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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE As was to be expected, the board action in December 1923 did not end the discussion. On March 12,1924 the Gettysburgian speculated that "sufficient pressure from outside sources" may "force the Board to reconsider their action." On April 30 the paper printed a letter from Joseph B. Baker, then a Lutheran pastor in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and one of the seven board members who had been the minority several months earlier. Disappointment and sorrow were words he used to describe his own feelings. "When we select athletes we judge muscle, when we select singers we judge voices, when we select students we ought to judge brains," he wrote. "To use any other basis of selection is to display a pathetic misunderstanding of the very purpose of an educational institution." There was some progress in creating a Lutheran college for women. With the help of the Board of Education nine cooperating synods in 1924 chose a board of directors, which decided to found a new institution in a metropolitan area rather than attempt to gain control of an existing college. In 1926 they determined to locate near Washington, D.C., whereupon the Maryland Synod agreed to purchase and donate 179 acres of land in Silver Spring, Montgomery county, near the district line. Meanwhile, on the Gettysburg campus, there were few signs that the days of women students were numbered. Their enrollment increased from 79 in 1923-1924 to 84 in 1924-1925 and 80 in 1925-1926. Their Y.W.C.A. had existed since 1920. The faculty recognized a second sorority in 1923, the year in which a glee club and a society for women education students were formed. The women organized and elected their own officers in 1924. Beginning in 1925 they had their own rifle team. In some previous years, either the valedictorian or salutatorian had been a woman. In 1926, for the first time in the history of the College, both of these honors went to women. If we can believe the Gettysburgian, they achieved the ultimate triumph in January 1927, when their petition was granted and they won the right to attend chapel, although they had to be content with seats in the gallery. The resolution which the trustees passed in 1923 was scheduled to go into effect at the close of the 1925-1926 year. In its issue for November 18, 1925, the Gettysburgian reported finding little support for the board's position and declared that "those who visualize a 'Greater Gettysburg' expect that the board will overrule its action and place co-education upon an improved basis." Believing that the board might reconsider its stand, the opponents once again began presenting their case. Petitions from some fifty past women students, both graduates and nongraduates, as well as from about one hundred current students of both sexes urged the board not only to reverse itself, but also to secure adequate facilities for women. The trustees chose to ignore the matter in December, but clearly 59