A. PRESCOTT ROWE
[address redacted]
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA 23226


November 1, 1983





Dr. John Wilson
President
Washington and Lee University
Lexington, Virginia 24450

Dear Dr. Wilson:

I have read with considerable interest as well as
dismay the news regarding the possible admission of
women to the undergraduate program at Washington and
Lee. While I can appreciate that statistical data
may support the admission of women, I believe co-
education would diminish significantly the uniqueness
of W&L.

As I wrote you last Spring, I was overjoyed that my
son, John, was to be a freshman this year. He is in-
deed there and one of the main reasons he chose W&L
was because it was all male. While change is healthy,
the overthrow of tradition may not be so.

I would urge that you devote your attention to curtail-
ing the party situation as opposed to coeducation.

I hope you will allow W&L to retain its uniqueness.

Sincerely,

[A Prescott Rowe]

[pb]

November 7, 1983



Mr. A. Prescott Rowe
[address redacted]
Richmond, Virginia 23226

Dear Mr. Rowe:

I have your letter and fully appreciate your feelings on the coeducation
issue. The papers have simply picked up a note I first articulated at the
annual meeting of the Alumni Association last May. That speech was later
printed in the Alumni Magazine where you probably first encountered it. The
newspapers have converted an intention to study a complicated question into
a resolution to admit women. I regret that, but don't quite know how to
turn it back.

Anyway we truly must look at it as carefully as we can and the Board
is determined that that is what will be done. At stake is the continuing
ability of the University to remain selective, to choose its students
carefully to represent a wide range of interests and talents and ambitions.
If we lose this capacity we will lose much of what has made W&L the dis-
tinctive university it has become. I do not refer to Board score averages
alone. I refer to a broad range of considerations, geographic, athletic,
extra-curricular leadership, artistic, academic. If we are compelled to
accept 9 of 10 applicants we will have lost our claim upon the larger society.

Now this does not have to happen in some inevitable way. Perhaps we can
enlarge our share of the college-going population by yet further admissions
efforts in the face of great declines nationally. To plan upon this is also
to assume that there will be a reversal in the number of young men who
decline us because they prefer to attend coeducation places of comparable
quality.

I don't pretend to know all the answers. I'm trying to sort through
what would be lost and what would be gained. I'm trying to figure out how
much we should be prepared to sacrifice in order to remain all-male.

I would welcome your further reflections on these thorny questions.
I'm enclosing a paper I've shared with the Board and the Faculty and a few
others. Kindly read it and let me know how you would work out your own
private equation.

I will continue to work on the fraternity/party problems you allude
to. They are not unique here, but they have taken on a special flavor
here and they are deep and serious problems. I do not entirely separate
them from the coeducation question, however. Perhaps I should.

[pb]

Mr. A. Prescott Rowe
November 7, 1983
Page 2


Do let me hear from you again. And please keep my paper rather close
to your own desk.

Most sincerely,



John D. Wilson
President

JDW/bcb

Enclosure