There was no parade or banner welcoming the first co-ed students at Union College.
Instead, the fall semester of 1971 started like any other, despite it being the first year the college had female students.
Kin Flagg Bolz remembers the male students didn’t even acknowledge them.
“They almost didn’t see us. They didn’t know we were coming,” she said Friday afternoon at a lunch marking the 35th anniversary of the first female graduates in 1972.
“The first year was hard,” said Flagg, an architect.
“There was no welcoming of women,” said Susan Maycock, one of the original co-ed class. “They voted to allow women, let us in, and that was it.”
The student body of 2,100 is now nearly 50 percent female.
There were 11 women who transferred to Union as juniors, into a college with a strong tradition in engineering and science. Students and staff weren’t used to women on campus, unless they were cleaning ladies or guests.
The men were used to going to Skidmore College or Russell Sage, then all female, for social life.
“Men would leave on the weekend,” Maycock said. “There wasn’t much of a social life.”
There was a women’s dorm the first year, though it had not been refitted for women — urinals remained in the bathroom.
There were no clubs or events for women. Some got involved in theater and in the second year formed a cheerleading squad for the basketball team. Those were the years when James Tedisco, now the state Assembly minority leader, was playing on an emerging Division III powerhouse as a high-scoring point guard.
“There were no women’s activities,” Maycock said. “We ordered some uniforms, held tryouts and formed a squad.”
Mary John Boylan, now an attorney, remembered it was diffi – cult to find a women’s bathroom and would go to her apartment on Union Street.
Boylan was ready to drop out of college before she went to Union. She finished three years at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She took a train trip from Rochester to Schenectady, where her brother attended Union, and after looking around, she decided on a whim to apply.
“I interviewed in my bare feet,” she said. “They took me, and I had to get on the next train, head home and get some stuff.”
After that, she spent her senior year living in an apartment on Union Street with 12 other people.
“It was kind of crazy,” she said.
When Union went co-ed, “it was really at the height of the anti-war movement. It was a very serious time,” she said.
Boylan was involved in many protests against the Vietnam War. Now, she notices a lack of passion in students against the Iraq war, even though it is not popular.
“I don’t know, maybe we didn’t raise them right,” she said, “maybe we had more to lose because of the draft.”
Five of the original 12 female graduates attended the luncheon, which was part of a weekend-long college reunion. Most remembered the college as friendly and fun, despite the cultural change on campus.
“I never felt out of place,” said Camille Price, a biology major and member of the Class of ’72. “Being the only woman in all of my biology classes, they could have pulled rank and closed me off.”
Margaret Green, a pre-med and modern language student, said she did have some issues. On a field trip for a biology class, students went into water wearing waders, looking for specimens.
“[The instructor] made a big deal, and said, ‘Oh, look, a woman is going in the water,’” Green recalled. “I grew up on a farm. I was used to wearing boots to keep out of the manure.”