The Crimson

CAMBRIDGE, FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 1879.

JUDGING from several newspaper articles, there seems to be a misunderstanding in regard to the proposed plan of private instruction for young women in Cambridge. The opinion prevails that a way has been found to admit women to Harvard College. Nothing of the kind has been done. Provisions have been made to enable young women to be instructed by Harvard professors and if in time the number of such students be comes large enough, a second university may be built up at the side of Harvard which will give young women the same college advantages that young men have at present. The plan is a good one, and we hope that it will receive every encouragement. Higher education for women is what the society of this country most needs. But if ever this plan tends to result, as some of its supporters hope it will, in the admission of women to Harvard, then it should be vigorously opposed. At the threshold of the recitation-room the line must be drawn. By all means let the girls have the advantages which we posses. We should be glad to have the scanty salaries of our instructors increased; we should be glad to see the bright faces of the young ladies in Cambridge, and we would not even be so selfish as to envy them a Harvard degree; but we have too much respect for them to wish to have them associated with us in our college course. Many examples of the success of coeducation have been quoted, but it has had some results which are not so satisfactory, and the reports of these results have been carefully suppressed. In spite of all that is said to the contrary, coeducation in college is not a success in the highest sense of the word. Eagerness to persevere in it is a dangerous tendency in American society, and we sincerely hope that the day will never come when anybody will make the powers of Harvard believe for a moment that evil would not result from coeducation here.