Great was the opposition, particularly from students and Faculties. The
Medical Department was especially concerned and even organized an
elaborate duplication of courses with an increase of $500 in
professorial salaries, measures which later proved unnecessary. One
month later, on February 2, 1870, the first woman was enrolled in the
University; Miss Madelon L. Stockwell, now Mrs. Charles K. Turner of
Kalamazoo. She was the only woman student until the fall term, when
eleven others entered the Literary Department, three the Department of
Pharmacy, eighteen the Department of Medicine, and two the Department of
Law, with four graduating the following June. Tradition has it that they
had a hard time at first. They were treated with indifferent courtesy,
college journalism had its fling at them, many boarding places were not
open to them, and in fact life was made as unpleasant as possible. But
they had good friends in the President and in many members of the
Faculties; they asked no favors, and they gained the education on a
masculine plane they sought. The experiment proved successful, as the
roster of Michigan alumnae will show; and it was not long before
co-education became the rule in all American colleges save the older
institutions of the East.
Michigan now, as we have seen, was a state institution in reality as
well as in name; but the educational arch of which she was the keystone
was not yet completed. The earlier close connection between the
University and the schools of the State, contemplated when the branches
were established, had proved impossible of realization, and the union
high schools which soon succeeded them were tied to the University only
incidentally and indirectly through the influence of such teachers as
had been students at the University. Their graduates came in increasing
numbers, it is true, but they were admitted by examination upon the same
basis as the graduates of any school.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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