NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) Fifty years ago, New Haven’s Yale University joined other Ivy League schools — like Cornell and Harvard universities — by becoming coed.

In the beginning, the ratio of male to female students was not equal.

In fact, university officials said only 13% of the students were female.

It was a trying time in the nation and in the city — there were protests against the Vietnam War and Black Panther rallies.

Anne Gardiner Perkins went to Yale in 1977. She had just written her first book “Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant,” which explained the trials her female predecessors faced under a national spotlight.

Watch the video above to hear more about her thoughts on why Yale went coed and how it was for female students in the beginning.