Qualla: Randolph College

Randolph College: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Russbird17, CC BY-SA 4.0. In August 2006, students returning to a hilltop campus above the James River in Lynchburg learned, only weeks into the semester, that the women's college they had chosen was about to admit men. The decision was not gentle in landing. Within days, protests filled the lawns of Randolph-Macon Woman's College, lawsuits were drafted, and alumnae who had crossed the same brick walks decades earlier began calling reporters. By the following July, the institution that had stood as a women's college since 1891 had a new name — Randolph College — and a future that almost nobody on campus had asked for.

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Image: Russbird17 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Randolph College: Born of a Refusal

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Northern-Virginia-Photographer, CC0. The college exists because Randolph-Macon College, the men's school down the road, said no. President William Waugh Smith spent years trying to convince his trustees to admit women. When they refused, he founded a separate institution under the same charter and went looking for a...

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Image: Northern-Virginia-Photographer | CC0

Randolph College: The Eccentric Namesake

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Northern-Virginia-Photographer, CC0. The Randolph in Randolph College is John Randolph of Roanoke (1773-1833), a planter and politician whose biography reads like fiction. He served in both houses of Congress, broke openly with his cousin Thomas Jefferson, and once fought a pistol duel with Henry Clay over a Senate ...

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Image: Northern-Virginia-Photographer | CC0

Randolph College: The Decision That Split the Campus

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pubdog (talk), Public domain. By 2006, the math had become unforgiving. Only three percent of college-age women said they would even consider a single-sex school, and Randolph-Macon Woman's College was competing for the same students as coed schools with deeper pockets. The trustees voted to admit men. Interi...

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Image: Pubdog (talk) | Public domain

Randolph College: The Maier Collection and the Sister-Classes

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pubdog (talk), Public domain. Some traditions held. Since 1920 the college has collected American art, and the Maier Museum of Art on campus now holds thousands of paintings, drawings, and photographs by 19th and 20th century American artists. The 'odd' and 'even' class rivalry - in which students of odd grad...

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Image: Pubdog (talk) | Public domain

Randolph College: What Endures

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pubdog (talk), Public domain. Randolph competes in NCAA Division III as the Wildcats, in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference, with nine intercollegiate sports. Notable faculty have included the cyberpunk novelist Rudy Rucker, who taught mathematics here in the early 1980s, and the educator Celestia Susannah ...

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Image: Pubdog (talk) | Public domain