Opening up

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(Image: Stadium dorm recreation room, 1961) Significant change came gradually to the Stadium Dorms in the post-war period. Between 1959 and 1961 the large open barracks were converted to enclosed rooms, housing up to four men. Women remained scarce in the Stadium Dorms, their appearances limited to occasional visits to the 1966 West Berg recreation room for dancing and refreshments. In part, men of the dorms were loath to accept women, fearing for their own free lunch. When the question of going co-ed was put to residents and defeated in winter quarter 1974, the SSD president explained: "We've had to keep reassuring people they're not going to get screwed." The atmosphere, though a far cry from the first Stadium Dorms, was still considered "wild" and "primitive," an unfit female habitat. Nevertheless, during the 1974-75 school year, expectant mother Jayne Irwin lived under A-deck with her husband William, the Stadium Dorms' resident director. On the last day of January, 1975, women were voted into the Stadium Scholarship Dorms, instantly doubling women's scholarship housing. By 1982, the dorm's female population nearly approached parity, at 209 men to 149 women.