Winter 2002 volume 99 issue 1 : letters
More on Men at Vassar
In the Fall 2000 Quarterly, Elizabeth St. John Dunn '46 pushes back the time of the first males at Vassar to when she attended, before the smaller group of WW11 veterans took classes in the "c" term of 1946 and the larger group (about 92) were admitted for the subsequent "a" term which began in September of 1946. I suppose the actual date of the first males to attend Vassar classes will probably never be determined precisely. In the Vassar Alumnae Magazine of October 1946 Professor Margaret Myers reported that "This action [admitting males] was not without precedent, for during the depression years, a few men had attended classes at Vassar. Nor was the presence of young men on the campus a novelty; many a Yale and Princeton reading period, and more recently, many a furlough, has been spent at Vassar." I suppose that if anything distinguishes the veterans who attended Vassar between 1946 and 1953 it is that they were the largest single group of males ever admitted to Vassar before it went coed, and that sixteen of them, who initially were granted the baccalaureate by the University of the State of New York upon the recommendation of the Faculty and Trustees of Vassar College, were subsequently offered the Vassar degree. Thus, those who accepted, no doubt became the first males to ever receive a Vassar baccalaureate degree.
Ralph LoCascio '50
Lincoln Park, New Jersey