A Look Back: Ralph Munro elected AS President in 1964

Before he was Washington’s Secretary of State, Ralph Munro, ’66, BAE, political science, won a close race for student body president at Western Washington University. A month after he was elected, Munro threw his weight behind eradicating the restrictions on female students in men’s residence halls.

“Perhaps it is time that students at Western be allowed to make their own moral judgements,” Munro told the Collegian student newspaper in 1964. “The rule which forbids women students from entering men’s apartments is utterly ridiculous. It is impossible to enforce and the girls are in and out of men’s apartments every minute of the day anyway.”

In addition to getting in the way of opportunities to socialize, rules that restricted the whereabouts of only women were inherently unfair and harmful, Munro said in a 2003 oral history. Infractions could get students kicked out of college, he said, and many never went back.

After 20 years as Washington’s Secretary of State Munro then served on the WWU Board of Trustees and established the Ralph Munro Institute for Civic Education. He passed away in March at age 81.