Trustees of Mills College Reverse Decision to Admit Men

Oakland, California -- Bowing to protests by students, faculty members, and alumnae, the Board of Trustees of Mills College has reversed the decision it made this month to admit male undergraduates starting in 1991.

The board unanimously accepted a plan proposed by alumnae and faculty members to erase the 138-year-old college’s budget deficit and make it unnecessary to admit men as a means of increasing enrollment and revenue.

Students, who had taken over the college and shut down its operations, called off their two-week-old strike one day before the board voted to keep the liberal-arts college’s undergraduate student body all female. Men have been admitted to graduate programs at Mills since the 1930’s.

F. Warren Hellman, the chairman of the board, announced the decision to several hundred cheering students and alumnae. “All of you have had a lot of banners for us all week -- here’s one for you,” he said as he unfurled a banner that declared: MILLS. FOR WOMEN. AGAIN. Members of the crowd shouted, “We did it, we did it,” and sprayed each other with champagne. Mr. Hellman had been hanged in effigy by protesters following the board’s original vote to admit men.

The goals of the plan accepted by the trustees include increasing enrollment from its present 777 students to 900 by 1993 and 1,000 by 1995. Also, increasing the endowment by $10-million, and raising alumnae annual giving to $750,000 from the current $450,000 by 1993.

To reduce costs, the teacher-student ratio is to be increased to 1-to-13 from 1-to-10. Faculty members have agreed to teach one extra course a year or devote time to student recruitment.

The college had been running a deficit of about $100,000 a year in its $24-million budget and was forced to dip into its $72-million endowment to meet expenses, college officials said.

Mr. Hellman stressed that if the college failed to meet its targets for fund raising, recruitment, and cost cutting, the board would have no choice but to admit male undergraduates. The Alumnae Association of Mills College said it would accept such a move if the plan it helped put together did not succeed.