Campus Housing for Co-Eds
Stanley McCormick Hall opened its doors in 1963, with 90 women student residents. The dorm offered housing, a library, conference rooms, an apartment for the housemaster, and a dining hall. Well into her late 80s, Katharine regularly held teas with women students to get to learn out their lives and work.
In 1966, to house the growing population of women students, construction began on the second tower of McCormick Hall. Katharine passed away on December 28, 1967, less than three months before the opening of the new section of McCormick Hall.
Originally there had been plans to add a third tower to McCormick Hall. However, as time went on, mixed-gender dormitories became the norm on college campuses, and the demand for women-only housing lessened.
In 1972 the report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Role of Women at MIT recommended increasing the number of women who lived in co-ed dorms as well as maintaining women only dorms, noting that “women who do not desire to live in a coed dorm must be guaranteed places in an all-woman's residence, although the Housing Office should not assume that all women will want to live in an all-female environment.”
In 1976, the Women’s Independent Living Group was established, offering an off-campus housing option for undergraduate women.
Physics professor Mildred Dresselhaus noted that as more women applied to MIT “it became clear that it was harder for women to get into MIT than for men. They needed to have higher scores. They needed better recommendations, and so forth; we became aware that the cutoff criteria of the two groups wasn't the same.” - Mildred Dresselhaus edited transcript, part II, June-Oct 1977
