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After 229 years as an all-male institution, Columbia College became the last Ivy to begin accepting women. This month marks the 30-year anniversary of the decision to make Columbia coed, and it seems impossible to imagine a Literature Humanities or Contemporary Civilization class without a female perspective. Yet 30 years wasn’t that long ago, and the alumni of the class of 1987 still have fresh memories of what it was like to be the first ones to set foot on a coed Columbia campus—memories of urinals in female bathrooms, professors who had never taught a female student, and frat boys who walked around in T-shirts championing Columbia College as 100 percent male. In this week’s lead, four women and one man reflect on their experiences as part of the first coed class and answer questions about discrimination, New York City, relations with Barnard, and the effect of the AIDS epidemic on the dating scene.

Catherine WebsterAssistant Professor of FrenchUniversity of Central Oklahoma Edmond, OklahomaInterview by Monica Carty

How were the relationships between Barnard and Columbia women?Sibling rivalry is a natural consequence of the whole situation, I think for me personally and for all of us to some degree. I had some excellent role models who were upperclass women at Barnard. There was more anxiety between the women who had gone to Barnard as first-year students and those who had gone to Columbia as first-year students. We also—this probably doesn’t happen to you very much—had to correct people all the time. “Where do you go to school?” “Columbia” “Oh, Barnard?” Barnard is a nice school that I do not attend. I didn’t apply there. It’s a great school—I have a lot of respect for it. I don’t go there. It was very hard for people to understand that I could be a student at Columbia College.

Just in general or within the Columbia community?If they knew about Columbia and Barnard, they would just assume that I was a Barnard student. Which wasn’t the worst fate ever, but still, it was wrong. People would ask, “How come Columbia College students have to constantly say that they go to Columbia College?” And I said, “Barnard has a hundred years of history, it has done great things for women, it has graduated some amazing people, and we haven’t graduated anyone yet.” We are making this happen. And we will do great things—I have no doubt that Columbia College women are going to excel in lots of areas, become nationally known. But give us a chance. So if you think we’re a little bit possessive about our identity, it’s because we need to make sure that people know what it is.

It seems as if you were on this cusp of trying to bridge two histories at Columbia together.Right! Exactly. It’s hard for me to fully understand what Columbia College is like as a coed institution, since I was barely in it. But we were at the cusp, which was fun and exciting. We definitely got a lot of positive attention because of our status, our historical moment. We were aware of it.

Would you say when you graduated from Columbia, it was significantly more woman-friendly than when you entered as a first-year?I don’t even recall spending that much time worrying about it. In McBain, Columbia had not renovated the restroom areas, so they were covered in not-very-friendly graffiti. We made a collage to cover up all the naughty stuff. There were also urinals in the bathrooms, so people put plants in them. Columbia didn’t cover every last detail, but the things that were essential were taken care of.

There was nothing that hindered you from being as successful as possible here?Really, no, and I felt that the things that were hindering me would have hindered me wherever I was, like my freshman chemistry class. That was intimidating. And I think it’s a compliment to the university that we felt like we were regular college students.

Sandy AsirvathamJazz pianist and singer-songwriter Baltimore, MarylandInterview by Meredith Foster

When you applied to Columbia, did you know that it was going to be the first coed class? Absolutely! Absolutely! Although a lot of the old stuff about Columbia, like the Core Curriculum, was also appealing. There was this combination of something very new and historic and tradition. Later we got more skeptical about ideas like the canon, but in the early days as a budding young feminist intellectual, I felt that it was a very exciting prospect. We also liked boys. That was part of it too, I am sure [laughs].

How did men respond to having women in their classes?I don’t remember anything particularly negative—maybe some of the older men faculty. I was a philosophy major, and I often experienced a bit of a chill or confusion. I wouldn’t say outright bias, but more of a cultural confusion of the men in their 60s who had been accustomed to teaching only men. They didn’t seem to know how to cope with it on some level, but I am only talking about one or two individuals. Among the students, though, I was so caught up in my own experience that I probably didn’t even register it. A couple of times in that first year, I caught a few T-shirts that were going around that I think one of the frat houses printed off. The t-shirts were light blue and had a king’s crown on it, and it said, “Columbia College, 100 percent male.” But personally, I did not experience anything particularly negative or positive from the male population.

So what were relations like between men and women?There was still a little bit of the freewheeling ’70s feel around. There was hooking up before we ever used that as a reified term. But there were also a lot of friendships. For me personally, I have always had as many close men friends as women. I continue to have that happen. I am a musician, and I just got back from a rehearsal where everyone in the room except for me was a man. That is a very comfortable feeling for me, and I think that is partly a result of my Columbia experience. Often I am not just the only women in the room but also the one in charge, as I was today. I think that comfort of friendship, collaborating, being the leader and the follower came out of the social scene in my freshman and sophomore year, when we weren’t that exotic to each other and were just hanging out.

What was the culture of New York City like at the time, and how did this affect your experience at Columbia? It was a lot edgier. You didn’t have to go very far to feel that you were in New York City. New York was still coming out the crime waves and fiscal crises of the ’70s. When my girlfriends and I would leave campus to go to a dance club in the Lower East Side, it still had that late ’70s, early ’80s punk feel to it. So that was cool. Columbia was an Ivy League and a little stale, and then there was this contrast that you were really in the big city with all its beauty and ugliness. I think that might be a little different now because the whole Upper West Side is more gentrified and ‘Mall of America’ since we were there. So I get the feeling that it is kind of a different experience.

Teresa Saputo-Crerend Jewelry designer and founder of A Little PeaceBedford Corners, New YorkInterview by Rikki Novetsky

How did you hear that Columbia was going coed?I had two older brothers that were enrolled in Columbia. I had one brother who had graduated in ’81, and my other brother was a senior in Columbia when I applied. I was determined to pave my own path, and I felt like if I could be one of the first women, I would be paving my own path. My mother also went to the Teachers College, so we were kind of a Columbia family. I was sort of privy to the excitement early on.

Upon your arrival, did you face discrimination from fellow students? What about professors?I never had that feeling. If anything, I felt like we were celebrated. There were some kinks to work out on the sports side. There was now a whole set of Columbia/Barnard sports teams that had to find a facility to practice in, so there were some kinks to work out there, but no, never any discrimination.

What was the culture like between men and women at Columbia? I felt like everyone was pretty excited about it. I’m sure for the freshmen, having women sit in on Lit Hum and CC definitely offered a new perspective in some of the philosophical debates, so maybe for some of the sophomores who before had been taking those classes with just men, I’m sure we helped broaden the classroom debate.

How did you feel being the first female class at Columbia?On the sports side, there were some barriers to break through. I was pleased to be a part of that discussion. I remember sitting in on meetings about alumni giving, and at the time all the alums were men who had graduated from an all-male school, and if they were giving to sports, there was a question to whether that money could be given to the women’s sports as well. That’s an experience that is totally unique to being in the first class of women at a school.

What was your experience being a part of Columbia athletics?My best friends to this day are two women from the Columbia tennis team. I speak to them and see them all the time. I was an 18-year-old driving a tennis van with 12 girls in it to the Binghamton Racquet Club, sometimes really early in the morning, and that was a bonding experience—navigating through the city traffic in a big van. There was a particular camaraderie between us and the men’s tennis team, which was particularly good at the time. We supported them and they supported us.

How did you decide to get involved in alumni affairs? Are you happy with that decision, and what has that experience taught you?I was asked to be on the dean’s task force to work on how we can get even more women involved with the school. There was a compelling argument to get involved—even though we now have 30 years of women graduated, in terms of giving back to the school, men still give more. We wanted to find out why that was, and how we can get more women connected to the school again. It was great to put together a group of women to work that out.

Andrea SolomonSenior Associate Dean for Academic Administration, Graduate School of Arts and SciencesColumbia UniversityNew York, New YorkInterview by Rikki Novetsky

How did you hear Columbia College was going coed?I didn’t hear. When I applied to Columbia, I didn’t know it wasn’t coed. I was recently speaking with a high school friend of mine who reminded me that he had stopped me in the hallway and told me I was going to Barnard, because he didn’t know Columbia was going coed either. In short, I found out in my admissions letter.

How did you decide to apply?I wanted to go to Columbia. I was interested in the Core Curriculum and the New York City aspect. It never occurred to me in the 1980s that an Ivy League school would be single-sex. Harvard and Radcliffe had combined so long ago.

How did you feel being the first female class at Columbia?After I got over the surprise, I was excited. It was new, and I was glad to be part of this brand new cohort that was going to change Columbia College for the better. After we arrived, we had heard that the average SAT score had went up 200 points in one year, and we felt very proud of Columbia for making the change. And a lot of the women in our graduating class excelled in very obvious ways. The valedictorian and the class president were both held by women by our senior year.

Did you receive any special opportunities—on campus or off campus—during your time in college because you were part of the first class? There were many opportunities because there were no women’s groups at Columbia College. We had to form a brand new entity—the Women’s Center and the Metrotones were both exciting new opportunities to form women’s groups. I remember we had to write a constitution for the Metrotones, and that was exciting. It was thrilling to decide how we were going to define ourselves against the Kingsmen.

Geoffrey MillerProfessor of PsychologyUniversity of New MexicoAuthor of The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human NatureAlbuquerque, New MexicoInterview by Meredith Foster

When you applied, did you know that it was the first year Columbia was going to be coed?I didn’t know until I got there, actually, so I was kind of surprised that there were all these women around and they weren’t from Barnard.

What was your reaction to having women in your classes?I had gone to a public coed high school, so I was certainly used to it. And it was a good, selective high school, so I was used to, at a certain extent, being around bright, intelligent women. But suddenly being in classes with all these women who were highly selected and academically brilliant was very fun and interesting.

Were most of the men as excited as you were that there were all these really smart women around? I think some of them were excited, and I think some of them were intimidated. I think that a lot of the guys felt that they had to raise their intellectual game in class and maybe also change their dating strategies.

What do you mean?The kind of strategies that had worked for high school girls didn’t necessarily work on smarter Columbia women.

What were the relations like between the men and women? Mostly friendships? Relationships?There was certainly a lot of dating freshman year. One interesting thing that happened is that there was a shift in the local sex ratio. Before Columbia went coed and it was just all guys, the dating pool for Columbia men was basically Barnard women and other local women in New York. And then what you had was a two girls for every guy situation. Not only were there girls across the street, but now around 40 percent of the Columbia class was also women. So that put the guys in a stronger bargaining position in the dating market. I think that was a dramatic shift in dating culture.

You said in an email “it was an interesting time” at Columbia—what did you mean by that?I think the sex ratio effect made it so that a lot of the guys who had been shy, geeky workaholics in high school were suddenly more in demand socially, and this allowed them to come out of themselves and to develop more self-confidence. There was also a more appreciative audience in seminars. As I said before, I think that a lot of the guys really raised their game in seminars. It was also an interesting time due to the novelty of the AIDS epidemic and the gloom that that cast over everybody’s dating lives and the kind of anxiety it provoked in terms of nobody wanting to be too promiscuous and people being a lot more cautious about same-sex relationships. The whole social scene seemingly charged by this AIDS scare and the conservative Reagan era that was going on created a kind of tension between the sexual promiscuousness commonly associated with college students versus this medical panic over AIDS and the conservative cultural pressures.a