folding in

I wrote last week (screamed into an entry, that is) about the Board of Trustees at Randolph-Macon Woman's College making preparations for a vote of yes in the case of the school going co-ed. After a few days of reading hundreds of emails on an anti-co-ed listserv as well as the school's Strategic Plan, I've realized that it's a no-win situation. Someone even said that it's a done deal...the vote on September 9 is simply a formality.

The petition that someone set up has only gathered 2700 names. And there are only several hundred letters in protest that have been written to date. They need thousands. It's pretty hopeless. But I am not going to give up hope. Mills College, Hampden-Sydney and others out there have stayed co-ed after long fights between the Board and alums. Maybe a force of hidden alums will come about at the last minute and take over, like the ghosts in "Pirates of the Caribbean." Oddly enough, those who would be fighting the hardest right now are much like those ghosts...they've past on.

I did have a chance to meet Helen, an 89-year old local woman who attended the college from '37-'39. She was the sole attendee at a get-together I threw together for alums with not so much order. She somehow got jaundice and had to leave the school in '39 or '40. She told me that she so regretted never going back and finishing her degree. She was still sending money to the college, even though she hadn't graduated. "It's a shame that there aren't that many women's colleges left," she said. "This just doesn't make sense."

There are about 40+ alumnae in the Central Ohio region. I'm planning a get-together for the Fall...a funeral of sorts for our school. But I think it will also be a celebration of what we all had the chance to experience in our life. Helen remarked to me before she left, "you never get another time in your life to really do something like this." She sure is right.