Fall 1989

Mills College Board of Trustees and Mary Metz, President of Mills College, announce that the College is facing financial challenges and will need to consider ways to increase enrollment.

January 1990

The Strategic Planning Options Committees are created. Meetings are held to explore options, which include admitting men to Mills for the first time in the institution's 138-year history.

February 1990

While the majority of the student body is not fully aware of the possibility that the College could become coed, a group of concerned students start a massive letter-writing campaign against admitting men. During one Board of Trustees meeting, over 300 students hold a demonstration presenting F. Warren Hellman, the Board of Trustees chair, with scrapbooks and other sentiments entreating that Mills remain a women's college.

March 1990

The Strategic Planning Options Committees are renamed Vision 2000. The committee is charged with creating visions of Mills based on two options: a larger women’s college or a coed college. Faculty opinion on the coed issue is not unanimous or fixed, and the debate heats up.

April 19, 1990

Over 100 Mills students meet to make banners and write letters to lobby faculty members to vote against admitting men to the College. The faculty vote is scheduled for April 30, 1990. At the same time that students work tirelessly day and night, faculty members are also lobbying their colleagues to help sway the vote against turning Mills coed.

April 30, 1990

Students line the bridge to Lucie Stern Hall, where the faculty vote is to be conducted, and chant "do the right thing" as faculty enter the room. The faculty vote two to one in favor of keeping Mills a women's college.

May 3, 1990

The Board of Trustees meet to vote on the fate of the College's 138-year tradition of educating women. The entire campus, as well as journalists from every major television network and newspaper, gather at Toyon Meadow to await news of the decision. Warren Hellman, the Board of Trustees chair, and Mary Metz, then President of Mills, announce that the Trustees have voted to admit men starting in the fall of 1991.

May 4–May 17, 1990

Student response to the vote is immediate and passionate. For the next two weeks, 300 students—nearly 40 percent of the student body—boycott classes, hold peaceful demonstrations, block entrances to all major administrative buildings, and close down the campus to business as usual in an effort to convince the board to reverse its decision. In support of the students and their own beliefs in the importance of keeping Mills a women's college, alumnae, faculty, and staff put together groundbreaking proposals to increase enrollment, cut costs, and grow the endowment. Faculty and staff agree to teach more courses without compensation and to dramatically cut administrative costs. Alumnae raise an unprecedented amount of money in pledges, agree to develop a strategy to enlarge the College's endowment, and promise to increase annual giving and alumnae donor participation. In turn, students propose to devote themselves to increasing enrollment by participating in recruitment efforts. On May 17, 1990, one day before the board is to reconsider its vote, students call off their strike in an act of good faith that the board will reverse the decision.

May 18, 1990

Students, alumnae, and faculty gather on the Tea Shop steps to hear the announcement of the board's decision. Hellman, the Board of Trustees chair, silently unrolls a banner in front of the throngs of students, alumnae, faculty, staff, and national media that says, "Mills. For Women. Again." Cheers of victory erupt amongst the gathered crowd. The board reverses its decision and Mills remains a women's college.