Quiet Riot : Student life: It is precisely <i> because </i> of their education, Mills women say, that they have been able to protest so effectively the decision to take the college coed.

It is midnight at Mills College, and so still that the crickets can be heard above the rumble from the freeway that nudges the sylvan campus. At blockades encircling President Mary Metz’s house, student strikers stand guard, as they have around the clock since May 4, the day after the board of trustees announced Mills will become coeducational in 1991.

They are foot soldiers in a war pitting students, who overwhelmingly oppose admission of undergraduate men to Mills, against the administration and trustees. As allies, students have most of the faculty and staff, as well as the Alumnae Assn.

This is a deceptively civilized little war. Gene Metz, the husband of Mills’ president, walking the family dog, stops at the blockade to discuss the dog’s diet. As he leaves, he asks the women: “Would you like the front light on?”

Ann Gelardi, a senior from Houston, says later, “I respect Mary Metz, and I feel bad about sleeping in front of her house.” Still, Metz is the enemy: She voted for coeducation.

Angelique Edwards, a senior from San Francisco, is a soldier with a big white hair bow. “In case you’re wondering,” she explains, “today was beautiful hair day” on the barricades. Kate Griffith, a freshman from Los Angeles, adds, “We’ve gone past fatigue and are now on the threshold of absolute absurdity.”

Across the 130-acre campus, blockaders are settling in for another long, chilly night. The enemy must not gain entry to buildings where college business ordinarily is conducted. When strangers approach, students link arms and ask, politely, who goes there.

Beneath the facade, however, there is hostility and anger. The trustees, scheduled to meet Thursday and Friday, have said they may consider rethinking admission of men--if all factions of the college have workable proposals to meet a financial crisis tied to dipping enrollment.

Over the weekend, Zina Jacque, dean of admissions and financial aid, sent a letter to protesting students imploring them to leave the barricades and join forces with the administration as “allies of necessity.”

Without access to their files, Jacque pointed out, the administration has been hampered in drawing up its proposal for the board; without access to files, computers and mail, it cannot process applications and may lose prospective students.

No dice, said the strikers. “She’s trying to make us responsible,” said student activist Anna Stravato, “to put it on our heads that admissions is not able to get students.”

From the start, protesters have reiterated, “We will not leave the barricades until the decision is reversed,” and insisted they would not vacate dorms Friday, when the campus is scheduled to close for the summer.

Student activist Silja Talvi said Tuesday the blockades will remain at least until Friday, when the full board meets.

“Of course, there will be students who will leave,” Talvi said, “but I think the administration will be surprised at how many students are willing to stay.” Whether the blockades stay, she added, “will depend entirely on the board’s decision.”

If the answer is no, she says, “We’ll reveal our plan of action. And we will have a plan of action.”

Mary Metz said Tuesday, “I believe the board will make a decision on Friday, either to change its decision of May 3 or to reaffirm that decision,” based on new proposals for fund raising, recruitment and retention.

Stravato said students want to end the strike “without losing legitimacy” with the board and with the media, which has given their revolt international play.

“Whatever happens,” she said, “we have won. We’ve made our statement to the world.”

That they’ve made a statement seems undebatable. What is unclear is the ultimate impact of the protest, which included a boycott of classes, cancellation of most finals and a campus takeover.

There was also grandstanding: Several women shaved their heads; others taped their mouths shut to symbolize the trustees’ refusal to hear their voices.

Have they, as some of them believe, done nothing less than revitalize the feminist movement on college campuses? Have they saved their school for women? Or have they inadvertently inflicted irreparable harm on their beloved Mills?

Asked if anything positive has come out of the turmoil, Jacque, long an advocate of Mills as a women’s college, replies cynically: “I think it’s real positive for other women’s colleges. The students are acting in a way that will absolutely hinder enrollment this fall. An 18-year-old woman doesn’t want anger, doesn’t want unrest, and is afraid of anything that smacks of radical feminism. People are going to write their $21,000 checks (for tuition, room and board) for this?”

Jacque cannot imagine that, in the current climate, male undergraduates will want to attend Mills. And, she adds, “I’m not so sure how many women will want to come. . . .

“We are losing ground every day,” she said.

She estimates that about 250 of the student body of 777 have been active strikers, supported by a “significant” number of passive students. She says she has yet to hear any student say she wants Mills to go coed.

The college could have called police at any time; it was discussed. But, Jacque says, “It really isn’t the Mills way. In 138 years of the college history, it has not been necessary. The Mills way is open discussion and negotiation.”

Students see that differently. Mills has an image, says Ann Gelardi, that just doesn’t jibe with “us being dragged off by the cops.” Besides, points out Angelique Edwards, “Oakland has far more serious problems” for police to deal with.

So the protesters remain in charge.

They have settled in with sleeping bags and blankets. With food dropped off by alumnae encouraging them to “keep the faith.” With coffee makers and portable TV sets.

An alternative coalition of alumnae, angered by failure of the mainstream Mills College Alumnae Assn. to react immediately to the trustees’ decision, sprang up. The coalition staged a brief takeover of Reinhardt Alumnae House--neutral territory. But the renegades and regulars have since made peace.

Working together, they mounted a huge phone-a-thon, hoping to reach 6,000 of the college’s 14,000 alumnae, asking for money. If the board will reverse itself, grant a five-year reprieve, the association has pledged within that time to raise $10 million for the endowment and increase its annual unrestricted gift to the college from $450,000 to $750,000.

Alumnae flocked to campus to support the strike. They sold T-shirts with slogans such as “Better Dead Than Coed” and “Mills College. Not a Girls’ School Without Men But a Women’s College Without Boys.”

Suzanne Yeiser, of Oakland, a community college art teacher who attended Mills on a graduate scholarship in the ‘60s, returned because “I don’t have any kids and I was really contemplating leaving any money I may have at the end of it to Mills. I don’t want to leave it to a coed college. My mom went to Wellesley. I’ll send it off to Wellesley.”

Christine Daniel, class of ‘86, an Oakland lawyer, assessed chances of the board coming around: “I call it the Old Coke-New Coke argument. If Coca-Cola can do it, why can’t we?”

Scenes from Mills in turmoil: A banner unfurled from a window of historic Mills Hall, a landmark that weathered the Big Quake of 1906: “Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned.” Shrouds of black on the bell tower and the library. The graffiti of protest--”RAPED” scrawled in yellow, the color that symbolizes the strikers’ solidarity.

Mills women may have lost their college as they have known it, but they have kept their sense of humor. At headquarters for the rebellion, a sign demands, “Shave the Dog and Paint It Yellow!” (A suggestion for the Metzes’ Sheltie).

On the side of the registrar’s office, students have written a curriculum for a new, coeducational Mills college. Course titles include “Beginning Mascara” with Tammy Baker, “Man-Trapping” with Dr. Ruth.

But these women are deadly serious about their mission: to keep Mills a women’s college.

The word they invoke again and again is “empowerment.”

Linda Kay, class of ‘73, executive director of the 111-year-old Mills College Alumnae Assn., says: “In a coeducational school, leadership is at best shared, and usually dominated by males. In the classroom, men speak more often, they speak longer.” The nature of the dialogue is different--and so is the gender of faculty role models (Mills’ faculty is 51% women).

Kay, who did graduate work at UCLA business school, adds, “Mills is where I really learned to think. UCLA was really my trade school.”

She estimates that 90% of the alumnae oppose Mills going coed. Among them is Judy Smith, class of ‘60, director of development for Mills and mother of Susanna Smith, a striker in the class of ’90.

Judy Smith arrived at Mills in fall, 1956, fresh from Oklahoma City. Then, she says, “If you were a good student, you went away one year and then returned to the University of Oklahoma and pledged the sorority of your mother’s choice. That’s where you made your social connections for life . . . and where you found your husband.”

Because she had grandparents in California, she decided to check out Mills. When she drove through the stately stone gates, she decided: “This is where I belong.”

But, as was expected, she enrolled at Oklahoma as a sophomore and pledged Kappa Kappa Gamma. “I hated it,” she says; as a junior, she returned to Mills.

Susanna Smith, a thoughtful, articulate biology major hoping to be a pediatrician, had never thought of following her mother to Mills. But the fun she had at an overnight campus visit for high schoolers convinced her: “They were doing just fine without guys around. I definitely feel stronger” for having had a women’s college education.

Though adamantly anti-coed, Judy Smith says, “We don’t want Mills to go away completely. I would rather have a coed college than no college.”

Warren Hellman, 55, a San Francisco investment banker and chairman of the Mills Board of Trustees, is the focus of much of the students’ anger, the scapegoat perhaps.

“It’s obviously painful, personally,” he says. Still, he says, “What they’ve done in a sense has been very positive. They’ve shown the world what Mills is . . . what they stand for.”

He laughs and adds: “One of their non-negotiable demands is that I resign, and I keep saying, ‘Please don’t take that one off the table.’ I get to pay several hundred thousand a year (his annual contribution) for the privilege of doing this.”

By itself, he says, the Alumnae Assn.’s fund-raising pledge is not enough. “The $10 million is a Band-Aid. No, it’s more than that, a tourniquet.”

The bigger problem, he says, is that “among traditional age undergraduate students, there is not a large enough market to make this college viable. We have to broaden the market. . . .

“Despite all the rhetoric,” he adds, “there are a hell of a lot of women who won’t consider a single sex college”--perhaps 95%, surveys show.

Hellman painted a grim economic picture of Mills, which competes with the other 92 women’s colleges in the country for the same students. Mills, he explained, has an endowment of $70,00 per student, compared to $200,000 at Wellesley. At Mills, the average student pays 63% of full tuition; at Wellesley, 80%. Tuition is also higher at Wellesley. He calculates that Mills starts each year with only $10,500 for each student, compared with $24,000 at Wellesley.

As tuition has climbed, the UC system--at a fraction of the cost-- has taken a toll on the Mills pool of students. For fall, Hellman says, “There were just not enough applications, by far not enough.”

Mills accepts 80% of those who apply; 40% of those enroll. Lowering academic standards and reorienting from liberal arts to a vocational curriculum were options rejected by the board.

Hellman assesses the abuse heaped on him, and the board, and concludes it is proof “no good deed goes unpunished.”

He points out the irony: “I resigned from two major clubs in San Francisco and I’m in the process, perhaps, of being kicked out of one” for objecting to male-only policies. “I’ve now been on both sides of the same argument.”

He wonders why Mills, a women’s college, has never had a woman chair of its board of 22 women and 13 men. “To me, a marvelous outcome of all this would be for a woman to become chairman and me to become vice chairman--if they want me at all.”

Metz, president since 1981, is seen by some as a “traitor.” Students contend they were misled for months about Mills’ intentions. The ultimate insult was Metz’s vote for coeducation.

But last week she stood before cheering students and said she was “very pleased” to tell them the board’s executive committee, based on the alumnae fund-raising proposal, would reconsider its decision.

“I want us to be enthusiastic, but cautious,” she added. It was a speech of coming-together. Nevertheless, new student body president Melissa Stevenson-Dile said, students remain “very concerned” about possible retaliation.

Earlier, Metz had delivered an ultimatum: Disband the blockades or no commencement. The deadline passed; the blockades remain.

In an interview, Metz discussed the chances of the decision being reversed: “We’re optimistic because the goodwill and the commitment is so strong. The faculty, for example, may consider teaching more classes. . . . I’m delighted. I wanted Mills to remain a women’s college in the first place. But my responsibility as president is for the well being of the college.”

After the executive committee’s “maybe,” a group of students broke into a loud chant: “Strong women, proud women, all women, Mills women.”

Nancy Sackett, 49, a resuming student, observed somewhat bitterly, “Mary (Metz) gave that cheer to us at our senior dinner two days before the announcement (about going coed). . . . I do feel she betrayed us.”

Sackett and her daughter, Robin, both graduating seniors, entered Mills together; they are one of three mother-daughter teams enrolled.

Both are passionately pro-strike. “I went through the ‘60s,” Nancy said, but “I’m blown away” by the intensity of passion here. “It’s not about hating men. It’s about loving ourselves and learning in a society that is still sexist and racist.”

Robin, a one-time cosmetology school student now majoring in psychology, said, “None of us really want to take anything away from Mills. We love Mills. If we weren’t serious about the value of our education, we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing.” Nancy nodded and said, “I want my granddaughter to go to Mills. Someday, if it has to be coed, I want it to be the most outrageous, forward-looking. . . .”

Added Robin, “It’s not the last two weeks of senior year I expected to have, but this has been an incredible learning experience. We may be the most exciting class that ever graduated from Mills.”

Nancy Sackett looked at her daughter and said: “We’ll have great war stories, won’t we, at our reunion?”

The Sacketts will have a commencement. Students plan a ceremony on campus at 10 a.m. Sunday. Board members are not invited.

More than likely, said Anna Stravato, diplomas--or, if necessary, pieces of paper--will be handed out by the commencement speaker: Sharon Richardson Jones, director of development for the Oakland Athletics and a Mills alumna, class of ’76. Chosen by the senior class, she received a letter of invitation from Metz last August.

“Unless I receive a letter uninviting me, I just assume I am still on,” said Jones, who refers to herself as the “Jacqueline Robinson” of baseball, the first black woman hired by the American league.

She supports the students--”I believe that they are doing what they were trained to do as Mills women, to stand up and to speak up, and to challenge authority and to work together, to interact and to negotiate.”

Under an orange and white parachute, a staunch little group is encamped at Cowell Center, which houses the admissions office. Amy Aucutt, a sophomore from the Monterey Peninsula, is peeved: “We were sold a service that we’re not going to be getting” if Mills goes coed. As an incoming junior, she adds, “I’m kind of stuck.”

These protesters are part of a team that swung into action at 7:30 a.m. May 4. Within hours, students had established a network of blockade runners; later, they would get walkie-talkies. Using automatic dialing devices, they jammed official campus phone lines.

One night, two students were barbecuing mounds of chicken on a giant brazier on the commons. The spirit of the rebellion was as visible as the curling smoke. Sarah Ratcliff, a junior from Chicago, was saying she doesn’t buy the argument that college is to prepare them for a real world that includes men. She played basketball in high school, where, “the boys got the money. They got the cheerleaders.” That, she says, is reality.

Linda Goodrich, a black woman who teaches English and ethnic studies, stopped by to encourage the strikers. “Believe me,” she said, “if this school goes coed, a lot of faculty will leave, or they’ll retire early.”

Later, at the registrar’s office, there was serious talk by the light of votive candles.

Cynthia Lamb, a graduate student from San Francisco, observed of Mills: “This is our home and these women are our family. I feel a mandate to preserve this place for generations of women.”

Mills, Lamb said, is “very comforting, a sanctuary.” She said she is a lesbian, a member of the Mills Bisexual-Lesbian Union, and, she estimates, one of about 50 lesbian students. “There has been a lot of homophobia on this campus,” she said. “Until this revolution, I have hidden my sexuality. The revolt really has cut across all lines.”

“Some women have expected a law, the ERA, to empower them,” says Kate Griffith. “Women need to empower themselves.”

Ann Gelardi defines empowerment this way: “At the University of Texas, I sat in the back of the classroom and let some guy ask the questions when I had my hand up first. I thought that was what was expected of me. Now, I feel I can stand up to anything.”

The students speak of the “sisterhood” of generations of Mills women. True, the Mills woman of today, in jeans and sweats, appears outwardly to have little in common with the women in sweaters and pearls who came to Mills, an old institution with old money, 40 or 50 years ago. Still, Griffith says, there is a bond.

Today, the student body is 26% minorities. The college encourages racial and social diversity by giving $3.3 million each year in financial aid.

Some see the revolution at Mills as male-bashing, an indefensible posture in an era when women are demanding nonsexist institutions. Karri Donahue, a senior from Bellingham, Wash., responds: “There isn’t the societal need for all-men’s environments. The position of men in society has never been questioned. It’s never been threatened.”

Now, says Zina Jacque, it is time for “healing.” There are deep wounds. One college officer was spat at by a student; Jacque tells of abusive phone calls to her home.

Four years ago, she came to Mills to interview “with my eyebrows up,” she says, a Northwestern graduate skeptical about a women’s college. She is a convert. Being identified now as the enemy “hurts, it really does,” she says.

Metz said of the student revolution, “They have helped us all focus on how much Mills means to us . . . they did really give us a clarion call.”