Fifty years ago this spring, Wofford began admitting women students on a regular basis, and four women became the first day students in the modern era. Within five years, the college moved to full residential coeducation.
Though women made up a small percentage of the student body at first, their numbers grew through the 1970s. This group of Wofford women did not wait for opportunities to lead, and they quickly won elections to Campus Union. Even before the move to full residential coeducation, Joanne Deakin Carpenter ’77 became the first woman to win a Campus Union office. She was elected student body secretary in 1976. Women frequently won one or two of each class’s seats in the Campus Union Assembly and also won seats on the Judicial Commission. By 1980, women held three of the four Campus Union offices. In that year, Carol Brasington Wilson ’81 became vice president, Roberta Hurley ’81 became secretary and Kem Molony ’81 became treasurer. It took a few more years before Mary Ann McCrackin’85 would become the first woman president of Campus Union.
The story of women’s leadership on campus is one part of an exhibit on the coeducation decade, which the college archives has put together. It is on display in the library’s Martha Cloud Chapman Gallery during the spring semester.
by Dr. Phillip Stone ’94, archivist