Dormitory arrangements
 

Tom Earp touched on this in his Harvard thread, and now I'm curious!

Whether you lived in them or not, what were the dorm living arrangements at your school? Was it:

-single sex dorms
-coed by floor
-coed by room
-or anything goes!

And what are the visitation policies like these days?

Sometimes I feel like I must be a dinosaur just cause I can't fathom having guys in the dorm room next to me...eeek! Coed by floor was fine thank you.

Housing at UH-Manoa
 

Housing at UHM pretty much sucked...that's why I moved back home after two years living there.

As far as housing goes... we have:

One all-female dorm (Kahawai)...a wellness hall.
The Hale Aloha Towers (4) ...coed by floor ...one designated a wellness hall... one designated a "Freshman Only" dorm
Gateway- suites, coed by room...designated for upperclassmen and grad students
One grad student apartment complex-coed by floor (kitchen equipped)
Two apartment complexes (Noelani and Wainani). Reserved for 3rd year+ students. Coed by room. Two wings of each of the apartments were designated wellness areas. (kitchen equipped)

Wellness halls are substance-free and quiet hours are enforced 24 hours.

Typically we are not allowed any overnight visitors. We're supposed to check in our visitors at the front desk...but no one ever does. When I lived in Noelani, I lived in a full house... me and 3 of my roommates...and each of our BFs. :eek: The football guys living next door were the sweetest guys! I liked hanging out with them than I did with my roommates!

Housing at St. Mary's University in San Antonio is okay, not the greatest. There are the freshman dorms that are co-ed by section. There is also a single room dorm which, of course, is co-ed by floor. Then there are the upperclassmen dorms, which are co-ed. I think they just stick whoever, wherever, as long as there isn't a girl and guy in the same room. What I am trying to say is that sexes are not divided by sections or floors. These dorms are the best on campus, but like I said above, are only for upperclassmen. :rolleyes:

My freshman year I lived in a double room on a floor that had mostly women except for one suite of men. My sophomore year I lived on a floor with only suites which were single sex. In other dorms if the rooms were doubles or in some cases triples, the floor was single sex. It was because of the bathroom. A suite contained its own bathroom.

The first school I went to had single-sex by floor for freshmen and co-ed for everyone else.

At the school I just graduated from, it is single sex by floor in two of the dorms and the rest is co-ed. They also have campus apartments that are sort of between dorm and apartment which are single sex by suite.

Dorm #1: substance free housing for Frosh through seniors. coed by floor

Dorm #2-3-4-5-6: Housing for all, coed by floor. Some nicer than others, of course. Dorms 1 and 6 have sinks in the rooms, very convenient

Dorm #7: Housing with singles, doubles, and 4-person suites from upperclassmen only. Usually layered, but women can live on the men's floor if they're living in one of the suites with a separate bathroom.

Dorm #8: converted fraternity house, now tiny singles, doubles, and two triples for women. The university has a much larger percentage of women than men

Other converted houses, theme houses, etc.

Where I was initiated:

About every mixture possible. And honestly, I dont remember much about it except; 1) when I moved in and flipped on the lights, the roaches scattered. 2) I woke up stinking every day. Soon realized it was my multi-fluid stained matress. Got a plastic matress zipper case to enclose it...problem solved. 3) our university handeled roomie matching with 1 question, "Do you smoke." Thats it. I get this big SOB whos first words to me were, "Well God Damn. Same Mother Fu*king room as last year. Shit." Nice to meet you too.

where I will graduate from:

One large, very nice dorm built in 86, completely coed. Private bathrooms. the other 2000 students on campus live in apartments 9, 7, and 5 years old repectively. Very nice by college standards. University has just drafted plans to build about 3000 more beds on campus (greeks included, yeah!) To include freshman only, grad student, themed and family.

At Tulane, the first school I went to, the dorms were either co-ed by floor or suite, or all female. I lived in a coed dorm and it was awful. The guys from the floor below us would come up and break our stuff.

When I got to LSU, all the dorms were single sex, but they've since gone coed.

at sdsu you have a few options...

east side of campus- the more social side, and closer to everything you would want to be around.
zura- huge 3 tower dorm. its all coed. when i lived there in spring 2001 everyother room was guy girl. there are a few singles that are the size of a closet.
tenocha- big high-rise dorm. there are a few single sex floors, but its mostly coed.
living learning center- first year freshman only. its 3 story brick dorms that are coed, and help freshman adjust to college. they also help set up their classes.
cuicacalli suites- suite style dorms. i lived there this year. these are like apartments. there are 8 people to a single sex suite on a coed floor.

west side of campus- the less social side, and a distance from anything fun...
templo del sol- a dump. 3 story brick dorms. this is where all the foreign exchange kids live and its the dorm that is open over Christmas break. its all coed.
chapultepec- a 11 story high-rise dorm. it's a new dorm, but it was closed this year to fix a mold problem.... its a nice dorm, and the upper floors have great views of san diego. it's coed

villa alvarado- these are apartments that are treated like dorms. they are a coed complex, but each unit is single sex. they are kinda out of the way...

university towers- this high-rise dorm is not operated by sdsu and is off by its self. it's coed.

If I recall correctly....
 

At LBSU (Long Beach State Univ.) there were two areas that were suites and they were co-ed by suite. Then you had your 2 traditional buildings (long hallway w/rooms on either side) and I think those had 1 co-ed floor and the other 2 were single sex by floor or wing (west wing / east wing).
There was absolutely no drugs or liquor allowed (but you could get away with anything in the suites).
Overnight guests didn't matter as long as your roommate approved. I think you were supposed to check in your guests, but nobody really cared.

At Humboldt State, aside from the campus apartments (where I lived for a year when I transferred), I really don't know what the rules are. The apartments were either single sex or co-ed.
Liquor was allowed for those who were of age. In the apartments, you could drink in the living room and other common areas and store liquor in the fridge. However, you weren't supposed to drink if minors were present (excluding roommates).
And almost everybody smokes pot! Instead of getting expelled or suspended for smoking pot, you get a warning. Doesn't really matter if it's your LGA (RA) or UPD (Univ. Police) who catches you. If your a frequent smoker, you get sent to "weekly meetings."

Funny huh?

at my school:

Freshman Dorms: co-ed by floor
Honor Dorms: used to be co-ed by floor, I'm not sure if they still are
All others: co-ed by suite (usually every other)

We also have an all women's dorm.

At the University of Central Oklahoma there are NO co-ed dorms. We have the women's dormitory and the men's dormitory. Then you have the commons which are more like apartments. We also have the Suites which are 4 1-person bedrooms with a single living room in the middle. I guess we do have co-ed housing if you want to count the married student housing. There are also some dorms that are exclusive to grad students (and they are truly the ugliest dorms on campus).

You can easily live off campus or in fraternity/sorority housing though. It's not required to live in the dorms (waiting list is long anyhow)

LHT
Kevin

At my school, there were 2 female dorms, 2 male dorms, 2 freshmen dorms that were coed by floor, and all the rest of the housing on campus (excluding fraternity and sorority houses) were coed by either floor, suite, or wing. There were also arts houses, off-campus apartments, and themed floors in a couple of the dorms. Overnight guests didn't matter as long as your roommate didn't mind, and most people who had significant others with singles pretty much lived at their place.

At MIT, we had:

Undergrads: (all undergrad dorms house freshmen through seniors)
1 all-women's dorm
4 dorms with suites - some suites were single-sex, others were coed by room (I lived in one of these dorms)
5 dorms with halls - coed by room

Grad students:
1 (very small) all-women's dorm
1 dorm with suites - coed by room
2 dorms with apartments - coed by apartment

Married student housing:
2 apartment buildings - apartments were a mix of efficiencies, 1 bedroom, and 2 bedroom - 2 bedroom apts. were only available to those with at least 2 children

Since I graduated, an additional undergrad dorm has been built (I think it opens this fall) to accommodate MIT's new policy that all freshmen must live on campus.

There were no restrictions on liquor or other drugs, overnight guests, or anything else - except pets. You weren't allowed any pets other than fish. However, a LOT of people had cats... if you were allergic to cats and your suitemate had a cat, you found another suite to live in. I know one guy who named his cat Fish, so that if the house manager challenged him, he could truthfully say "I only have Fish." :D

Funny thing I heard about pets (or maybe not funny at all depending on if it's used or not):

At Oklahoma State the rule I'm told is that anything is allowed if it can survive underwater for 3 minutes. I'm wondering if this test is ever actually used:eek:

At UCF, we had a few dorms that were all girls, a few all boy dorms, and a few coed dorms. The coed dorms divided the boys and girls up by floors. Girls would be on the 3rd and 4th floor while the boys would be on the 1st and 2nd floor. That way, a bunch of guys would not be living next door to a group of girls. There were no limits on visitation.

At elon, there are a few single sex dorms, and then mostly co-ed dorms by suites or floors. Freshman and sophmores have to live on campus, so the sophmores usually get the greek houses, the campus apartments, and the "Danieley Center" wich is its own little campus off by itself, which is surrounded by off campus housing that the juniors and seniors live in. Not many juniors or seniors live on campus except for in the greek houses.

We didn't have dorms at the University of Michigan-Flint :(

At Brown, there's one single-sex HALLWAY. That's called "the convent", specifically for girls whose parents request that their daughters stay in single-sex living arrangements.

Other than that, it's a free-for-all. Rooms and suites have to be single-sex, but we're co-ed by hall, meaning you can live next to someone of the opposite sex. I never saw a problem with it--there weren't that many hook-ups. Lots of couples, but not so many hookups.

At Iowa, there's one dorm thats coed by floor meaning you could be living next to guys/girls. The other 8 dorms are all coed by floor - ie: floor 1 girls, floor 2 boys, ect...

Our visitation policy was actually kind of funny - if you had a member of the opposite sex in your room overnight, you were not supposed to sleep. Of course we all laughed about that, b/c we interpreted that as find other ways to keep yourselves "occupied" ;) Obviously, people had guests in their rooms all the time and RAs never enforced any policy.

We have all co-ed dorms. The guys are typically on the first floor and sometimes the second (depending on the dorm). The girls are on the 2nd and third floors. Our school is talking about doing co-ed floors in the fall. That should be interesting.

Our apartments are single sex for the most part, but anything goes.

Georgetown has coed dorms. . .

Most halls were coed, although some floors were all female. I happened to live on an all male floor my freshman year. It was all male because the second and third floors of my dorm were half the size of the rest of the floors, so instead of half male/half female, they put the dudes on my floor and the girls beneath.

Anyway, they weren't really separated by wing, so you could theoretically be next door to someone of the opposite sex.

We did have one place on campus called the Black House, which was basically a special interest house for multicultural events. That was the only house that had both men and women. The other apartments, houses, and suites had to be single-gendered because of rules against cohabitation.

At Baylor there was no such thing as co-ed dorms. Heaven forbid you had girls and guys living in the same building! Baylor, for all those who dont know, is the largest baptist school in the world.

Anyway, i remember that we couldnt even have guys in our rooms during the week. Visiting hours were on the weekends only, and from like 12-6pm. The guys could stay in the lobby but that was about it. The only guys allowed upstairs during non-visiting hours were family members like fathers, brothers, uncles, and grandfathers.

At W&L freshman housing is co-ed by floor. After that you either live in Greek housing or you are in suites/apartments that are co-ed by suite/apartment.

No visitation limits.

We didn't have dorms. :(

UF had every kind of arrangement imaginable. There are:
- Virgin vaults, both male and female, where there was no opposite gender visitation ever allowed (including relatives) Those are being phased out after this academic year though :)
- Traditional dorms, coed by floor or by wing.
- Non-air dorms coed by room.
- Apartments and suites were coed by room.
- Apartments for families with and without children.

At the school where I initiated:

1 all female dorm, 8 wings, double rooms.
1 all male dorm, 8 wings, double rooms
4 coed by floor/wing dorms, 9 wings, double rooms
2 coed by floor/wing dorm, 8 wings, double rooms
1 coed dorm by floor/wing, 11 or 12 wings, all double rooms except one wing of singles

There was some sort of visitation policy that all guests had to be registered with the front desk, but it was NEVER followed. I stayed in my dorm to visit when I was underage and I may or may not have shacked a whole lot - particularily after I've moved out.

At the school where I'll graduate from:

I believe there's currently 10 dorms - some are converted housing because they took way too many freshmen. Some are living on my street in a former halfway house! The dorms range from quads with common bathrooms to singles with a private bathroom and most of them are quite nice.

There's also upperclassmen/grad housing in the form of apartments - again, everything from studios to a 5 bedroom townhouse.

The visitation policy here is apparently pretty uptight, I never lived on so I'm not entirely sure. I do know, however, that my mom managed to have overnight male guests in the 70s, so I'm betting it's still easy to violate. ;)

We have-

One male freshman dorm divided by wings, with females living on the top floor and one wing of the floor below.

One female freshman dorm, with the second-to-top floor being the honors floor with one male wing and one female, the top floor being an upperclassman coed substance-free floor.

Two coed by room upperclassman dorms.

Res Life @ Alabama is notoriously shitty. All of my friends at other universities have it so good compared to what I had. I only lived on campus for one year. I actually moved off campus to save money. Yeah. The dorm I lived in was finished the week I moved in, and it was supported a lot by private grants (I was in an honors type living learning program) It was gorgeous! (And also $1700 per semester) A bit small, but the architecture was beautiful and there were nice airy common rooms on each floor. We were coed by floor, w/ floor 2 being all guys and 3 and 4 all girls. There was a little hooking up but in general we were all like family.
There are a few older apartment buildings meant for grad and married students. There's a huge apartment building coed by apartment that houses mostly upper classmen and lots of athletes. There is a large men's dorm that's about to be torn down, and then there's the notorious Tutwiler hall, also known as Slutwiler or 14 floors of whores (all girls). It's mostly freshman and mostly greek, and it houses nearly 1000 girls. It's insanity in that place. There are a few ok dorms but in general the situation is rather run down and old. Only about 25% of the student population lives on campus anyways.

The living situation at Mercer isn't bad. . . freshmen and sophomores are required to live on campus but a lot of juniors and seniors stay on anyway. My only complaint is it is soooo expensive to live on campus. I live in the Greek Village and am paying about $2040 per semester.
Here's the breakdown:

Mary Erin Porter Complex: all freshman in three dorms. Dowell is community bath for guys and Boone is community bath for girls. Porter is suite bath for girls. Not too bad. I lived in Boone and Porter freshman year.

Plunkett: freshmen coed by wing. ewww this place is nasty and the rooms are like closets. and "Plunketteers" tend to be a little crazy sometimes!

Shorter: Freshmen coed by floor. VERY nice! 2 rooms connected by a living room with suite baths.

Roberts: Upperclassmen coed by floor, community bath. EW that is all I have to say.

Mercer Hall: upperclass coed by suite, 2 bedroom or 4 bedroom suites with living room and a bathroom for every 2 rooms. You get your own room and it is WONDERFUL. Nicest dorm on campus

Sherwood: Upperclass coed by floor. normal dorm suite style but with really big rooms. Really nice.

Garden: upperclass coed by apartment. Private bedrooms 2-4 per apartment. a bathroom for every 2 bedrooms. kitchen and living room. Very nice and very ahrd to get into.

Winship: Similar to Garden except not furnished and used for grad and non traditional students or undergrad overflow.

Stadium Drive: Apartments obviously built in the late 60s-early 70s. 2-5 person. Kinda sketchy and really far from the hub of campus. Right near the really bad part of town that campus backs up to. We all try to avoid living in Stadium.

Greek Village: 10 rooms houses, private rooms. 2 story with huge common rooms and kitchen/laundry room and an office. I currently live in the house owned by Panhellenic. (Some houses are 5 rooms, 1 story for the smaller chapters.)

At my alma mater, freshman and sophomores were required to live in the dorms. We had one all female dorm, and the rest were co-ed by either floor, wing, or 'scattered'. We didn't have any on-campus apartments or married student housing... I believe if you were married you were exempted from the 2 year live-in rule.

All rooms were doubles, except for a very, very few singles, and I think a few triples here and there.

This is one of those, "I had to walk three miles to school in knee deep snow and uphill both ways," posts.

When I was in school, (1965-69), there were no co-ed dorms -- except for a private dorm that had men and women living on different floors, and elevators that only stopped on male or female floors.

The internet hadn't been invented, so there was no computer wiring. There was one phone in the hallway per floorsection. It rang differently for every room. There were no phones in rooms at all. TV's, fridges, hotplates, etc. were either highly discouraged or against the rules.

The rooms were pretty small and had painted concrete block walls. The beds were triple bunks. No "lofts" or anything like that allowed.

The ADA hadn't been passed yet, and there were no elevators in the university dorms. Also, no air conditioning.

Dorm food was awful. The kind where you could eat the Jello with a fork. If you lived in a dorm, you had no choice of where you ate -- it was whichever cafeteria (or commons) your dorm was assigned to. You had to dress fairly nicely in the cafeterias. No hair in curlers, flip flops, etc. You pretty much had to dress like to would for class -- which was somewhat more formal then than now. On Sunday evening, you had to wear coat and tie to dinner and the girls had to wear dresses, etc. Breakfast rules were a little less stringent. There were no snacks, etc. between meal periods.

The worst thing, though, was women's "hours." A woman under 21 had to be in by 10:30 PM Sunday through Thursday, and 12:30 AM on Friday and Saturday. The could get two 1:00 AM "lates" per semester.

If men or women under 21 decided to get a room or apartment, it had to be "university approved" and the same rules (hours, etc) applied.

Oh, and there were NO opposite sex members allowed in those rooms or apartments at all, except on "open houses" (maybe once a quarter), and in those cases both parties had to have at least one foot on the room floor. That led to some creative acrobatics.

Finally, there was NO beer or liquor allowed in dorms or approved housing, even though the drinking age was 18 (for beer) in Ohio in those days.

Is it any wonder us old guys are warped?

When I was in school, all the dorms were separated by gender, except for one that was promoted as co-ed, but really wasn't. It was actually two completely separate dormitories that had breezeways connecting them to a common building where we had a microwave, TV room, and game room. Guys couldn't be even in the breezeway of the girls' section after midnight, and vice versa for the girls -- and they had RA's on duty in the common building to make sure that you weren't sneaking around.

Now, the school has grown so much that they're building new dorms, and the old ones are co-ed by floor. They'll eventually tear them down, and it's a good thing because a lot of them have mold problems.

Our rooms were the old, small, concrete block kind furnished with big ugly desks, closets, and beds that took up most of the space.

I think there is an all female dorm, because some girls are dumb are girly enough to only want to live with other girls. There are no all guy dorms because that is retarded.

I lived in a freshman only dorm. It was coed by sweet. I had a male roomate and shared a bathroom with two other guys plus my room mate.

Sophmore year same thing, only I was in a super suite. Two suites faciing each other only we had a chill common area where we could chill at.

My dorm is:
2nd and 4th floor are coed
3rd floor is all female

I live on the 4th floor and I love it! I am in one of only two air conditioned dorms on campus and we can control the heat too which really helps out. :)

I've lived in two different dorms at two different schools, and they had two totally different set ups. The first one was co-ed by wing (each floor had four wings branching off the main tower, and two were male, two were female). The second was an entirely female dorm (not my first choice, but hey, when you don't have the chance to sign up for housing until May you take what you can get).

In my experience, the majority of housing these days is either co-ed by wing or co-ed by floor. I've yet to see anything that was just co-ed by room, randomly tossing in guys and girls rooms. I think single-sex housing is on the way out -- my first school had no single-sex dorms, and the second has one that will probably remain an all-girls dorm for as long as possible (it's pretty palatial for a dorm and has a lot of history connected to it, and as soon as they get guys in there, they'll tear up the place!), but it used to have more fairly recently that got transitioned into co-ed dorms because of lack of interest.

In my experience, there were definitely limits on visitation in the traditional dorm-style housing. It definitely wasn't enforced very effectively, though.

We also have a dorm reserved for Honors and LEAD Scholars, as well as apartments that are co-ed by apartment.

all of the dorms on my campus are co ed

all the dorms on my campus are co-ed by room. no mixing of the genders within rooms/suites.
all visitors must be signed in at all times, and the same person can not be signed in by the same resident for more than 5 consecutive nights.
unless you live in the hotel, and then anything goes. no one cares, and nothing is moderated.

Our son lived in a dorm last year as a freshman. He was on the "National Merit" floor. There were women on one wing and men on the other with lockable doors between the wings. I'm not aware that there were any restrictions on visitation, though. The rooms were in suites with two guys in each room, and two rooms shared a single bathroom. Fairly typical. The rooms were pretty small, but efficient.

This year he has an apartment with a sophomore woman with whom he claims he is just friends. We'll see. Anyway, it's much bigger than the dorm suite and both have their own bedrooms and bathrooms, so he probably has as much privacy there as he did in the dorm.

Plus, it's only on the second floor -- not the eighth.