To cope with the high ratio of female students accepted into Appalachian State this year, Eggers Hall is now an all female dorm.
“I am surprised I was put in an all girls dorm because I requested co-ed,” Mattelyn Hough, a freshman who lives in Eggers, said. “However, I actually love being on a hall with all girls. I think I like it better than I would if I were placed in a co-ed hall.”
Tom Kane, director of University Housing, said since the push to desegregate halls about six years ago, the trend has been for more women to prefer living in an all female hall.
“Parents want their daughters to live in single-sex halls,” Kane said. “So the issue becomes who fills out the application. If they tell us they want to live in a single-sex hall, we will do our best to put them in White—and this year we just said we’ve had so many more requests for women for single-sex [residence halls]—or Eggers. That’s why we made Eggers [all female], to meet the demand.”
The demand being that nationally, the ratio between males and females at public universities is 43.6-56.4, according to Forbes.
“We expect between 55 and 60 percent of the freshman class to be female,” Kane said.
Hough said she feels women are more driven academically, leading them to apply for higher education at higher rates than men.
“A study that we’ve done, in regards to grade-point average [is] that a group of women in an academic setting, if they’re in a living learning community, typically their grade-point average is the highest of any group on campus,” Kane said. “On the other hand, if you put a group of guys together, and no matter how much you try to program for them, usually they have the lowest grade-point average. And then your co-ed is sitting in the middle.”
Lert Ratanaamornkun, a freshman building sciences major, said he prefers co-ed halls because having both males and females around helps with variety in discussion and productivity.
“All guys dorm[s] are kinda distracting because you’re always out with your friends doing some stuff and forget to study or whatnot,” Ratanaamornkun, whose girlfriend lives in Eggers, said. “It would be easier if the hall is co-ed but [it’s] not a big deal for me.”
“I think it’s really important, probably more so than ever, in regards to having people communicate,” Kane said. “There are students who really would prefer just to live on a floor and not have any guys around. It’s a modesty thing, it’s a privacy thing, and we’re going to try to accommodate it.”
Through predicting exactly how many more females that will attend Appalachian in the years to come, it is clear that the Residence Hall Association will accommodate for whomever and whatever their living preferences may be.