This isn't Ally McBeal. It's the college dorm.

"There was a great deal of artificiality in relations between men and women in the '50s and '60s," Wesleyan's Professor Scheibe says.

He and other professors recall 1968 as a pivotal year for US culture. The feminist movement was in full swing. To protest gender segregation, for example, women at Barnard College in New York held a "sleep-in" in 1969 at brother-school Columbia University's male dorms.

In 1972, Title IX mandated equality at schools that received federal funds, covering everything from admissions to athletics. After the Ivy Leagues opened to women, other schools quickly followed.

The change put pressure on women's colleges. Formerly all-women's Goucher College in Baltimore, for example, voted to enroll men in 1986.

The result, some say, was not entirely positive. Richard Pringle, a psychology professor, says women started to drop out of class discussions when the culture of romance hit. With men and a stronger emphasis on sports came "fraternity-ish" practices, too, he says.

"Drinking has taken on a new charge. Vandalism was nonexistent before, but now vandalism is somewhat of a problem. Sexual assaults and date rape were never a problem."

Women continue to face a chilly climate at co-ed institutions because of these same factors, some say. "There's been progress, without a doubt, but research shows that men dominate in classes and get more faculty attention," says Leslie Miller-Bernal, author of "Separate by Degree: Women Students' Experiences in Single-Sex and Coeducational Colleges."

Some schools have banned frats or made them co-ed for a "civilizing" effect. When Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., did so in 1995 to equalize housing and improve what many perceived as a male-dominated social scene, it was able to attract better academically qualified women, says dean of faculty David Paris.

Yet as coeducation gets pushed to the limit, some find it's not all it's cracked up to be.

"It's embarrassing at times," says Connecticut College student Mary Rafter, a sophomore from Maine. As a freshman she shared a room with two women on a floor with a bunch of men who were hockey players. "Your hair's a mess and guys are shaving and putting on cologne. What you sleep in is not what you want people to see you in."

Legal experts suggest that extreme living situations may even stir the very problems that schools are trying to solve with approaches like making fraternities co-ed. There could be more lawsuits in the future because of date rape or sexual harassment, for instance.

The equation is also complicated as campuses draw students with a wider range of religious and cultural backgrounds. In the Yale case, Orthodox Jewish students saw co-ed dorm life as too immodest for their religious standards. They sued over a policy that wouldn't allow them to live off-campus instead of in required dorms. The suit was dismissed. But it hinted at a level of sensitivity that may lead to a retreat from liberal policies.

"We are seeing more campuses where women and men want their own dorms," says Arthur Levine, president of Columbia University's Teachers College. But he predicts universities will swing between integration and separation.

The future will also bring a more nuanced approach to fulfilling equity in education, says Hamilton's Dean Paris. "Coeducation is evolving from the macro questions of access and equity to more micro questions like classroom climate, assessing learning styles of men and women."

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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