USD Magazine, Summer 2000

Maher Hall resident freshman Aaron Watts (second from left) and resident director Joshua Gaynor give a tour of the dorm's rooms to junior Crescentia Thomas (far left) and freshman Katie Detlope.

While USD has a 57 percent to 43 per– cent ratio of women to men undergraduates, housing officials have worked to accommo– date chat difference by spreading male and female students through the five freshmen residence halls. Resident directors are hoping for a 50-50 split berween males and females in Maher, but are still working with the Office of Admissions to finalize distribution lists. Maher's co-ed plan will make it easier for housing officials to balance the male-female ratios in the Missions Apartments, which currendy is rwo-chirds women. It is antici– pated chat Camino and Founders halls will remain women-only, since communal bathrooms make gender integration almost impossible. Maher houses about 250 freshmen and five resident advisers, who are usually sopho– mores and juniors. Gaynor says rwo women resident advisers will be added to the staff. 'Tm excited about ic," says sophomore Kate Irwin, who will be an adviser in the fall. "I chink at first a lot of guys were against it. There is the whole idea of tradi– tion. Bue it is a freshmen dorm. The guys live there for a year and move on. The fresh– men coming in chis fall won't know about the tradition." Some critics of the change say having women in the dorm will inhibit the cama– raderie of the freshmen men. Bue Gaynor predicts it will only add to the dynamic. "Your freshman year can make or break you," says Gaynor. "If you gee off on the right foot and make some good friends, chat creates the college experience most students are looking for. In a living experience like this, the opportunities to meet different kinds of people from different backgrounds are limidess."+

This fall, the all-male Maher Hall goes co-ed, signaling the start ofa new freshman dorm tradition

more to do with comfort than integration of the sexes. Maher's dorm rooms have private bathrooms, whereas the dorms reserved for freshmen women - Camino and Founders halls - require a walk down che hall to a community bathroom. The women's dorms also are less spacious than the freshmen men's digs, where some rooms house up to four students. And there's also Maher's extra amenity - many rooms boast million-dollar views of San Diego, Point Loma and Mission Bay. "For years, women have asked to live in Maher," says Larry Perez, assistant director of residence life and a former Maher resident dean. "They wane the bigger bedrooms, their own bathrooms, the nice carpet and the views, too." The change was prompted by the comple– tion of a three-year, $ 1. 5 million renovation of Maher, which included new carpet, elec– trical fixtures, bathroom decor and ocher infrastructure improvements. Logistics are still being worked out, bur female residents likely will live in the east wings while men will be in the west wings.

r~dicions need rime to evolve. They also need rime to dissolve. Such is the case with Maher Hall, which chis fall will house female students for the first time in 41 years. "Some people like it and some don't," says Joshua Gaynor, Maher's resident director, of the university's decision to make the well– known dorm co-ed. "It is a huge break with tradition, but it's also a way to start a new tradition." The five-story building opened in 1959 as the Immaculate Heart Seminary and housed seminarians, students and faculty of the San Diego College for Men. The building's name was changed years lacer to DeSales Hall, for Saine Francis DeSales, and then renamed for Bishop Leo T. Maher. Yet it always remained a men's facility, despite a push in 1969 by then men's college dean Father Barry Vineyard to integrate the dorm as part of the merger of the men's and women's colleges. The schools combined in 1972, but Maher Hall remained fraternal. Gender equity finally caught up with the dorm chis year. And the reason has much

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