Chronology

Trustees vote to admit women to the university's post-graduate courses

President Edwin Alderman persuaded the trustees to admit women to post-graduate courses, though they voted down a broader motion to open all of the university to them. Pamela Dean dates the vote January 1897; Battle's history gives February 21, 1897. Alderman took the vote to cover junior and senior courses, so most early women came to Chapel Hill to finish degrees begun at other colleges.

Marcia Louise Latham wins the mathematics department's Holt Medal

Latham took the department's top award only three years after women were first admitted. Dean reports that department head William Cain, who had expected no women in his classes, changed his mind about them.

The university first admits freshman women, limited to daughters of Chapel Hill families

From 1917 freshman and sophomore women were taken only from families living in Chapel Hill, and they lived at home. The first four were Mary Louisa Cobb, Nell Abbie Patterson Pickard, Mary Louise Stover and Lillie Dell Witaker.

People: Mary Louisa Cobb

The university opens its first two houses for women students

After years of pleas from adviser Inez Stacy, the university gave women two houses on adjoining lots, room for about forty-five of the sixty-five women enrolled. One was Archer House, which burned a short time later.

Subject: Archer House

Pi Beta Phi and Chi Omega become the university's first sororities

The two chapters were started partly to ease the shortage of rooms for women, though both grew slowly. Chi Omega gave up its house in 1933 for lack of members.

Gladys Angel Beard is hired to direct physical education for women

Her hiring began a formal program, and physical education became required for freshman and sophomore women. Intramural basketball for women followed the next year.

The Navy and the university jointly build a gymnasium for women students

The gym replaced space women lost when the Navy took over campus buildings for wartime training. Their playing field went to military training and was not replaced.

Glenn Harden is elected the first woman editor of the Daily Tar Heel

In a campus runoff on April 18, 1951, Glenn Harden, an independent coed candidate, beat Don Maynard about two to one for the editorship of the Daily Tar Heel for 1951-52. Pamela Dean, who puts this in 1950, notes that she was the first woman to head any of the campus publications, though a woman had been nominated to edit the Carolina Magazine in 1933.

Subject: The Daily Tar Heel

The Women's Council refuses to enforce the apartment rule and Dean Carmichael vetoes it

The student council said it would no longer enforce the rule barring a woman from a man's apartment unless another couple was there. Dean of Women Katherine Carmichael overruled it, and after a mediation committee the next handbook made the rule optional for upperclass women.

Trustees open freshman admission to women, first in fine arts and then in all programs

Since 1951 the School of Nursing, and from 1954 a few other health programs, had admitted freshman women from across the state; otherwise only daughters of local families could enter as freshmen. The trustees added a condition that admission depended on dormitory space, which in practice held women to higher standards than men.

The history department hires Gillian Cell, its first woman on the tenure track

Cell was hired as a lecturer despite her doctorate and later became the department's first tenured woman.

About a thousand students march to Lenoir Hall to demand dormitory visitation

Men students wanted a standing policy for entertaining women in their rooms. While a twelve-member committee with six students met in Lenoir Hall, marchers delivered a petition of about 4,000 signatures.

People: J. Carlyle Sitterson

Subject: Lenoir Hall

Chancellor Sitterson rejects self-limiting hours for women students

Sitterson turned down the Women's Residence Council plan to free older women from dormitory closing hours, even though a student affairs board had approved a version of it. By late March he had named a nine-member joint committee to study the question.

Subject: South Building

Junior and senior women win self-limiting hours with their parents' consent

Chancellor Sitterson announced that junior and senior women could set their own hours with their parents' permission, a policy recommended by a joint committee and approved by President William Friday. Women's Residence Council chair Libby Idol said it went further than she expected because it took in juniors. A dispute over keeping the sign-out cards was settled by March 1969, when the choice was left to parents, and by 1972 almost no women were under closing hours.

People: J. Carlyle Sitterson

President Friday keeps the open-door rule for dormitory visits

In May 1969 a committee simplified the visitation rules and asked that doors no longer have to stay open during visits. A student affairs board agreed, but William Friday, wary of public reaction, kept the open-door requirement.

The university requires all entering freshmen, men and women, to live on campus for two years

A committee answered women's requests to live off campus by applying one residence rule to both sexes: two years on campus for entering freshmen and one for transfer students. Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson's administration announced it on February 5, 1970, for students entering that fall, and let junior women who were not transfers live off campus. Before this men had to live on campus only as freshmen.

People: J. Carlyle Sitterson

The university begins admitting women under the same standards as men

Under pressure from students and parents, and facing a federal mandate against sex discrimination, the university dropped its separate admission standards for women. By then about 6,500 women made up more than thirty percent of the students.

The university starts an affirmative action program for women and minority faculty

Federal officials had found the university out of compliance, and only sixteen percent of the faculty were women. Chancellor Taylor gave the officer's duties to Vice Chancellor Douglas Hunt on top of his other work.

People: N. Ferebee Taylor

The Faculty Council sets up a committee on the status of women

Faculty women backed Professor Rhea Stambaugh's proposal. The committee, which included men, reported each year to the council and the chancellor.

Women outnumber men in the entering freshman class for the first time

The Chapel Hill Newspaper warned that fewer of the state's future leaders would be university men. Joan Scott answered that women's studies could build alumnae loyalty.

Faculty women found the Association for Women Faculty

The group served as a support network and forum on women's issues at the university. It later created the Mary Turner Lane award.

People: Mary Turner Lane

The university approves a women's studies program with Mary Turner Lane as director

An ad hoc committee named in March 1974 recommended the program, which became a major within interdisciplinary studies. Lane served as half-time director and built the first course, Women's Studies 50, with Joan Scott.

Teachers and students file sex-discrimination charges over the lockers in Woollen Gym

Grievances signed by 23 students, faculty and staff charged that the physical education department broke Title IX by giving men 85 percent of the lockers in Woollen Gym, though women physical education students outnumbered men. Pamela Dean adds that earlier talk of a similar suit led the Morehead trustees to open their scholarships to women.

Subject: Woollen Gymnasium

Gillian Cell becomes the first woman dean of the College of Arts and Sciences

Chancellor Christopher Fordham appointed her after she had served as his full-time affirmative action officer and as the first woman to chair the history department.