Accommodating Female Students at UNC-Chapel Hill, March 25, 1923

Will Find Way Out

The University of North Carolina authorities have been wrestling with a ticklish problem in the request of the girl students for a woman’s building at the University. The opposition to it by the majority of the alumni and of the student body was and is strong, while the women are about as strong in their request. That put the officials in between two fires, and unless there is some diplomatic work done somebody is going to get burnt.

The University, as we understand it, is not a co-educational institution in the usual meaning of the word. Some years ago it opened its doors to women who desired post-graduate work, and not long ago the regular courses in the junior and senior classes were opened to women. There are at present, all told, probably less than 100 women at the University. Of those, somewhere in the neighborhood of half are members of families of faculty members, and need no special woman’s building for their housing. Of the others, all except probably eight or ten are housed in a building specially set aside for women. In that view, the trustees do not think that it is necessary to go to the expense of putting up an expensive building when there are so few women to be accommodated, and the University at this time has no plans for making the institution co-educational in the general acceptance of that term.

But the women students, even though they are small in numbers, will not be ignored, at least that is the general impression, though the officials are not giving out definite statements about it at this time. The outlook is that there will be a building to cost probably $75,000 or more, provided the young women students, and under the present demand that should be more than ample to take care of them. But the problem has given much concern to the trustees, faculty, building committee and all others connected with the University, and there has been considerable side-stepping especially by some who have a weather ear to the trend of politics. However, it is believed that the whole matter will be worked out on a basis that will prove satisfactory to all parties concerned.

From the editorial page of the Durham Morning Herald, Sunday, March 25, 1923