An Alumna Recognizes the Distinctive Voices of Mills

I admit it, I’m biased. I am a Mills College alumna and for two years after graduation I worked as a Mills admissions recruiter, taking my enthusiasm for life at that small women’s college out into the world of boy-crazed high school girls and their weary, skeptical counselors.

Two weeks ago, Mills College Trustees decided to admit men, a decision that set off a campuswide protest. That student outburst, in turn, has been credited with moving the trustees to announce that they would reconsider their decision at a meeting today.

When trustee murmurs about admitting men first filtered into alumnae publications last year amid discussion of Mills’ perpetually rocky finances, I figured it was cyclic. At least once a decade the notion of the healing power of co-education arises.

Instead of joining the debate, sending letters to the board of trustees or phoning the college president--as the Mills Alumnae Quarterly urged--I telephoned a friend who lives near the Oakland campus to try to secure one of the “Better Dead Than Co-Ed” T-shirts students were wearing.

The thing is--I confess it now--I went to Mills in spite of the fact that it was a women’s college. Selfish motivations were at work: I had a boyfriend in the Bay Area; I found the prospect of UC Berkeley intimidating, and my mother worked at Mills, which meant I could go there tuition-free. For me, Mills was the easy, lazy decision.

Then I became a convert. In some ways, becoming a Mills woman is like joining a cult. You are told you can be whatever you want to be and you start to believe it.

Even young women forced to choose Mills by their parents--often because the parents mistakenly believe it is a protective environment--begin to see the college’s strengths soon after discovering that there are no dormitory curfews and no bed checks.

I found I had more close women friends at Mills than ever before and we were having in-depth discussions, sometimes even comparing passages in Greek mythology rather than describing real-life Adonises on Berkeley’s Greek row. I found that a calculus class sans those two smart aleck boys from high school meant I could lead the pack. Mills was an oasis from the distraction of flirtation. It was convenient to set aside social life until the weekend or the evening.

So when those photographs of terror-stricken Mills women reacting to the news of the trustees’ decision hit the front pages of newspapers around the state, I was not surprised by their emotion. Many of my colleagues and friends, however, could not fathom such grief over something so minor: “It looks like Armageddon,” said one.

“What’s the matter with those girls?” said another.

And a third, a columnist I tried to persuade to write a piece about the college, said, “The broads oughta be thankful.”

I am probably more realistic than many alumnae about the seriousness of Mills’ predicament. What I know is that while my SAT scores and high school grades made me an average admittee in 1976, by the time I was working for admissions four years later, students with such average credentials were being snapped up by the admitting committee.

Recently, Mills administrators have been quoted as saying that if the college does not go co-ed, it will have to lower its admission standards. What I know is that if they were completely honest, they would say those standards have been slipping for the last 10 years.

In a more selfish than altruistic way, I care more about Mills’ reputation as a top-notch liberal arts college than I do about it being a women’s college. If it really does face the choice between death--or at least critical injury--and going co-ed, then I say, “Open the gates.”

But the widespread disdain for the Mills students’ passionate reaction may be the best argument yet for preserving the status quo at the college.

A fellow alumna blamed the media. She said we--television especially--had focused too heavily on the flashier moments of the students’ protest and not enough on their sophisticated attempts to make sure their voices were heard.

“Next thing I knew they were on ‘Donahue’ . . . they got on the phone and got themselves on ‘Nightline,’ ” she said. “That’s the kind of leadership you get out of these girls. At 18-19, they’re leaders.”

Several friends and a few of the letters to The Times said the grieving Mills women were hypocritical: If women want to have access to male-only bastions, such as service clubs, they have to give up women’s colleges.

It’s an argument Mills alums have encountered before. I always argue that the reasons for opening Rotary, Lion’s and JayCees to women are the same reasons women’s colleges are important: improved access to a male-dominated society.

There’s no question that things have improved markedly for women in the last 20 years, which I suspect is part of Mills’ recruitment problem. But the fact is we still have male-dominated judicial, political and corporate worlds.

A friend who graduated from Vassar College before 1969, when that institution began admitting men, said she was appalled to see during an academic competition on public television that the Vassar team was all-male. What had happened to her alma mater during those 21 years?, she asked.

At Mills, we would have said it was another example of socialization. No matter how evolved their parents are, little girls are surrounded by male authority figures. The message they receive is that men are in charge. Boys receive the same message.

At Mills, we were allowed to pretend that wasn’t so, even if it was for only four years. The class notes section of my Mills Alumnae Quarterly is testament to the results. One of my classmates is doing postdoctorate genetic research so complicated that it took a full paragraph to describe it in layman’s terms.

Several own businesses or work overseas with multinational corporations. One has her own dance troupe. Another just published the first of a science-fiction trilogy--and recently gave birth to twins.

Leaders in classes, clubs, sports, politics and dorm life at Mills are all women. More than half of the faculty are women. It’s a heady experience. Mills women have daily proof that their voice is being heard, their vote counts, their sex is not a factor. Empowerment--buzzword of the recent protests--actually has been the theme at Mills for some time.

So when the trustees initially voted against student and faculty recommendations to remain single sex, it was a dose of a very harsh reality indeed.