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The First Women Students
How Women Fared
A New Home
College Life: 1910-1919
Targets of Humor
Women's Space
For Women Only
Rites of Passage
Black Women at Pitt
The Twelfth Floor
The War Years
Women in Sports
Coming Into the 70's


No longer a tiny minority on campus, women made themselves at home in a school that finally looked like a coeducational institution.

Until the turn of the century only five or six women were enrolled at the university in any one year. The year the School of Education opened in 1910, the percentage of women students rose dramatically from 4% to 19%. In 1914, 600 women enrolled at Pitt, more than 25% of the student population.

The yearbook staff responded to the increase in the number of women students with an offensive essay "Co-eds" in the 1914 Owl (see below).

Women students sent a petition to Chancellor McCormick, protesting these insults.

The First Women | How Women Fared | A New Home | College Life | Targets of Humor | Women's Space | For Women Only
Rites of Passage | Black Women | The Twelfth Floor | The War Years | Women in Sports | Coming Into the 70's


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An essay in the 1914 Owl read, in part ". . . A co-ed's ambition is to be popular with college men. . . .She is a distraction in the class room, an attraction on the campus . . . the book of fashions is their bible . . ."

Read the entire essay.

Chancellor McCormick's response to the petition.