Dartmouth Calls for Quantitative Sex Parity

Equal numbers of men and women will soon be enrolled at Dartmouth College, if college officials make good on a promise they made last week.

"[The Board of Trustees] strongly endorses administration efforts to obtain more substantial parity in the number of men and women students applying to and matriculating at the College," according to a proposal announced by Dartmouth's ruling body.

The Trustee's statement was made in reaction to a speech given last month by Dartmouth President James O. Freedman '57, who addressed faculty for the first time since taking over as president last July. In that speech, Freedman asserted that the current imbalance in the ratio between men and women "is not healthy to either the intellectual or social life of the students," according to Alfred T. Quirk, Dartmouth's dean of admissions.

In recent years the percentage of female applicants and matriculants at Dartmouth has hovered around 39 percent, Quirk said. "We don't want to get into a down cycle here where women are destined to be in the minority forever." he said.

Quirk cited several possible steps to attract more women. The elimination of all single sex dorms next year at the college, he said, will create a more attractive atmosphere for potential women students, he said.

Further, he added, "as we increase the percentage of women on our faculty, that'll be another signal," Quirk said. Dartmouth's faculty is currently 25 percent female.

But women's studies professor Carla Frecerro, who said that "there's been a feeling that there's no space on this campus that women feel is really their place," said she's worried about the type of commitment the college wants to make to women. "My concern is that what they're going to use to encourage women to come may be cosmetic," said Frecerro, director of a documentary celebrating the 15th anniversary of coeducation at Dartmouth.

But students at the Dartmouth Review, a conservative, independent weekly, think that the proposal will diminish the quality of those admitted to Dartmouth. College officials have not, however, announced any quotas or timetables.

"I think that next year the percentage of women [matriculants] may be 45 percent," said Harmeet K. Dhillon '89, a contributing editor to the Review who recently wrote a disapproving editorial on the college's proposal. "They're going to have to dip a bit lower into the [applicant] pool."

"We would be disappointed if we didn't get a larger share [of qualified women applicants], but we will not change our criteria," said Alex Huppe, Dartmouth's news director. "We will admit women because they should be admitted, not because of their gender."

The situation at Dartmouth is not unique to the Hanover campus, Huppe said. "I think the Ivy League as a whole suffers from a lack of applications from women," he added.

Quirk said that Dartmouth is only one or two points away from the average manwoman ratio in the Ivy League, which is apoproximately 60-40. "I think what we're fighting is a certain societal tilt toward the traditional roles," Quirk said.

Colleges have to take the issue "head on and realize that change is inevitable," Quirk said. "I think that we have to overcome the perception that [the Ivy League schools] are male institutions with female guests," said Quirk.