Founded by Friends : the Quaker heritage of fifteen - Scarecrow Press

Haverford College 17
cooperation with its sister institution. Full cross registration and a combined
student newspaper occurred in 1970–1971.
A little bit of background on the culture at Haverford in the late 1960s
and early 1970s will help one understand the Haverford of Coleman’s
time. The state of the arts had not moved ahead appreciably since Sharpless’s
time, and there were those who felt the time had come for a change.
Thus, in the summer of 1967, a faculty–student committee set up a department
of fine arts in conjunction with Bryn Mawr College, and somewhat
later Haverford organized its own fine arts department. Between
1967 and 1977, the Haverford chamber music program began, the faculty
brought in five musicians-in-residence as members, the Ruth M. Magill
chair in music was endowed, a new music center and library was opened
in Union (a professional librarian for the music library was not hired until
the 1980s), an art gallery was installed, and a student-run, summer
stock repertory group was formed.
Haverford offered no fine arts classes until a sculpture course was introduced
in 1968, nor was there a painting course until 1969–1970 or photography
until 1970. Still, Haverford has acquired a good deal of art over
the years. Some examples are the 1942 bequest that included an oil painting
of St. Sebastian presumed now to be the work of a follower of Pietro
Perugino; an oil on panel, Early Autumn, White Birch, by Maxfield Parrish;
an oil portrait of Samuel Johnson; and a number of other works. Today,
artwork can be found all over Haverford’s campus.
ROBERT BOCKING STEVENS (1933– ),
THE NINTH PRESIDENT, 1978–1987
It would be incumbent on Robert Stevens, a former provost at Tulane University
and professor of law at Yale, to resolve the coeducation dilemma.
Indeed, during his tenure, the college became fully coeducational (the
board agreed to coeducation beginning in 1980, though nine BAs had
been awarded to women before 1979). By 1982, there were also twentyseven
women faculty members and ten women administrators. The decision
to make Haverford coeducational may have weakened social cooperation
with Bryn Mawr but seemed to strengthen academic cooperation.
While numbers of women on campus increased, numbers of Quakers
did not. In his speech to the Newcomen Society in 1983 on Haverford history,
President Stevens stated that while the number of Quakers in all of
Haverford’s constituent groups (except the corporation) was low, Quaker
values and spirit were high. In 1987, the corporation approved a steering
committee on Quakerism with the charge of “seeing that Quakerism remains
strong and vibrant at Haverford.”