page_title: History of Cornell University
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: History of Cornell University / Coeducation / Background
context_page_description: The history of Cornell University begins when its two founders, Andrew Dickson White of Syracuse and Ezra Cornell of Ithaca, met in the New York State Senate in January 1864. Together, they established Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1865. The university was initially funded by Ezra Cornell's $400,000 endowment and by New York's 989,920-acre allotment of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862
  However, even before Ezra Cornell and Andrew White met in the New York Senate, each had separate plans and dreams that would draw them toward their collaboration in founding Cornell. White believed in the need for a great university for the nation that would take a radical new approach to education; and Cornell, who had great respect for education and philanthropy, desired to use his money "to do the greatest good." Abraham Lincoln's signing of Vermont Senator Justin Morrill's Land Grant Act into law was also critical to the formation of many universities, including Cornell, in the post-Civil War era.
context_section_description: In the mid 19th Century, coeducation was still a new and controversial idea. Most colleges were exclusively male, and several womens colleges had been founded as a response. But prior to Cornell's charter in 1865, few colleges were devoted to coeducation. (It is worth noting that coeducation did not catch on broadly with elite northeastern schools, including the Ivy League, until the 1960s) Oberlin College and University of Michigan were two coeducational colleges which predated Cornell's founding, and provided models for Cornell.
  The carnage of the American Civil War had introduced women into new areas of experience and leadership, and because of war casualties women outnumbered men in the United States. Central New York, and especially nearby Seneca Falls, was the center of the 19th-century women's rights movement. Cornell's founders Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White favored coeducation and had deliberately included language in the school's charter specifying that it would offer instruction to "any person." Still, the school had no explicit policy about accepting women, and Cornell enrolled its first class in 1868 with 412 men and no women. In theory,  the school would accept any person who could pass the admission requirements, but no facilities existed for women at its start, and the reality of admitting women was not immediately clear.
  In September 1870, one Jennie Spencer, of Cortland, New York, passed a state scholarship examination thus becoming Cornell's first female student. Because of the lack of housing for women on campus, Spencer lived in downtown Ithaca, requiring her to walk up the hill for classes. This was an arduous task in Ithaca's harsh weather, considering the condition of the roads and the bulky Victorian dress of the time. Spencer reluctantly left Cornell without graduating, but her situation raised awareness of the need for housing and facilities for women on campus.
caption: Sage College was the constructed as the women's dormitory in 1872
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