a Davidson woman needs no introduction.” In its overt sexualization of female students, the cartoon portrays one response of the male student body to the arrival of women on campus in 1972– viewing them as sexual objects, rather than intellectual equals.
In the very next issue of The Davidsonian, from September 29th of the same year, comes the response of a “coed,” or female student, Kathy Huntly (‘75) (Exhibit II). She calls the cartoon “sexist,” “degrading,” and a “blatant example of male chauvinism.” In the small section of the page she is allotted, she demands that the new female students be seen as the “intellectual peers” that they are to male students, rather than “voluptuous, female sex objects.” Just as Davidson men are valued for their intellect, rather than their bodies, can Davidson women not be treated with the same respect? Huntly’s response to the cartoon demonstrates a case of a woman on campus utilizing campus publications to enter into the community discourse on the change, and to make clear their own thoughts about the treatment of women in higher education during this time of great change on campuses across the country.
These sources represent the types of news pieces I will be pulling from the The Davidsonian archive. Both pieces cover the topic of coeducation, but in two different mediums– cartoon and commentary. The cartoon showcases the views of at least a section of the student population at Davidson at the time, while Huntly’s “letter to the editor” indicates that at least some of the student population opposed this depiction. In my research, I would compare how the medium of news and the identity of the author index facts or opinions about the same issue in different ways, revealing insights into the broader campus dialogue surrounding coeducation.
A cartoon, as news, has the ability to say things that commentary cannot. According to Linus Abraham’s research on cartoon’s effectiveness as a medium to express opinions about social issues, cartoons provide an “aggression-reduction function,” allowing a pathway for the expression of opinions that might otherwise be seen as un-shareable in some way (119). Cartoons, being visually symbolic rather than written, allows them to access different dialogues than written narratives can. A picture is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes. The image of this sexualized wildcat could indicate a commonly-held, but maybe not overtly shared, on-campus sentiment that held women as sexual objects rather than intellectual equals. My further research would involve a comparison of the portrayal of co-education across mediums. Considering what the cartoon may be able to access as opposed to the commentary, what aspects of the campus dialogue surrounding co-education be revealed? Analyzing how different mediums of news covered the topic of coeducation– noticing how a cartoon may index certain views that a commentary cannot, could grant greater context to the on-the-ground opinions of students at the time.
The commentary showcases the small way in which a woman’s voice was granted space on the newspaper page. However, I wonder if the “letter to the editor” served as the sole space for women’s opinions to be expressed? Kathy Huntly seems to singularly represent the views of “co-eds” at Davidson, though it cannot be assumed that all female students shared her opinion. I would look further into the Davidson archive for more examples of female authorship to evaluate the space female voices were given in the Davidsonian. A lack of female authorship in the media in general, beyond the “letter to the editor,” may indicate the media’s flattening of the female students’ experience into a monolith. The fact that a “letter to the editor” can be written by any student calls into question how much Huntly’s letter really exemplifies inclusion– were there female journalists on staff to write op-eds or draw cartoons showcasing their beliefs? Analysis of the presence of female voices in the news, within diverse areas of news, may unveil new perspectives on the types of conversations women were permitted to enter into through media at the time. It would be worthy to investigate these potential barriers to deepen historical understanding of the on-the-ground experience of women entering academia.
Davidson, being one of the only small, previously all-male, private liberal arts colleges in the South, provides a unique and important case to include within a broader investigation of American colleges in general. I chose Davidson to represent only one part of a much larger sample of schools that integrated around the same decade. Since my research seeks to understand on-the-ground dialogues surrounding co-education through the analysis of the portrayal of the issue in campus news media, it is integral to study a broad range of newspapers from diverse schools across the country. Davidson is a valuable campus to study amongst other schools, like Dartmouth and UVA, which began admitting women in the same decade. Through comparison of the news media published on unique campuses and observing key similarities and differences in the analysis of evidence, a broad understanding of on-the-ground student dialogue across the country during the 1960s and 1970s may be reached.
Works Cited
Abraham, Linus. “Effectiveness of Cartoons as a Uniquely Visual Medium for Orienting Social Issues.” Journalism & Communication Monographs , vol. 11, no. 2, June 2009.
BALK. “‘A Davidson Woman Needs No Introduction.’” The Davidsonian, 22 Sept. 1972, p. 4.
Huntly, Kathy. “Coed Dislikes Male Chauvinist Cartoon.” The Davidsonian, 29 Sept. 1972, p. 5.
