With the Best intentions: Villa at 65, November 17, 1957-2022

There is a humorous, often repeated story recounted by Rev. James A. Anderson, C.S.C., (CP ’32, Chemistry faculty, 1946-1982).  Asked about the origins of co-education (women) on campus, he answers:

There wasn’t really too much difficulty about that, or at least if there was, it was a long time ago.  Because the beginnings of co-education was really with the Nursing School.  That school was at St. Vincent Hospital.  It just became more convenient eventually that the nurses would take a class here rather than over there.  Then, when Music was started, there were girls who wanted to take music.  So there was no particular problem.  The only problem was about the girl’s dormitory.  This had to go to the Superior General of Holy Cross [in Rome].  He said it was O.K., but to build it on the corner furthest away from the boy’s dormitory.  In retrospect, it might well have been built someplace else.  Everyone had to use the Commons and it might have been more convenient to have the dorms and eating facilities in the same general location.  But that was the only thing.  He didn’t exactly make a problem over the exact spot, just as long as it was as far away as we could get it.   [abridged]

This 1968 reminiscence found in the oral history of the University gives evidence of the first seed of a colorful anecdote about how the presence of women on campus was enough to inspire a paralyzing sense of sexual panic among the Catholic administration (fainting priests).  With this winking, knowing anecdote about cautiously positioning the women’s residence along the rim of the campus, ‘beyond whistling distance from Christie Hall’; the Villa Hall origin-story hints at fear & exclusion, assuming that our school has been reluctant to welcome women or to extend all students an equal equality.  Such foot-dragging is unlikely in the event however.  The women’s hall was built on-campus (a year before Kenna!).  And even prior to 1957, the Dean of Women had already been coordinating living arrangements for women students in boarding houses beyond campus, just across Portsmouth (in effect market-testing the need for a brick and mortar residence hall on the campus proper).

As things work over time, much has changed regarding the genteel living promised to women in the new and most-remote student hall.  Therefore, naturally, today Villa Maria is a men’s residence (since 1984), and too, the University has long since spanned Portsmouth (counting in the Franz Campus on the river) such that Villa now holds a central location, though the dining hall still seems remote to Villa residents.  Within the last twenty years the proud denizens of Villa have adopted a gorilla as mascot and a hall badge boasting modest excellence.  The kilted bag-pipe wailing Villa Drum Squad (see: the Celtic cross in the hall badge) has claimed a mixed gender membership for several years.

1956 Admissions Brochure

Citations: Oral History Program I:245-6; The Pilot, September ’56: A Guidebook for University of Portland Students, p. 14; Province Review (February 1957) p.3

Related post: https://sites.up.edu/museum/orientation-at-the-university-of-portland-campus/