Union College has had a rich and vibrant history since its establishment in 1795—from being the first institution chartered by the New York State Board of Regents to being the “Mother of Fraternities”, Union has seen it all. The college has witnessed pivotal milestones across time, the most recent one being the swearing in of president Elizabeth Kiss as the first female president in the history of the college. This comes over half a century after the admittance of female students into the once all-male college.
The 1970s were a revolutionary decade for both the United States and Union College. These years saw the surge of a feminist movement nationwide, bringing about substantial changes in the status of women at colleges. The decade began strong at Union in the fall of 1970, when the college’s first co-educational batch of students, comprising 126 women, entered the campus. This topic was covered in a Union College Chronicle article from September 1970.
The same year, Muriel Kauffman got elected as the first woman in the college’s board of trustees. These events succeeded a 1968 vote by the faculty and then board of trustees ruling in favor of coeducation, following schools like Colgate and Wesleyan. Shortly after, in 1972, Professor Helena Birecka of the Biology department became the first woman to receive tenure at Union.
The years that followed witnessed even more positive changes. In 1974, the college abolished its sex-based admissions quota and held its first Women’s Week. Consequently, women comprised 33 percent of the entering class in 1975. In the 1977-1978 academic year, the first two sororities at Union, Sigma Delta Tau and Delta Gamma, were established.
While Union was in the middle of this great social shift in the field of higher education, it also made headlines in the cultural realm by being one of the locations for the shoot of Sydney Pollack’s “The Way We Were”. Various scenes of the movie were shot at Union’s campus in the fall of 1972.
The movie, considered one of the top romances of all times, follows Katie Morosky and Hubbell Gardiner whose encounter at Wentworth College leads to a spectacular romance across decades, ultimately ending in heartbreak. It flaunts various locations and landmarks across campus including an ivy-clad Nott Memorial, Jackson’s gardens, and the Chester Arthur statue.
The protagonists were played by prestigious Hollywood actors Barbra Streisand and the late Robert Redford, the latter of whom recently passed away on September 16, 2025 at the age of eighty nine in Sundance, Utah.
Though the actor had no personal association with the college, his role in the movie, which was nominated for six Academy Awards and featured various Union students as extras, serves as a prestigious reminder of Union’s role in shaping American history, both inside and outside the classroom.
