Note 17 — Front matter

The objection of men students in the east to coeducation seems to be mainly in the apprehension that the presence of women may interfere with the free social life which has become so prominent a feature of private colleges for men in the east. These colleges are, for the most part, situated either in small country towns, or in the suburbs of a city, in communities which have grown up about the college, and their students live largely in college dormitories; the conditions, therefore, are exceedingly unlike those prevailing in non-residential colleges and also unlike those prevailing in the world at large. These exceptional conditions are a source of pleasure and, in many respects, of advantage to the student. Undoubtedly there is in coeducational colleges less unrestraint; young men undoubtedly care much for the impression that they make on young women of the same age, and there is more decorum and perhaps more diligence in classrooms where women are present. The objection to coeducation on the part of women students is, to some extent, the same; separate colleges for women in like manner are, as a rule, academic communities living according to regulations and customs all their own; women also feel themselves more unrestrained when they are studying in women’s colleges. Then, too, coeducation in the east is still regarded as in some measure an experiment, to the success of which the conduct of each individual woman may, or may not, contribute, and the knowledge of this tends to increase the self-consciousness of student life.