Excerpt from Yale Needs Women by Anne Gardiner Perkins, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Derek graduated in June 1968 without making much progress with Brewster, but he wasn't done with Yale yet.  While Brewster sat pecking away at his president's report in Martha's Vineyard, Derek was busy making plans of his own. Even if he would not be at Yale to carry them out himself, he knew plenty of students in the classes below him who were just as tired of Brewster's intransigence on coeducation as he was. Perhaps Derek could provide a spark to ignite student activism for change.

When Yale students returned to campus in September, they found that Derek had been there before them. On entryway bulletin boards and hallway doors, on trees and telephone poles Derek had stapled a broadside that featured a large picture of his younger sister Brooke and the question "Please, Mr. Brewster, why can't I come to Yale?" You couldn't miss it, and there was no denying the boldness of the "Operation Coeducation" idea that it proposed: Bring one thousand women students to Yale for a week. Construct geodesic domes on the Old Campus to house them. And see what Kingman Brewster said then.

Excerpted from Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant by Anne Gardiner Perkins. © 2019 by Anne Gardiner Perkins. Used with permission of the publisher, Sourcebooks. All rights reserved.