Barnard College

of the board at Barnard, Eleanor Thomas Elliott, led the resistance to the takeover. The college's marketing emphasized the Columbia relationship, however; the Bulletin in 1976 said that Barnard described it as identical to the one between Harvard College and Radcliffe College ("who are merged in practically everything but name at this point").
After Barnard rejected later merger proposals from Columbia and a one-year extension to the 1973 agreement expired, in 1977, the two schools began discussing their future relationship. By 1979, the relationship had so deteriorated that Barnard officials stopped attending meetings. Because of an expected decline in enrollment, in 1980 a Columbia committee recommended that Columbia College begin admitting women without Barnard's cooperation. A 1981 committee found that Columbia was no longer competitive with other Ivy League universities without women, and that admitting women would not affect Barnard's applicant pool. That year Columbia president Michael Sovern agreed for …