CAMPUS CORRESPONDENCE : The Struggle of Mills’ Women to Hold Out Against the Tide

After a day in San Francisco, my roommate and I are driving over the Bay Bridge on our way back to Mills College in Oakland. Just on the other side, I glance out the window and see an enormous purple-and-green billboard that reads, “Smart women call us home. Mills College.”

I honk my horn at it, thinking about those 15 days my roommate and I spent camped in front of the college’s computer center as part of a student strike last May. The sign’s bold, jade letters loom above Bay Area commuters like an officially sanctioned “atta-girl,” letting everyone know that the women of Mills won the fight to preserve the college’s founding mission to educate only women.

The Board of Trustees had announced May 3 that financial difficulties would force the oldest women’s college on the West Coast to enroll men in 1991. The next day, students took over administrative offices and shut down the college.

Fifteen days later, the board reversed its “quick-fix” co-ed decision and granted a five-year reprieve. The Mills community had five years to prove to the board that Mills could survive without men, as it had done since 1852. At the end of the five years, Mills’ financial situation would decide if the anti-co-ed forces were right.

The ultimatum was an immense responsibility, given the fact that only 5% of high-school women even consider women’s colleges and 205 single-sex colleges have been swallowed by co-education since 1960. But amid all the champagne and elated tears, more than 500 students promised to raise fall undergraduate enrollment from 777 to the trustees’ requisite 1,000 by 1995.

We solemnly pledged to recruit from our high schools, call prospective students and even raise funds. The alumnae, faculty and staff who supported the students during the strike pledged to recruit as well.

In an amazing act of selflessness, two-thirds of the professors agreed to teach an extra class without pay. The alumnae association committed itself to raise $10 million by 1995.

As of today, half the endowment goal has been met. For Mills, the radical ‘90-’91 increase in alumnae donations is the backbone of the fight to save the college.

But this doesn’t mean that Mills is on its way to a secure single-sex future. According to student leader Beth Rohrman, student attendance at recruitment meetings has dwindled to about 20 die-hards, most of them first-year or transfer students who watched the strike unfold from their living rooms.

Student fund-raising efforts have also been a disappointment. So few people attended the Octoberfest Fair and Greek Theatre Dance a few months ago that the two fund-raisers not only failed to make a cent, but cost Mills $1,500. During winter break, 80 students signed up to “Take Mills Home” to their high schools in an effort to actively recruit more students, yet only 16 are known to have actually visited their campuses.

The lack of school spirit can be partly attributed to the polarization of the student body between the “veteran” strikers and the new students. Recruitment organizers rely on romantic memories of The Strike to sustain enthusiasm. However, this alienates the new students, who are made to feel that they missed something or can’t really appreciate the role of a woman’s college because they’ve never had to fight to protect the all-female environment. This leads new students to shy away from recruiting efforts, only reinforcing the strikers’ belief that the new class isn’t committed to securing the victory won last spring.

This polarization will alienate the very students Mills desperately needs to survive. The “who’s-a-better-feminist” argument distracts students from the important issues like recruitment failures--and a loophole in the post-strike statement issued by the board of trustees. It said: “In the event that the college is unsuccessful in meeting these goals, or the Board of Trustees determines that the college is not achieving financial stability for the long term, the college will immediately move to implement strategies to modify its mission, which may include admitting men.”

Today, Mills has 20 more undergraduates than at this time last semester. Veteran strikers need to integrate the new students if we’re going to keep them at Mills and live up to the promises made last spring.

The campus is back to its old self again; all the feminist graffiti has been washed away and the “Better Dead than Co-ed” T-shirts have been tucked away in dresser drawers. But unless students unite in their recruitment efforts, they just might have to pull their shirts out again in 1995--or earlier.