Lauren Dubas, History 250: The Historian Craft, Spring 2019

Lauren Dubas, History 250: The Historian Craft, Spring 2019

During the late 1960s, change spread throughout all walks of life on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. New ideas about gender roles affected student’s lives, particularly with their living situations. Previously, women on campus lived under the rules of the Association of Women Students (AWS). The AWS set regulations for the education and living conditions of women attending the university, restricting where a woman could live, when she could entertain visitors, and when she could be absent from her residence hall. Men had much more flexibility when it came to their living arrangements, but still had to adhere to the visitation rules determining when and in what manner they could hold guests on campus. By the late 1960s and early 1970s students were ready for this to change. Students on campus voiced their opinions on such matters, appealing to the chancellor to promote the updating of these rules. Student demand for more modern and versatile housing options on campus in the late 1960s and early 1970s led to a new age of coeducational housing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

UNL was not the first campus in the United States to turn to coeducational housing around this time in history. The 1960s and 1970s were defined by an increase of social activism and the sexual revolution. Unfortunately, there is very little documentation or record of the switch to coeducational housing. Instead, universities seemed to naturally adjust based on student demand and financial consideration. Students wished for single-gender housing less and less until the lack of flexibility to fill single-gender dorms vacancies turned into a financial burden for Universities. Rather than building brand new dorms to house coeds, buildings were usually updated and redefined to let both men and women live there. UNL acted similarly to other large universities at this time down to the obscurity of documentation on the shift to coed housing. [1]

The first coeducational housing option on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s city campus resided within the building now called Neihardt Hall. The switch to coed living was brought about by the addition of the Centennial Education Program in the fall of 1969. One of [2] the big changes in the University to celebrate its 100th year of operation, the Centennial Program allowed students to live and study in the same building. The floors of two halls, Love and Heppner, alternated by gender for dorm living. The first floor of the complex was modified into classrooms and study rooms to allow students the option to easily meet up with their classmates and peers. Built in 1932 as Carrie Bell Raymond Hall, a women’s dorm, the building went through many expansions and name changes. In 1973, shortly after the Centennial College’s creation the building was renamed Neihardt in order to better represent its new occupants. The other two halls in Neihardt followed suit allowing men into alternating floors starting with the oldest part of the building, Raymond Hall, in 1976.[3] [4]

The creators of the Centennial College did not debate much about whether or not the program should include both men and women. The goals of the college were to be cutting edge, and the university followed the trends of many other schools at the time turning to coeducational housing. From the early stages of its planning, the Centennial College was designed to house both genders in the same dorm for students to live and study together. In the proposal given to the Board of Regents, the committee in charge of establishing the Centennial College cited other universities who had also been trying out experimental colleges. These universities emphasized the importance of living together to counteract the sense of students feeling lost and unimportant within the university system.[5]

During this tumultuous time in the early 70s, students were vocal about wanting more from their residence hall experiences. In “An Evaluation of UNL Residence Halls” conducted by a subcommittee of the ASUN Environmental Task Force, students found that there should be more differentiation in housing options for students. They proposed each hall have different rules regarding visitation in order to provide for students’ personal preferences for living conditions. The evaluation was also in strong support of adding more coeducational housing “as a tool for achieving the total learning and developmental process that the university experience entails.” In the questionnaire attached, the evaluation recorded that students were in support of having people of the opposite sex living on anther floor rather than on the same floor at this time. Overall, the evaluation stressed the dissatisfaction that students had with their University housing experience and the social benefits of more freedom of social interaction between residents. Students felt both lost in the system and that the Housing Office was not holding up the standards it promised of “personalized small group learning” and “sound human relationships.”[6]

After the Centennial College, other dorms started their own experimental trials with going coed. Schramm (of the cluster of buildings known as Harper-Schramm-Smith) was the next building to start a coeducational living style of every other floor in 1970. An article in The Daily Nebraskan described how pleased people were with the outcomes of the new living situation. The Residence Director is quoted claiming how the main lounge was being used more into the night as well as an increased number of clubs being organized. Abel (of Abel-Sandoz) became coed on the same floor, each side, north or south, housing a different gender. The “Chancellor’s Proposals for Changes in UNL Campus Housing Rules” called the Abel style of housing “Associate Living Floors” as men and women would be housed on the same floors together. This proposal covered many other housing issues that were on the time including the creation of housing groupings based on academic studies (now called learning communities), and changes in visitation rules in the residence halls.[7]

The University of Nebraska also researched other Nebraska colleges in order to evaluate the housing options they offered. On August 13, 1973 Kenneth L. Bader, the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, sent Chancellor James Zumberge a “Residence Hall Survey” of Nebraska Colleges. This survey shows statistics on other colleges in Nebraska including their visitation policies and dorm rates in relation to their enrollment statistics. This memorandum was gathered with the intention of presenting it to the Board of Regents at an upcoming meeting, about a year before the official “Chancellor’s Proposals for Changes in UN-L Campus Housing Rules” mentioned above. The ASUN report on housing and this gathering of information show the university was thinking heavily on changes that it wanted to make. It took into account what the students wanted and also kept a close eye on their own enrollment numbers making sure that the changes it would make would not affect them.[8]

The changes in visitation rules found in this same proposal were heavily debated in effort to find the best solution. Many students were not happy with the current limitations of hours along with the requirement that residence hall staff stay present during those hours. This dissatisfaction led to a series of suspensions of visitation rights in certain residence halls. The Daily Nebraskan on January 23, 1974 reported on how Harper Hall’s Residence Director made the decision to revoke visitation hours. Students blatantly violated visitation rules by keeping doors closed while having female visitors over, even after they were warned. There were also reports of female voices heard in the halls after the visitation hours were over. Students were not fans of this punishment, commenting on how much they pay for a room. Going into college, freshman felt they deserved independence, yet still were controlled on when and where they could have visitors. Only one week after Harper’s punishment, visitation hours were suspended for Schramm and Smith Halls, the other two buildings of the HSS complex. Students were fed up with officials and began to take action to do something about it. On January 30th, 1974 The Daily Nebraskan reported that the Schramm student government was in the process of trying to change these visitation policies.[9]

With the Chancellor’s proposal three months later, the Board of Regents wanted to cater more to students’ wants and needs. The existing rules for visitation included 0-6 hours Sunday through Friday, and then 0-12 hours on Saturday. The proposal would allow students to choose between 3 different variations in visitation hours. Their options included no hours, 0-8 hours on weekdays and 0-16 hours on weekends, or 0-16 hours daily. These options were created “to insure a higher rate of satisfaction among students.” Each student would request an option for their hall when signing up for housing. Then, which hours of the day that those hours could be fulfilled would be decided by vote within that floor or hall once residents moved in. Changes to these decisions throughout the year could not be easily accomplished, and parental permission for those under the legal age were required. In between the proposal, approval, and implementation of the new visitation hours rules outlined, the hours shifted to a more conservative maximum of 14 hours, rather than the original 16.[10]

The proposal also supported getting rid of both the requirement for residence staff to be present during visitation hours and eliminating the need for residence to keep their doors open. With the increase of hours, it was less feasible for employees to be on staff to monitor the residents the whole time for visitation. For students wanting less restrictions and more independence, the rule enforced the feeling of restriction.  The “open door” requirement was also proposed to be eliminated in order to let students exercise their right of privacy. The Board recognized that this policy created irritation and tension between residents and residence hall staff. Lastly, the proposal aimed to establish more coeducational living, specifically in Abel-Sandoz for the following year. The proposal emphasized the success in success of the Schramm Hall and Piper Hall models that have men and women living on alternate floors. Listed among the advantages are normalized peer relationships, better educational programming activates, and better student attitudes and behaviors.[11]

In the following fall when these changes were implemented students generally responded positively. According to an article in The Daily Nebraskan, about 64% of students in the fall chose to live on a floor with the maximum number of hours given. Only 75 students chose to have no visitation hours. The article also mentioned that a major argument for relaxing dorm rooms was to increase occupancy. While the number of students who requested single rooms numbered 114 more than the last year, the dorms’ occupancy was still down 276 students. Two months later in a follow up of the housing policy, The Daily Nebraskan reported that most residents were satisfied with the new housing options. Students respected the rules more than they had the spring before, which was a relief to residence hall staff. Nobody who requested visitation hours was placed on a floor without visitation, and 91% of those who preferred the highest number of visitation hours were granted that placement. Swerdlow, the Assistant Director of Housing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at the time even mentioned that within a few years the dorms might turn completely to 24-hour visitation rights.[12]

In the late 1970s and early 1980s housing remained a hot topic on campus as students continued to fight for more and more freedom within their residence halls. By this time, most of the dorms were coeducational in the sense that there were both men and women living within the same complex, if not the same hall. This continuous improvement sparked a new drive for 24-hour visitation rights for all students. By 1976, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln was one of 4 Big 8 Conference schools without this kind of policy in place, and students were ready for that to change. It would be years however before they accomplished this for undergraduate students.[13]

Students on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campuses during the late 60s and early 70s advocated heavily for changes in their residence hall experiences. They felt unimportant in such a large system, and that, for the money they paid, they should be able to have more choices when it came to what they wanted. The university, noticing its students’ attitudes and how that affected occupancy, proposed and implemented policies allowing for more freedom for students to choose what they would like from their residence hall experiences, leading to a new norm of coeducational housing for students. 

Notes

  1. Willoughby, Brian J., Jason S. Carroll, William J. Marshall, and Caitlin Clark. “The Decline of In Loco Parentis and the Shift to Coed Housing on College Campuses.” Journal of Adolescent Research 24, no. 1 (January 2009): 21–36. 
  2. [2]Centennial Education Students Acting Photo. Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. RG 48-3-1. Centennial Education Program. Box 1. Folder: Centennial Education Project Photofile.
  3. [3] Gurtiss, Jay. “More Than Just a Place to Live: A History of Raymond, Love, Heppner, and Piper Halls.” 1983. Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.. RG 52-02-00. UNL Buildings and Grounds. Box 20. Folder: Carrie Bell Raymond Hall (Residence).; Knoll, Robert E., Robert D. Brown. “Experiment at Nebraska; The first two years of a Cluster College.” University of Nebraska Studies, new series no. 44 (June 1972).
  4. [4] Centennial Education Students Studying Photo. Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. RG 48-03-01. Centennial Education Program. Box 1. Folder: Centennial Education Project Photofile.
  5. [5]Knoll, Robert E., Robert D. Brown.; Advisory Committee. “A Proposal.”  Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. RG 04-02-29. Records of the University of Nebraska Centennial Committee. Box 3. Folder: Centennial College 1967-69.
  6. [6] McCarty, Joe, et al. “An Evaluation of UNL Residence Halls” 1972-1973. Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. RG 05-01-01. Office of the Chancellor. Centralized Files of the Chancellor. Academic Files. Box 138. File: Housing 1970-1978. “Coed Living Working” The Daily Nebraskan, 3. October 01, 1970. Vol. 94, No. 10. (3) https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1970-10-01/ed-1/seq-3/#words=coed+dorm+first ; Zumberge, James. “Chancellor’s Proposals for Changes in UN-L Campus Housing Rules.” April 19, 1974. University of Nebraska Archives and Special Collections. RG 05-01-01. Office of the Chancellor. Centralized Files of the Chancellor. Academic Files. Box 138. File: Housing 1970-1978.
  7. [8] “Residence Hall Survey – Nebraska College” November 28th, 1973. Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. RG 05-01-01. Office of the Chancellor. Centralized Files of the Chancellor. Academic Files. Box 138. File: Housing 1970-1978.
  8. [9] “Harper Hall Visitation Suspended.” The Daily Nebraskan. January 23, 1974. Vol. 97, No.5. (1) https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1974-01-23/ed-1/seq-1/#words=hours+visitation ; Fullerton, Jim. “Visitation Suspended in Schramm, Smith Halls” The Daily Nebraskan. January 30, 1974. Vol. 97, No. 9. (1) https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1974-01-30/ed-1/seq-1/#words=hour+hours+Visitation+visitation
  9. [10]  Zumberge, James. “Chancellor’s Proposals for Changes in UN-L Campus Housing Rules.”
  10. [11]  Zumberge, James. “Chancellor’s Proposals for Changes in UN-L Campus Housing Rules.”
  11. [12] Hoffman, Mark. “Swerdlow: New Housing Policy Working Well in Residence Halls” The Daily Nebraskan. September 13, 1974. Vol. 98, No. 12. (1) https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1974-09-13/ed-1/seq-1/#words=visitation+visiting ; “Options Satisfy Most Residents” The Daily Nebraskan. November 06, 1974. Vol. 98, No. 41. (13,17) https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1974-11-06/ed-1/seq-13/
  12. [13] Hudson, Joe. “UNL One of Four Without 24-Hour Visitation Rights” The Daily Nebraskan. February 26, 1976. Vol. 99, No. 87. https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1976-02-26/ed-1/seq-1/

Bibliography

  • Advisory Committee. “A Proposal.”  Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.. RG 04-02-29. Records of the University of Nebraska Centennial Committee. Box 3. Folder: Centennial College 1967-69.
  • “Coed Living Working” The Daily Nebraskan, 3. October 01, 1970. Vol. 94, No. 10. (3) https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1970-10-01/ed-1/seq-3/#words=coed+dorm+first
  • Fullerton, Jim. “Visitation Suspended in Schramm, Smith Halls” The Daily Nebraskan. January 30, 1974. Vol. 97, No. 9. (1) https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1974-01-30/ed-1/seq-1/#words=hour+hours+Visitation+visitation
  • Gurtiss, Jay. “More Than Just a Place to Live; A History of Raymond, Love, Heppner, and Piper Halls.” 1983. Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. RG 52-02-00. UNL Buildings and Grounds. Box 20. Folder: Carrie Bell Raymond Hall (Residence).
  • “Harper Hall Visitation Suspended.” The Daily Nebraskan. January 23, 1974. Vol. 97, No.5. (1) https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1974-01-23/ed-1/seq-1/#words=hours+visitation
  • Hoffman, Mark. “Swerdlow: New Housing Policy Working Well in Residence Halls” The Daily Nebraskan. September 13, 1974. Vol. 98, No. 12. (1) https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1974-09-13/ed-1/seq-1/#words=visitation+visiting
  • Hudson, Joe. “UNL One of Four Without 24-Hour Visitation Rights” The Daily Nebraskan. February 26, 1976. Vol. 99, No. 87. https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1976-02-26/ed-1/seq-1/
  • Knoll, Robert E., Robert D. Brown. “Experiment at Nebraska; The first two years of a ClusterCollege.” University of Nebraska Studies, new series no. 44 (June 1972).
  • McCarty, Joe. Barb Dalton, Steve Byrne, Karen Hardy, Wendy Reitmeier, Mary Say, Marlene Stueter, Marcia Stewart, Al Tietjen, Tom Weaver. “An Evaluation of UNL Residence Halls” 1972-1973. Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. RG 05-01-01. Office of the Chancellor. Centralized Files of the Chancellor. Academic Files. Box 138. File: Housing 1970-1978.
  • “Options Satisfy Most Residents” The Daily Nebraskan. November 06, 1974. Vol. 98, No. 41. (13,17) https://nebnewspapers.unl.edu/lccn/sn96080312/1974-11-06/ed-1/seq-13/
  • Residence Hall Survey – Nebraska College” November 28th, 1973. Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. RG 05-01-01. Office of the Chancellor. Centralized Files of the Chancellor. Academic Files. Box 138. File: Housing 1970-1978.
  • Willoughby, Brian J., Jason S. Carroll, William J. Marshall, and Caitlin Clark. “The Decline of In Loco Parentis and the Shift to Coed Housing on College Campuses.” Journal ofAdolescent Research 24, no. 1 (January 2009): 21–36. 
  • Zumberge, James. “Chancellor’s Proposals for Changes in UN-L Campus Housing Rules.” April 19, 1974. Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. RG 05-01-01. Office of the Chancellor. Centralized Files of the Chancellor. Academic Files. Box 138. File: Housing 1970-1978.
Lauren Dubas, History 250: The Historian Craft, Spring 2019