President Wilson:


After much consideration, I feel I may have seen the proverbial light and may
have come around to your way of thinking about coeducation. In my research
this summer for the archeology laboratory, I came across a few ideas which
might be of interest to you at this time. Your erudite nature possibly has
already caused you to read Boley's Lexington in Old Virginia. In any case,
two potentially helpful quotations follow:



1. This is an excerpt from Dr. Henry Ruffner's (president of Washington
College, 1837) innaugural address:

Students in the higher schools of learning are separated, in a large
measure, from the common mass of society and associate chiefly with
each other. This seclusion is favorable to their progress in learn-
ing, but it generates some moral evils which the faculty find diffi-
cult and very often impracticable wholly to correct. It is a
common observation that soldiers, seamen, and artisans congregated
in large manufactories and, in general, wherever men live apart
from mixed society, are prone to adopt the vices and neglect the
decencies of life. Even the religious communities of monks and
nuns, however pure originally, in Europe became the most scan-
dalously dissolute. It is only by the intermixture of ages and sexes
and the influence of family relations, so wisely ordained by Providence,
that human society can be purified and refined (p. 58).



2. This is part of Boley's comment on the advent of Lee to Lexington
after the Civil War.

With his coming, the college doors again opened and, more than
ever, were thronged with eager and ingenuous boys from every sec-
tion of our common country, whose zeal and devotion in search of
knowledge won the commendation of both the community and the college
authorities. The homes of the village were also opened, for
General Lee preferred that the boys stay in the Lexington homes,
where they would come in contact with the best society and its
wholesome influence (p. 120).


I hope you can use these this weekend. Let me know if I can be of further
assistance.

Sincerely,

Warren Taylor [phone number redacted]
[I'll be in special collections in the library all afternoon.
W.T.T.]