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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 19, 1992                   TAG: 9202190362
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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COEDS WERE AT TECH IN '40S AND '50S

AW, C'MON NOW! Whatever happened to research on stories before they are printed? On Feb. 10 I read that "Tech opened the doors to females a decade later [after the 1950s]," and later in the story, "There were 1,200 students back then [the '20s] - only a dozen or so of them women . . . [who] lived in a dormitory known as the cow barn."

I can't speak for the '20s, but in the '40s and '50s there were most definitely coeds on campus, and I have a diploma to prove it, Class of 1951. And while I lived in town, most of the girls lived in a dorm called the skirt barn.

I well remember German Club Midwinters . . . also fall and spring dance weekends. There were two dance clubs then, and dance weekends were highlights of each quarter.

But let's get it right. Hey, people, we were there! JEANNE R. PRITCHARD ROANOKE

Editor's note: Virginia Tech made participation in the Corps of Cadets optional during the 1960s. That "opened the doors" to much greater enrollment of females.

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