In the lounge of Zechiel residence hall a female student studies beneath an empty wall where there once hung a poster of a woman in a bikini. No one would disagree that things have changed around here a bit this year: it’s quieter, the public spaces are cleaner and oh yeah, it’s co-ed. Currently, 21 men and 16 women live here and most of the bathrooms are fair game for anyone who needs to use them.
Last year, when the Housing and Dining Committee ratified a proposal to make Zeke, as it is popularly known, into a co-ed residence hall, to go into effect at the beginning of this academic year, they also did away with the last all-male living space on campus.
Zeke had long been considered the closest thing to a fraternity at Oberlin. Besides its having been all-male, a large number of its residents were athletes, many of whom belonged to the football team. Furthermore, most Oberlin students, including former Zeke residents, would generally agree that the dorm’s atmosphere and social environment were noticeably different from the rest of campus.
During spring semester of last year, Zeke was pushed into the campus spotlight after incidents of violence and vandalism and then a recurrent campus discussion of “sportsphobia.” Several student groups on campus voiced concerns with the mentality and activities that were, in their view, encouraged by the dorm.

The Housing and Dining Committee, however, claimed that the decision was made before these issues emerged and was based primarily on logistics, not politics.
“It came down to the space issue,” Donita Pace, Area Coordinator for residence halls in North Campus, said, noting that the need for male space wasn’t strong enough. According to her, no more than 21 people a semester ever requested to live in Zeke, which can house as many as 43. Many of its residents had not chosen to live there. The decision was also made in response to the increasing number of female students on campus and the growing need for space in which to house them.
The transition to co-ed living seems to have been relatively smooth and painless. Already in the third month of its new existence, the dorm and its residents have faced only minimal problems and disagreements, such as the decision to make the bathrooms co-ed, with the exception of the shower areas. There seems to be an overall comfort level and a lack of gender-based tensions.
“They have their incidents just like anybody else. It’s not like it’s a heaven now that it’s turned co-ed. But there are a lot less incidents then we anticipated,” Pace said.
Sophomore Laura Wallerstein is Zeke’s first female RA. When she applied for the position last year, she put Zeke down as her fourth choice. “I kinda put it as a joke,” she said, not knowing at the time, that the dorm would soon be co-ed.
Wallerstein has enjoyed living and working in Zeke thus far. She has encountered few incidents or concerns among her residents. “There’s that sense of ‘yeah, this is going to be a controversial thing,’ but people who live there don’t feel that controversy. There isn’t that sentiment on campus that we’ve destroyed something.”
The dorm’s residents still predominantly consist of athletes. According to an assessment by Wallerstein, who plays three different sports throughout the year, male and female residents are involved with a variety of College and club sports teams. Nine football players presently live there.
Wallerstein, who has helped form a hall council that is still in its initial organizational stages, emphasized that a community still exists within the dorm, one that is not gender segregated. “We’re definitely able to coexist,” she said.
Nevertheless, Zeke “definitely has a different feel,” Wallerstein said, noting that the lounge area is significantly less social than it was in previous years and that the overall mentality that characterized the dorm is now not as prevalent. A poster of a women in a swimsuit can still be found on a bulletin board in the guy’s hallway, but it is smaller and out of direct view. “With Residential Life’s decision, we made the best space we could,” Wallerstein said.

While many students have voiced their support of the administration’s decision, there exists a contingent on campus who continue to oppose and resent the transition. Much of the issue comes down to whether or not it’s necessary for male students to have the option of living in a single-sex hall on campus that would also serve as a safe space. Although several dorms have all-male halls and sections, such as East and Barrows, there is no male equivalent to Baldwin, an all-female program house, or Old Barrows, an all-female residential co-op.
When ratifying the proposal to make Zeke co-ed, Housing and Dining decided that such a space was not necessary. “I don’t think the men of Oberlin campus feel they need a safe space,” Pace said. “Mostly the old Zeke was like a locker room. It wasn’t a safe space,” she said.
Some students however, both male and female, have spoken of the importance for a separate all-male living space. “I would like to see the boys have their space,” Wallerstein said. “The football team is ostracized enough as it is.”
Adam Miller, a sophomore and football player who lived in Zeke last year, said there was a lot of opposition to the decision among the members of his former dorm. He noted that the resentment among residents came not so much because of the decision to make it co-ed, but because of the feeling that something important was being taken away from them.
Miller described Zeke as a place where football players felt comfortable and enjoyed spending time. Since last year, many have moved out. “Last year that’s where you’d go to hang out,” he said, noting that now the football team is far more spread out across campus and is unable to get together as easily.

On the importance of having an all-male living space, he said, “I don’t think it’s necessary, but some people did … Zeke was a safe space. It followed its own rules. It stood for [the residents] point of view.”
Junior Mike McClendon lived in Zeke for two years and moved out at the end of last year. “I was rather upset by the decision to go co-ed. Pretty much everyone in the hall had their own reasons for opposing the change, but we all agreed on one thing. We were not opposed to co-ed living. We opposed an act whose intended effect was to break up a community unique to Oberlin’s campus,” he said, challenging the administration’s claim that it was an issue of filling space. “There were no empty beds. Everyone wanted to be there.”
McClendon added that both he and other residents were largely excluded from the decision-making process, making the transition, in his view, unfair.

“It’s hard to really quantify the ‘Zeke experience.’ If more guys knew what Zeke added to its residents’ college experience, there would have been far greater outrage,” he said, noting that he felt Zeke was not only a safe space for male athletes, but was also both racially and socially diverse. “I would bet we were more diverse than any other dorm,” he said. “Hell, my neighbor was a hardcore Zeke boy and a bigwig in the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Union.”