In an effort to create better gender balance, coordinators of the Office of Residence Life and the Assignment Office have informed some students in Simmons and Atherton Halls that they cannot live in their current rooms next fall.

The abundance of women in Simmons and men in Atherton prompted this relocation, said Kathy Krinks, assistant director of assignment operations.

The fourth and fifth floors of Simmons will become all-male floors, and California House of the first floor of Atherton will become an all-female wing, said Barry Bram, associate director of residence life. If the displaced students desire to stay in their current dorm, they will be guaranteed rooms on other floors in Simmons or Atherton.

Simmons and Atherton are Special Living Option houses that accommodate students of the Schreyer Honors College, so the assignment office guarantees rooms to active members of this group, Bram said.

About two years ago, the assignment office and residence life noticed a gender imbalance between Atherton and Simmons, Krinks said. Prior to Simmons becoming a Special Living Option house in 1999 for Schreyer scholars, it was an all-female dorm.

This caused the majority of female Schreyer scholars to reside in Simmons even though the dorm is co-ed. Many men were not assigned to Simmons because of the need to separate parts of the building by gender. Consequently, there have been more men in Atherton and more women in Simmons Halls since the establishment of the Schreyer Honors College in 1997.

For the most part, displacing a large group of students from their rooms is uncommon. However, the assignment office is constantly trying to find places for men to live on campus, Krinks said.

To ascertain if more rooms need to be allocated to men, Lynn DuBois, associate director of housing, said the assignment office has to look at trends, such as increases in the amount of men in supplemental housing. This semester, 198 men were placed in supplemental housing.

Transferring students to new dorms is one way to find rooms for men and produce gender balance. For instance, this past fall, graduate students who resided in McKee Hall moved to White Course Apartments, and the Science, Technology and Society House moved into McKee Hall from Jordan Hall. Still, many students remain on waiting lists to obtain housing since the number of housing contracts requested outweighs that of contracts being offered.

Residence life notified students of its intentions to create gender equity in 2000. It informed the women of the fourth and fifth floors of Simmons that, in a couple of years, they would no longer be able to return to their rooms, Krinks said. Men of the first floor of Atherton Hall were also informed of the possible displacement at the same time.

At a meeting held by the South Halls Residence Association last fall, a majority of students in attendance and the executive board approved the plan.

"I think we're fairly compensated for [the move]," said Matt Smalley (freshman-information sciences and technology), a resident of California House. "We get first dibs on a free room. If it needs to be done, it needs to be done."