>>Former college student shares her coed experiences

By Grace Cooper

We’ve all heard of the typical on-campus, college living experience before: a single-gender dorm where members of the opposite sex employ strategic entering and exiting moves to visit the building.

People in the dorm are friendly and social, and the atmosphere is more like that of a big house with a boisterous family, rather than a sterile hotel with everyone sealed off from one another. 

This image, while once fairly common, is rapidly fading on college campuses.

A recent report in Reuters Health says that close to 90 percent of college dormitories in the United States are now housing men and women.

At East Tennessee State University, half of the dormitories are coed. The largest, Governors Hall, holds 542 students.

Other coed dorms are Lucille Clement Hall, Stone, Davis Apartments and Centennial Hall.

“I know very few of my neighbors and rarely see people in the hallways. Mostly, people keep to themselves."

       - Hanna Norris, Governors Hall resident         

Coed dorms are growing in popularity and the social aspect is a common denominator.  On-campus drinking tends to occur in coed dorms more than any other types, according to some studies.

However, living in a coed dorm isn’t the libertine lifestyle many people expect, at least not at ETSU.

Johnny Shephard, 18, a resident of Centennial Hall, describes his dorm as “moderate, maybe a little more rowdy than others.”

Hannah Norris, 19, a Governors resident, also refutes the idea of living in a coed dorm being one big, around the clock party.

“I know very few of my neighbors and rarely see people in the hallways,” said Norris. “Mostly people keep to themselves.”

Even with the coed dorm’s growing popularity, many students are choosing a more traditional route.

Kelsey Daily, 18, lives in Carter Hall, one of three women’s dorms on ETSU’s campus.

“I think if it was coed it would be awkward,” said Daily. “It seems more inviting to have just girls because we all do pretty much the same things.”

Daily describes Carter as being “quiet and studious” and is “very, very happy” with her decision to live there. She plans to live in Carter again next year.

Some people pick a single-sex dorm for different reasons.

“I did it for the traditional college experience,” said Patrick Thompson, 21, of Dossett Hall.

Jay Leggett, 19, also of Dossett, had another story.

“My first pick was Governors but I’d pick Dossett over anything else now,” he said.

Both Leggett and Thompson were adamant that single-sex dorms could be just as social as their coed counterparts, particularly with how large most of the coed dorms on campus are.

“The bigger the dorm, the less personable you can be,” said Thompson. “You make friends quicker.”

The informal, more lenient atmosphere is also a draw for students to single-sex dorms.

“[It’s] very relaxed,” said Leggett.

For some students, it doesn’t matter so much whether or not the dorm is coed. They decided on it for different reasons.

“I went [to Governors] because it was nice and for the private bathroom,” said Norris.  “There are times I think an all-girls’ dorm would be better for me,” she said.

Whether single-gender or coed, the dorm experience is what students make of it. If they want a social atmosphere, it’s up to them to make friendly overtures to their neighbors and to get things started. The sought-after party scene of college life depends more on the individual students than the dorm.