"No man must be so committed to contemplation as, in his
contemplation, to give no thought to his neighbor's needs; nor so absorbed in action as to
dispense with the contemplation of God."
St. Augustine
City of God 19, 19
Although there were more students than ever, campus life in the 1950s was
much as it had been a generation before. Mother's Day and Junior Week were still
highlights during the second week of May. Proms and other dances at the Field House
were well attended and continued to feature famous dance bands. With the exception
of the nursing program, the student body remained overwhelmingly male. These
familiar rhythms of student life made the upheavals of the 1960s all the more
surprising. Echoing a nation-wide movement, Villanova students protested against
what they considered to be unacceptable conditions on campus, including paternalistic
social rules, and irrelevant curriculum, poor student facilities, and a student government
devoid of any real authority. They also decried a spate of national problems: poverty,
racial discrimination, and the Vietnam War. Another change was the admission of
women to all programs at the university for the first time in the Fall of 1968.
Although women had gradually entered academic life at Villanova over the years,
coeducation was no final and complete.
