The Legal Documents of Maryhill

Legal Agreements between St.Edward's and IHM

The legal agreements between the Sisters and St.Edward’s gave both sides the option to terminate or renegotiate their contract should the other side violate it.  Not only did St. Edward’s help in the construction of buildings deemed necessary by the Sisters, but it was also required to provide low costs to live on campus and medical insurance.  From what the legal documents indicate they had planned to have a coordinate system much longer than the four years it actually lasted. The contract states that the terms will be reviewed every three years while the actual coordinate program only lasted for around 4 years.  It also states that “ Either party, may terminate this agreement…after the record for the year have been completed.”  It seems that after only a few years of a coordinate program the people no longer saw purpose for it and decided to go coeducational and bring all the students under the supervisions of St.Edward’s.  They

A Basic Budget for Activities

This budget was given to the women of Maryhill to cover the costs of the activities for student clubs.  Much of the funding was for the class dues and activities such as dances or picnics during the school year. The amount which they were given was $2610 which, adjusted for inflation is equivalent to $19,065.15 today.  For the amount of students that they have this is a rather generous amount. With the amount of students on campus being “based on an enrollment of 174 girls next year,” this is more than enough to pay for the activities of the students.  It can be seen that the women were not deprived of campus life and had plenty of funds for their own activities.  While they were allowed to have these events, for the most part they are separate from the events held by St.Edward’s University.  The activities council sent in this request and did not have to renegotiate the deal because of the legal agreement between the two administrations.  This allowed the women good terms to negotiate the costs for the university and get them paid by St.Edward’s. Since Maryhill is owned by St. Edward’s the costs are all handled by them, and even through this the women get a large control over their own budget without being denied funding.

The Original Design Plans for Maryhill College

The Sisters had a fair amount of influence in the design of Maryhill buildings.  St.Edward’s trusted them in the design of the buildings as their women’s college in Michigan had had great success, and they trusted the vision of the sisters.  A few members of St. Edward’s played a part of the process including “organization and administration, Brother Raymond Fleck, CSC, president; academic program, brother Francis Borgia Woehler, CSC, dean ….”.  Even though they were participating in the consultation of this construction project a majority of the work was delegated to the Sisters.  The legal agreement between the colleges gave the sisters control over their own endeavors, but required them to submit their budgets to St. Edward's for approval. Almost everything else was under their control.  This was beneficial to St.Edward’s as they were not required to monitor this coordinate college because they had people who were more than qualified for the job. It would bring in a large amount of new students and they would not need to spend their personal time trying to watch over the program.  The sisters had a large amount of control over the program and St.Edward’s would benefit from the influx of new students onto the campus.