But Nora and Em and I knew why the snowshoer wasn’t ready to move on from Exeter—he’d told us. Even in the early sixties, Elliot Barlow was advocating for the academy to become a coed school. Until Exeter let in girls, Mr. Barlow wasn’t leaving; he wanted to be there for the boys who got picked on. “Once there are girls around as witnesses, boys will be kinder to other boys,” the snowshoer said. He’d talked to his fellow teachers at several New England all-girls’ schools; the teachers at those schools had told him how mean girls could be to girls. Having boys as witnesses would make the girls behave better, too. That was Elliot’s argument for coeducation: kindness.

“Try being coed in the summer school—see if it works there,” the little English teacher had been saying for years. In 1961, thirteen girls were admitted to the Exeter Summer School—they were day students, not boarders. The next summer, the first girl boarding students were admitted. A majority of the academy faculty supported the change; the summer school had provided convincing evidence of the academic desirability of coeducation and the feasibility of handling a boarding population of boys and girls.

In 1969, the board of trustees took up the matter. As Mr. Barlow had predicted, the principal argument against a coed Exeter was financial: women graduates would earn less than men; women would give less to the school. The snowshoer proposed polling recent Exeter alumni, who were now in college; Mr. Barlow already knew that the Exeter student body wanted a coed school. The only college students who opposed the idea were at Dartmouth. Nora said Dartmouth had a dick-oriented culture. Em’s pantomime is best left to the imagination.

The Exeter board of trustees voted unanimously in favor of coeducation in 1970. The first girl day students were admitted to the regular session in September of that year; the girl boarders would come in 1971. In 1973, the snowshoer resigned from Phillips Exeter Academy, where he’d taught for twenty years. With Nora and Em’s encouragement, Elliot Barlow would move to New York City.

When he’d been asked how the boys would treat the girls at Exeter, the little English teacher had said: “I can only hope they will treat the girls better than they have treated other boys.” It would remain dismaying to Elliot, however, that there’d been no discussion among the trustees at Exeter concerning the possibility of inappropriate behavior by the faculty toward the female students at the school. Even in the early 1960s, when he was asked how the Exeter faculty would treat female students, the snowshoer had sighed. “As everyone knows,” Mr. Barlow had said, “men generally behave very badly with women.” (As the snowshoer had been finding out for himself, around town.)