LIFESTYLE: Living the co-ed way

Years ago, coed living was virtually unknown. Then it became hip. Today it's so commonplace that it barely gets noticed. Off-campus, there exist everything from single-sex houses to houses of roughly half men and half women. And in a few cases, there are houses with one man and a large group of women, or the other way around. On campus, coed floors became the rule years ago, but Residential Living doesn't allow coed rooms or suites. Perhaps coed on-campus rooms will be the wave of the future. A few already even exist semi-officially. · College sophomore Duncan McBean shares an off-campus apartment with eight senior women. The eight women came up with the idea of inviting McBean to live with them when their intended ninth house-mate bailed out. The eight seniors needed a ninth housemate, and McBean, who was in search of a place to live, fit the bill. But McBean's room is the only one on the first floor of the 41st Street house, and he has his own bathroom as well. His house-mates live in the upstairs of the apartment. The College sophomore hardly gives a second thought to the fact that he is a male -- a sophomore male -- living with eight female seniors. None of the students' parents objected to the gender imbalance -- in fact, the women said that most of their parents thought that having a man living with their daughters would serve as protection from the hostile environment of crime-ridden West Philadelphia. "My mom is totally overprotective, and for her my living with Duncan is the greatest thing," said housemate Alix Jaffe. The housemates say their friends are often surprised when told about the gender makeup of the house. McBean says his friends ask, "How did you pull that off?" "People can't believe there are eight of us and one of him," Jaffe added. The housemates all say they get along quite well. "Having a guy around makes the whole atmosphere a lot more casual," said College senior Jennifer Causing. "I have younger brothers and I can relate to him like that," said College senior Sarah Tucker. But even in this female-dominated 41st Street house, some of the more traditional sex roles do apply in dividing the household chores. "I take out the garbage and they wash my dishes," said McBean. When the apartment was robbed earlier this year, the women were happy to have McBean living with them. After McBean's room which was robbed, "he didn't try to be macho about it. He was scared," Tucker said. All of the housemates slept together upstairs that night. · College senior Pauline Schwartz is the lone woman in a house with seven senior men, and she calls her house "a society of equals." "Sometimes they'll all be sitting around, talking guy talk, and I'll sort of go along with it," she says. "I'm not what you would call a radical feminist, but I hold my own with them, I'm proud to say." Sometimes in the course of an argument, Schwartz will claim, "You pick on me because I'm a girl," though she said she doesn't actually mean this. College senior Andy Beckwith, one of Schwartz's housemates, said that she often says the same thing to her mother over the phone. In response, Beckwith said, her mother threatens "to come and beat us up." The house members are a cohesive group, hardly arguing even about keeping the house clean. "Basically, we're all slobs," said Schwartz. Schwartz says she plays on her housemates' machismo to get them to help her. One when she was trying to put together a bookcase, she said, she asked one of her housemates a leading question about how to attach two pieces, soon to be followed with the inevitable, "Can you do it?" "What do you mean? Of course I can do it!" was the response, and Schwartz sat back and watched her housemates jockey for position to assemble the bookcase. · Although off-campus coed housing has become widespread in recent years, there are very few coed suites on campus. At least three suites in the University's Van Pelt College House house both men and women together. College seniors Elizabeth Gerst and Nancy Levy share a four-room quad in Van Pelt with College junior David Davidson and College sophomore Seth Goren. "We had to do a little bit of finagling [to arrange the suite]," said Gerst. "But Van Pelt really didn't have a problem with it." Gerst called her living situation "the best of both worlds -- I have a co-ed living situation but I still have the security of being in a protected dorm." Engineering senior Aaron Fuegi and College senior Sharon Jackson share a two-room double in Van Pelt. Jackson said that the living situation has not created any big problems for them. "It's really not a hassle," she said.

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