30 YEARS OF COEDUCATION: Strong, handsome, Barnard boys

This story is part of a special issue examining the Barnard-Columbia relationship, 30 years after Columbia Columbia decided to go coed and Barnard decided not to merge with Columbia. Check out the rest of the issue here.

A few months ago I wrote an op-ed about being a Barnard boy (“Barnard Boy,” Sept. 8). I live in Barnard housing, have a large number of friends who go to Barnard (not those types of friends, but real genuine ones), and take a considerable amount of my courses there. In short, I’m essentially one-third of a Barnard student. All that being said, I was really quite surprised by the largely positive responses the op-ed got, both from other Barnard boys and acquaintances across the street. A few made it seem as if I were making some crusade against those men and women of “the College” and SEAS who continue to promote a stigma associated with Barnard—and there’s something to be said about a need to end that stigma. While this isn’t news to me, or to any of my fellow Barnard boys, I was surprised by how many Columbia men make a point of expressing their feelings of attachment to Barnard when given the opportunity.

When thinking about this fairly large bunch of Barnard boys, questions easily arise regarding Barnard’s place in the Columbia community, especially when commemorating the 30 years since Columbia decided to go coed. Does it even have a place if the discussion is revolving around men and women learning together? Or could one make the argument that Barnard is effectively a coed school, and should therefore be equally commemorated?

Barnard clearly has a place in the University, but no, it can’t be argued that Barnard is a coed school. From my conversations with current students, if you’re a Barnard girl and want to experience Barnard as a women’s college with as little testosterone as possible, you can easily do that. However, if you want Barnard to be a more coeducational experience, you can more than easily spend your time there taking classes full of many men and women, with as many male friends as female friends. Many of my friends at Barnard do just that.

In light of this, I can only justifiably argue that Barnard is potentially more coed than other women’s colleges. Women’s colleges like Smith and Wellesley, although connected with other coed institutions, can’t possibly be as linked as Barnard and Columbia because of distance. It takes seconds to cross Broadway while it takes a 15-minute bus ride from Smith to Amherst. Because of the 100-foot separation, Columbia and Barnard students can interact as part of a unified community in a way that would not be possible between many other women’s colleges and their coed counterparts.

Ultimately I think Barnard is stronger for it. I think everything is made stronger by at least a dash of its opposite—in this case, the opposing gender. Having a noticeable male presence on campus means that Barnard can’t rely just on the fact that its students are all women to make it a women’s college. It ensures that Barnard is a school focused on women which fosters their potential contributions to the world. Barnard is a women’s college because events like the Athena Film Festival help to create a space for women (and men) to discuss what it means to be a woman in today’s society and how that impacts their lives. Such an intellectual atmosphere makes a college a women’s college, not just a group of women who happen to study together. This educational ambiance really makes Barnard a women’s college—having an all-female student body is just a corollary.

As one of many men looking for a place at Barnard, I know we might wish it were coed. Certainly some aspects of Barnard life are, or at least can be. This is particularly the case for those departments that only exist at Barnard. Even though it might have a good number of male students, Barnard is very clearly a women’s college. By all means, we can still commemorate coeducation even if Barnard is not coed. The fact that all the communities that make up Barnard and Columbia are so closely linked shows students that gender can still be a focus in a coeducational atmosphere, which is a good thing. Just because men and women can now study together, we shouldn’t forget that the two genders are different.

The author is a Columbia College sophomore.