Arizona republican. [volume] (Phoenix, Ariz.) 1890-1930, 1907-11-16
HAS CO.tDUCATlON
IN COLLEGE FAILED
Some Views on Training Young Men
and Women Under the Same College
Roof.

4 Cambridge, Mass, Nov. Especial
Correspondence to the Republican,
Are we Americans going back on CO.
education?
] More than 1900, 900 children are
being coeducated in public schools. and
the enumerators at the time of the last
national census found that nearly ~
per cent. of American college students
/ were in coeducational institutions
iOberlin College opened its doors to
both men and women as far back as
1888 and throughout the length and
breadth Of the country practically all
the state universities are coeducational
Yet the two sex plan has been pretty
Frequently under attack recently. Some
things the late President Harper of
Chicago University has To say about
Two more hard knocks have just
been given to the system of imparting
college education to young men and
young women under the same roof
one by an Eastern college president
whose experience has shown that men
students tend to disapper from the de-
Ipartment to which women are admit
ted the other by one of the most
brilliant of the women novelists which
! is creating a sensation on account Of
4 its frank treatment of social problems
tdue To conditions of heredity and en-
vironments has occasion to paint a
somewhat unlovely picture of the re-
O., suit of coeducation in a leading Wes-
tern university.
The question of what to do with am
bilious young women seeking the same
advantages as their brothers and cous-
ins has been met in Cambridge by
what is know mas the Radcliffe plan.
and the woman's college affiliated with
Harvard has flourished since the days
! when il was, the Harvard Annex"
thought the attitude of the men stu
dents at the oldest of American insti-
buttons OF higher education, has always
been like that of a freshman who when
| his father asked him what were the
sights Of Cambridge, replied. THE
Radcliffe girls" Whether. however
the broad problem has been solved
anywhere is still regarded by practical
educators as doubtful
There was consequently a ripple of
interest last month when President F.
w. Hamilton of Tufts College. one of
the greater Boston. came out with a
declaration that the college of liberal
arts is likely in the near future to con-
, Tain Snly women unless some scheme
for separate colleges can be devised
The girls drive young fellows away.
Women students began to be admitted
to Tufts fifteen years ago. They COM
pose nearly so per cent of this years
entering class in the college of liberal
arts. President Hamilton. without at
lacking the higher education of women
in which he thoroughly believes. ar
CUES against coeducation as applied to
the Eastern institution of which he is
the head
A more personal lien of attack ap-
pears in a novel, THE Road to Damas-
GUS" written by Mrs. II. A. Mitchell
Keays, resident now of Cambridge
but until recently of the university
centre of one of the Western states
Mrs. Keays one of whose earlier stories
handled the divorce question with that
utter frankness that the women novel;
lists OF today affect. has in this latest
books taken advantage of an interest
ing study of the old antithesis of here
dity as against environment TO have
something to say incidentally regard
ing the social side OF life in the col
leges where both sexes meet daily in
class rooms and elsewhere. Her novel
is not distinctly a college story. II
deals with the larger aspects of life
as lived by men and women in a city
lof the Middle West. Some Of the
chapters. however. give point to the
words OF a member of the medical
faculty Of Syracuse University to the
effect that other problems arising out
of coeducation. however serious they
may be. are nevertheless "a minor
matter compared with the lasting pow
er to harm that exists in student love
and marriage 1t attacks the credulity
of one not born under the influence of
American customs to be told that these
colleges deliberately foster student
marriages. which must also imply stu
dent love. In one Western college
day is deliberately set apart during
Commencement week for the annunce-
ment of engagements between the stu
dents"
Some such situation as this appears
to exist at ''Waverly University" the
institution at which some of the action
in Mrs. Keays' book centers. Just
which of the leading state universities
of the West is intended has already be-
come something Of speculation
among eastern readers Of the book:
although reference to wo-to-noth-
/. ing football game played between
Waverly and the University of Chicago
might seem to give clew.
woman newly married to a we'll
to-do lawyer in a Western city which
could be Detroit or Minneapolis or Mil
waukee or Kansas City of any other
place in the half million class, received
into her home during her husbands
,absence in Europe his illegitimate son
of whose existence he had never been
Informed. Her action was put to her
as duty which she felt she could not
levade. Fearing to destroy the illusion
of married happiness, she was unwill-
ing to disclose the adopted boys iden-
fifty to his father, who with unconceal-
| ed disgust allowed her to bring up a
founding with the same care that was
Ill., Il