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21 September 2007

Why are men "students" but women "coeds"? [More:]I appreciate that headline writers prize short words, and "coed" has four letters to seven in "student," but is it really so remarkable in 2007 that MIT admits women that we should be calling them "coeds?"

In some older buildings at MIT, men's and women's bathrooms alternate floors. At the time they were built, no women's bathrooms were needed, so there was just one bathroom on each floor.
Seems like a total contradiction to me. I always used the term "coed" as referring specifically to both men and women since, for example, a coed residence hall contains both (and was a great big "Woo, you live in one of the coed halls, how cool and convenient, what's it like?!" conversation point during my first year of college.

I wonder if my local private college, Lake Erie, was referred to as "coed" when it finally began accepting men and was no longer all female? I guess that would prove our point about the term.
posted by shane 21 September | 21:35
Purely for the kink factor.
You forget men have been trained to find women "the anomaly."
posted by ethylene 21 September | 21:37
Advanced learning was almost exclusively for men since Greek times. When women started attending schools they were coed-ucated with the men. For some reason it still hangs on.
posted by arse_hat 21 September | 22:52
The term is completely archaic. No media outlet or institution that's been awake in the last 30 years should be using it. How ridiculous.
posted by Miko 21 September | 23:00
I never thought about it because the term is so rare now. But you are totally right. I see a lot of style guides for university press offices that forbid its use.

My institute was built recently and men and women's bathrooms alternate floors. They just didn't want to put all that floor space into bathrooms.
posted by grouse 22 September | 01:45
At my college, our dorm bathrooms were (ahem) "coed," - in other words, both sexes used them.

It seemed weird for about three days, until everyone realized that's how it is at home, too.

It worked out all right. You'd think there'd be all sorts of problems, but there weren't - if anything, it may have made people a little more accepting of/familiar with one another.
posted by Miko 22 September | 10:02
You forget men have been trained to find women "the anomaly."

I just thought that was worth repeating.
posted by Elsa 22 September | 17:11
The term is completely archaic. No media outlet or institution that's been awake in the last 30 years should be using it.

Unless it's a porn site. 'Hot Busty Coeds,' just has a certain ring to it.
posted by jonmc 22 September | 20:01
The term is completely archaic. No media outlet or institution that's been awake in the last 30 years should be using it.
Interesting - I had never considered that the word is used only for females until now. It's not a word that's used much here anyway, so perhaps that's why.

"Hot Busty Students" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?
posted by dg 23 September | 17:26
September 21st is "Talk Like an Adult" Day. || The BF has a fever of 102.6F!

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