When the Aquinos went to celebrate their daughter Giulietta’s birthday on her college campus in May 1990, they had to wade through a sea of makeshift tents, sleeping bags and students holding “better dead than co-ed” signs, to find her.
They were surprised to find Giulietta linked arm-in-arm with her fellow students blockading the registrar’s office at Mills College, the Oakland, Calif.-based women’s college she chose to attend the previous fall.
Aquino, a first-generation college student, was bound by her newfound love for Mills to oppose a decision by the institution’s board to open the school to male students for the first time. Low enrollment and poor financial prospects had driven it and other women’s colleges to resort to co-education.
“By nature I am a rule follower but when I heard about the decision that was made I was very upset because I made a commitment to attend an all-women’s college,” said Aquino, now the dean of undergraduate admissions at Mills. “I saw the value of a women’s-only education.”
Determined to shut down their school completely, students staged a strike for 16 days blocking entrances and refusing entry to staff just a few days shy of commencement. They took shifts guarding the doors and getting food, Aquino said, eventually garnering local support and national media attention.
“I try not to become too nostalgic but it was my first act of civil disobedience and I thought I was going to be arrested,” she said. “It’s amazing to still be a part of this community.”
Mills is still a women’s college and is celebrating the 20th anniversary of their board’s recommitment to single-sex education thanks to the actions of their students. The school has undergone a stark shift since the days when it was founded by the daughters of White California-bound settlers in the nineteenth century and has developed a successful model for diversity success that stems from the top down.
