Fifty Years of Female Broncos

By Anayo Awuzie

When female students were first admitted to Santa Clara 50 years ago, the university did not allow them to use the telephone late at night, they were forbidden from sunbathing in the gardens and they couldn't wear shorts. Today, the president and vice-president of Associated Student Government are both women, there are more female than male students, and last year's valedictorian was a woman.

Since the day the Father Patrick Donohoe gave the green light for co-education, Santa Clara became the first Catholic institute of higher education in California to admit women after 110 years of being exclusively male and multitudes of women have been able to receive a Jesuit education just as the men before them.

"It was really a watershed moment for the university because our history has been extensive," says Kathy Kale, Executive Director of the Alumni Association, "There was a lot of controversy about that decision, and yet women came to campus and really changed Santa Clara irrevocably. I think Santa Clara has been better for it; it opened the door for female faculty members and certainly female staff members."

According to one of the first female graduates Gaby Miller (‘65), "I learned, but they hadn't a clue what to do with us, they really didn't."

Santa Clara Historian George Giacomini said that women remained out of higher education for a long time. "There had been a movement toward co-education throughout the country, but it was a slow movement in the west and among Catholic colleges. Santa Clara was certainly in the forefront."

The university changed the all-male residencies at Park Lanai, where the Park Ave apartments are currently located, to Villa Maria, a residence hall that was specifically for the incoming women. After 1961, the university quickly built Graham Hall, which became the on-campus residency for women for future years. Women-only dorms at a Jesuit school in its first year of accepting women in the early 60's came with a set of stiff rules.

Giacomini said that even though most men who attended the university weren't bothered by women attending the school the administration, given the time period and the nature of a Jesuit institution, wanted to take precaution by restricting the female students.

"Even at basketball games, women had to sit in a separate seating section," said Giacomini, "They couldn't sit in the booster section with the male students... that stayed for about three years. Then they were eventually allowed to sit with the rest of the students."

The women on campus had many successes and have made a difference at Santa Clara, such as Mary Somers Edmunds, who was the first woman to receive an undergraduate degree in 1962, Mary Woods Bennett, who was the first woman to serve on the Board of Trustees in 1971 and Denise Carmody, who was the first woman provost in 2000 and established Women's and Gender's Studies Department in 2005.

Outside of campus, women like Janet Napolitano, United States Secretary of Homeland Security and Brandy Chastain, a former member of the Olympic soccer team and currently playing for the California Storm, have taken the values they learned at Santa Clara to an internationally-recognized level.

"Now the president of the student body is a woman which was unheard of during that time," said Giacomini.

An event for the spring is currently being planned by the Alumni Association and others on campus to properly celebrate this milestone for women, but there are still no concrete details.

"What I admire so much about them was their courage," said Kale. "It took a lot of courage to even decide to come because they knew this was going to be a whole new experience for everyone involved. Their first act of bravery was to come and I think the second act of bravery was to stay. And now, Santa Clara is better for it."

Contact Anayo Awuzie at aawuzie@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.