Columbia Moves Toward Coeducation

NEW YORK--Columbia University faculty members voted last month to from a committee to study ways to make Columbia fully coeducational within two years.

Officials and professors who attended the closed meeting said the vote was overwhelming and amounted to an endorsement of a report on coeducation prepared by the College Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid. That report recommended that Columbia accept women as transfers next fall and as freshmen the following fall.

Columbia is now the only single-sex Ivy League school. Columbia officials have met with representatives of Barnard College, an all-women's school associated with Columbia, to discuss ways to increase coeducation, but the talks have broken down.

Administrators have said that because a merger with Barnard is unlikely, Columbia should admit women on its own.

The day after the faculty approved formation of the coeducation committee, Alvin Paul, Columbia's director of physical education and intercollegiate athletics, warned that coeducation could result in severe cuts in men's sports programs.

Paul said that under Title IX men's and women's programs would have to be equivalent. The only way to accommodate women's sports would be to drop some men's sprots, he explained.