University officials recently began talking of major changes to Mount Vernon that could radically alter what, for 122 years, has been an independent women’s campus. Administrators are considering housing men at Mount Vernon and making the University Honors Program a bigger presence at the campus. The question facing administrators and students is to what extent the proposed and rumored changes are good for GW and Mount Vernon? The answer is that they are necessary for progress.
Administrators want – in the words of Mount Vernon Executive Dean Grae Baxter – a synergistic programming proposal that would enable men to live at Mount Vernon. While such an initiative would alter the women-centered mission of Mount Vernon, including men would improve the environment of the campus. Women at the campus often complain that nothing happens there, that they feel segregated from Foggy Bottom students. Adding men would bring the Mount Vernon experience more in line with that at Foggy Bottom.
The current Mount Vernon renovations – including new residence halls, athletic facilities and a parking garage – improve the capacity to deliver services to students. Alumnae, however, are distressed that the campus no longer looks as it once did. But, sometimes improving the experience of future students demands change, however painful the accompanying adjustments may be. The University – Mount Vernon included – must be capable of keeping up with the times while preserving what it can of the past.
But the effort to remain true to the history of Mount Vernon could unravel plans to bring the campus into the future: The University already entices women to live at Mount Vernon through financial aid and admission to waitlisted women, provided they live at the campus. This process shows that not enough regularly admitted women choose to live at Mount Vernon to keep the campus exclusively female. Thus, men must be admitted to maintain that campus’s economic viability.
The changes coming to Mount Vernon are significant and demand cooperation between administrators and students. University officials have to take into account students’ concerns and cannot overlook the women who came to GW expecting a single-sex experience at the campus. And Mount Vernon students should realize that the interests of all students come first. Improving Mount Vernon, including new facilities and the addition of co-ed living, must be the University’s top priority.
