This day in history: Boys at Gonzaga Prep had mixed feelings about decision to admit girls

From 1975: For the first time in its 88 years, Gonzaga Prep would be admitting girls.

This was not unexpected. Holy Names Academy, a Catholic school for girls, announced it was closing a few months earlier, leaving 250 girls without a school. Many expected Gonzaga Prep to fill that need.

The Gonzaga Prep principal had now made it official: girls would be admitted next fall. The boys at the school had mixed feelings.

“I was against it when I first heard about it but now I think it will be good,” said one sophomore boy.

Another boy called the move “drastic,” and said he hated to see the all-male tradition ending.

Yet a senior student body leader said he believed “the girls will bring a social stability to the students they have not had.”

“I am glad they are coming,” said one sophomore. “The girls think they are not wanted, but all I have heard is people welcoming them.”

From 1925: The Spokane Daily Chronicle claimed that it had proof that Spokane’s proprietors of “liquor, vice and gambling” were backing a ticket of three particular city commission candidates.

The Chronicle said it distributed “test ballots” on the east end of downtown – which was considered Spokane’s racy section – and had them filled out by the proprietors of the area’s “resorts.” By resorts, the paper meant sketchy hotels and so-called “soft drink parlors.”

The results were conclusive, said the paper. This trio of candidates received almost three times as many votes as the “dry” candidates. The trio was considered by some to be more sympathetic to the “wet” cause, that is, the anti-Prohibition cause.

However, at least one member of the trio insisted that this was not true – he too believed “in strict law enforcement and the Volstead Act.”