The Long Road to Coeducation Sporting the uniforms they
persuaded President Duke to fund, the first men's basketball
team, organized in 1949, almost 20 years before full coeducation
choose the school's sporting name: The Dukes. For nearly 50
years, Madison was all about women. Despite the fact that men
had attended since the beginning and that many had managed to
graduate with teaching degrees, Madison College was one of
Virginia's four women's teachers colleges. Men first enrolled as
day students in 1910, during the Normal's first summer session.
Alongside 207 women, about 14 men registered as day students, a
situation that remained largely unchanged for nearly 40 years.
Except for two brief periods, 1927-29 and again in 1940 when men
lived in campus housing for the summer sessions, male students
commuted or found local housing. In 1946, following World War
II, men were first admitted to regular sessions of Madison
College under the G.I. Bill, a reluctant concession by the state
board of education at the req