IS NOTRE DAME A PLACE FOR WOMEN?
This question is posed on an original poster, produced by the university’s admissions department, announcing that women would be admitted in 1972 for the first time since the Catholic university’s founding in 1842. A historic black and white photograph of rugged, and less than welcoming, Notre Dame football players covers the top half of the poster, which states: “Notre Dame men … that phrase reaches back more than a hundred years and was always tinged somewhat with the pride and ruggedness associated with football … Next fall, Notre Dame, for the first time in its history, will directly admit women – both as first-year and as transfer students – to its undergraduate program. Coeducation has come to Notre Dame’s 1,250-acre campus … and with it a new climate of living and learning at the nation’s foremost Catholic university. Women will like it at Notre Dame. Men have.”
In the mid-1960s, Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College, located in South Bend, Indiana, developed a co-exchange program allowing several hundred students to take classes not offered at their home institution, an arrangement that added undergraduate women to a campus that already had a few women in the graduate schools. In 1972, two of the male residence halls were converted for the 250 newly admitted female students, while two others were converted for the next school year. The first female student, a transfer from St. Mary's College, graduated in 1972 with a bachelor's degree in marketing.
According to Notre Dame University Archives, there were some women graduates of the university prior to 1972. In 1918, Notre Dame established the summer school program, which was the gateway for women to study at Notre Dame. “The history of coeducation at Notre Dame is a fascinating and complex one. The view of Notre Dame as an all-male bastion often leaves out the story of Notre Dame’s female students who were here before their more traditional female counterparts moved in for the fall semester of 1972,” the website states.
This 18” x 22” poster is printed on white paper with black and yellow printing. It is neatly folded into quarters, with some mild wear to the extremities; otherwise very good. Scarce, with only one copy on record, in the university archives at Notre Dame. Very good. Item #73801
Price: $300.00