Every reason which had formerly been urged against the admission of women was now offered for their exclusion. The peculiar origin of the discussion and the able and gallant defense of the rights of the women already enrolled in its classes which was made by Dr. Carroll Cutler, the president of Adelbert, attracted wide notice, and the arguments, pro and con, were reviewed by the press of the country.
Dr. Cutler wrote to the authorities of all the principal co-educational colleges, for the results of their experience. The courtesy of Dr. Cutler makes this voluminous correspondence available for this chapter.
Stated briefly and in the chronological order of their development, the arguments against co-education are as follows:
a. Women are mentally inferior to men, and therefore their presence in a college will inevitably lower the standard of its scholarship.
b. The physical constitution of women makes it impossible for them to endure the strain of severe mental effort. If admitted to college they will maintain their position and keep pace with men only at the sacrifice of their health.
c. The presence of women in college will result in vitiating the manners, if not the morals, of both men and women; the men will become effeminate and weak, the women coarse and masculine.
d. If women are admitted to college, their presence will arouse the emotional natures of the men, will distract the minds of the latter from college work, and will give opportunity for scandal.
e. The intimacies of college life will result in premature marriages.
f. Young men do not approve of the collegiate education of women; they dislike to enter into competition with women, and if the latter are admitted to our colleges it will result in the loss of male students, who will seek in colleges limited to their own sex, the social life which cannot be furnished by a co-educational institution.
g. A collegiate education not only does not prepare a woman for the domestic relations and duties for which she is designed, but actually unfits her for them.