Cecil Hall has seen more requests since fall 2010, when 85 students opted for a single-sex living option. Officials had to turn some students away last year, with 119 requesting a spot in the 94-bed dorm.
Resident Life may be preparing mixed-gender and gender-neutral housing for next year, but there are still a group of students who choose the campus’ only single-sex housing option.
Cecil Hall, located near the Memorial Chapel on South Campus, is the only residence hall on the campus that is all-female. While some may believe the desire for this kind of housing is waning on a campus moving toward less discrimination between sexes in dorm life, more students requested the single-sex option last year.
In fall of 2010, 85 students requested a single-sex living option, according to Department of Resident Life data. But officials found themselves turning away some students who hoped to live in Cecil Hall in 2011; 119 requested the dorm and there are 94 beds.
“Out of students who request that as a first choice, not necessarily all of them receive it,” said Erin Iverson, Resident Life assignments manager.
Not everyone who requests Cecil Hall is necessarily looking for single-sex housing, Iverson said. Some of the requests come from students who don’t fully understand the university’s options.
“We frequently get students incoming who maybe don’t understand the lay of campus yet who make requests to us that don’t quite fit with where we can assign them,” Iverson said.
If there is a significant number of female students who want to live in Cecil Hall for religious or cultural reasons, there are options outside of Cecil Hall. Resident Life organizes entirely female floors on North Campus, providing residents with a somewhat same-sex housing option. Same-sex options are not as easily available for male students, though.
“We tend to not do a lot of all-male floors in a building,” Iverson said. “Sometimes that’s a little harder to manage.”
Despite the stigma surrounding living in an all-female building, some former residents said they enjoyed their year in the dorm.
“Cecil’s location is just phenomenal,”said Ellie Markewitz, a junior mathematics major. “It was basically like a penthouse suite, and we loved it.”
Freshman Nishka Batra, an international student from New Delhi, said she chose to live in Cecil Hall this year, but would rather have the experience of living on the more populated North Campus.
“I didn’t know if I could have a guy roommate; I didn’t know how it worked,” the economics major said, adding she thinks many residents in Cecil Hall were pulled in. “If someone actually decides to live here, it’s probably because their parents are conservative.”
If Batra could pick a housing option all over again, she said her choices would be different the second time around.
For now, Batra is fine where she is.
“I was actually deciding to change for spring, but I decided against it,” Batra said.
As long there are still students requesting the all-female option, Resident Life will continue making it available, said Director Deb Gradner.
“We want all students to feel comfortable living in the residence halls. For some individuals, having a single-gender residence hall is really important to them,” she said. “I think we’ll need to monitor what students are interested in and make our decisions based off of that.”
