University of Iowa - Hawkeye Yearbook (Iowa City, IA)

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ill Temporary housing at the UI is no joy ride for any- one. Students sardined,' into dorm lounges were all out by October. For most, it couldn't have come too soon. Leslie Baldwin opts for Greek living at the Gamma Phi Beta house. Answering the phone for 55 other housemates is one responsibility everyone shares. much be here without going out to do thingsf, Along with the demands, being an R.A. also has benefits. Lammers has a triple room to herself, where she has space not only for her rocking chair and sofa, but for parking her bicycle in the corner. She also enjoys her relationship with her girls. Being an R.A., you meet a lot of different peoplef, she said. And it forces you to improve yourself, because you know there are people watching you. The UI,s housing crisis, in fact, has forced a lot of students to do things they never thought they could do before. But somehow, they have done it. At least until next year, they can rest assured that they have answered the question that every up- perclassman had to face. I Chris Zinger

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Housing continued Baldwin now lives in the sorority house with two roommates and 55 other house- mates and is happy with the way things worked out. She feels she would have missed a lot by living in an apartment. Here, thereis a lot going on, people to talk to and you have a base for coming into a new school a lot of people have helped me through itf, Even students who found a place to live before fall semester had to alter plans. Linda Wright, a second semester senior, expected to spend the year sharing a house with an 80-year-old woman. However, that arrangement lasted only one month. She was just too intolerant of my inde- pendence. I got the impression she wanted to mother me - which I don't need, Wright said. Wright became a boarder in the wom- an's home after growing disillusioned try- ing to find an apartment with 'foff-the- street parking, a six-month lease and cheap rent. Her room was quiet, clean and cheap, but it didn't mix well with Wright's social life. She went to bed at 10 ofclock at the latest and didn't want me to get any phone calls after she was asleepf' That wasnit all. uAfter I moved in, I found out my kitchen privileges were a half shelf in the refrigerator . . . I also got the impression that when I came home, I was supposed to go from the back door to my room, maybe to the bathroom on the wayf' Wright thinks living with an elderly per- son may work out well for some people and may have worked out better for her had she known the woman beforehand. Main- ly, though she's just really glad to be moved into another apartment. For some students, the challenge is not only finding the right place to live but keeping it. Susan Cotten, Beth Wissing and Kate Wissing have had to become experts at a game called f'How to Live With Three Girls in A One-Bedroom Apartment Without Telling Your Land- lord. For one thing, we have a Post Office box, so no one sees our mailf, Cotten said. We also avoid a lot of the neighborsf, Kate said. f'There,s only supposed to be two people living here,', Cotten said. Fitting three girls into a one-bedroom apartment demands organization and cre- ativity, along with one bed, a mattress and a living room chair that folds out into a bed. Whoever stays up latest sleeps in the living room, Cotten explained, But if you get up earlier, you sleep on the mat- tress we pull out, which practically covers A man's home is his castle - even if it's a van. Mike Shicr's I0-day vigil of Hroughing it, while searching for housing, resulted in finally finding an apartment. the whole bedroom floor - because if Kate were on the mattress and I got up first, I'd step all over her. No matter how small, the apartment seems a good place to get away from things. As Kate says, You feel less like you're in school all the time when you can come back here. A handful of upperclassmen were able to get dorm rooms - mainly transfer stu- dents or resident assistants like senior Ja- net Lammers. As Lammers describes it, being an R.A. can prove a unique way to earn room and board. This is a typical day - well, maybe not typical, but it happens quite often: being awakened at 12:30 a.m., 1:30, then maybe 5:00 again. One morning at 5 the fire hose was turned on and flooded my room and the room next door.', Responsible for 20 girls, Lammers em- phasizes, You have to be an R.A. 24 hours a day. I try to be around in the evenings as much as possible. I study in here, l have my own T.V. I can pretty . , ..., rrr.

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Women Remaining Single 1960 1970 Ages 20-24 28.495 35.45 Ages 25-29 10.596 10.596 Men Remaining Single Ages 20-24 53.1 Z 54.7Z Ages 25-29 20.82 19.12 1976 42.621 14.895 62.1 96 24.995 Source: U.S. Bureau of Census, March 1976 . fp 1 I M L, ,- 1 I i Pushes, pulls-the single struggle Notice that youire the only one without a ring the last time you got together with friends? Or that y0u're getting fewer invi- tations to those get-to-gethers? Did Mom ask if yould thought about marrying that nice man you were seeing the last time you called home? Whatever form it takes, the push toward marriage is a factor that singles have to deal with, according to Harriet Shaklee, UI professor of psychology. Shaklee, who does research on sex dif- ferences, noted that this pressure exists for both men and women -that it is a myth that men only want relationships for sex- ual intercourse. But sociology professor Karen Polonko noted, as Bernard Ca well-known re- searcherj has said, marriage has a lot more advantages for men than women. Polonko explained that research shows that singlehood is a more positive state for women than men. Women who remain single voluntarily tend to be high achievers and mentally healthy, but the opposite is true for men, she said. The data also suggests that single ver- sus married women rate higher on all psy- chological tests, having less depression, headaches, etc., Polonko said. According to Shaklee, there are several ages at which the 'fl should be married feeling hits even those women who value their careers or who plan to remain single. The first stage occurs around high school graduation, the second in the late 20s, and the third around age 35. She describes these as points where people make deci- sions with long-term implications on their life situations. Shaklee noted that individual times of pressure towards marriage may vary, in- creasing, for example, when one of a pair of lovers is leaving town fthe one leaving may want to take a security persons' with him or her, or if a woman gets pregnant. Polonko said that the ages of 28-32 seem to be the most difficult for most adults, involving a lot of turmoil and re-evalua- tion, problems at work or job choices . . f' Men and women who remain single would seem to agree with these evaluations IMarriage and Family Review, JulyfAu- gust 1978, Peter Steinj, reporting 30-34 as the most difficult years. Polonko said peo- ple may believe this because they start to regard their living arrangements as perma- nent when they reach 30. More people have been remaining single . . . it is a myth that men only want relationships for sexual intercourse. or putting off marriage since the late 1960s, Polonko said. She noted that re- search on the subject is limited because there is little done on the Htopology of singlehood,' Qwho is seperated, divorced, widowed or simply never marriedj. Polonko reported that surveys show that 10 percent of people now in their 20s plan to remain single their whole life Cwhile only 5 percent of the people in their 40s and 50s are single nowj. ' The reasons for this trend are varied. In his book Love, Sex and Marriage Through the Ages, Bernard I. Murstein reports that growth in the 'cult of -the individualf changes in women's roles fto include work- ingj, and the idea of marital choicef, have encouraged the trend towards singlehood. If the fplusses and minusesj donit bal- ance out or have more on the advantage side, people go back on the marriage mart - so they're always keeping themselves prepared, he said. He said that this kind of marriage Qnot a security blanketj is of- ten questioned before people go into it. Peter Stein, in i'The Lifestyles and Life Changes of the Never-Married, gives six reasons for the popularity of the single lifestyle. These include higher education and increased career opportunities for women, the impact of the women's move- ment on general attitudes, birth control Creadily availablej, the Baby Boom Qmore women than men available in that age groupj, the ease with which singles can have an active social and sexual life, and the increasing divorce rate Cleading people to question marriagej. Higher education and more career op- portunities might not seem to automatical- ly cause an increase in singlehood, but ac- cording to Polonko, they do - for two reasons. It teducationj not only gives women more alternatives of what to do with her life, she said, but studies show that the higher the intelligance, occupa- tion and income for a woman, the more likely she'll stay single. This is not just because she has an enormous amount of autonomy and a ca- reer to give up fas may occur in a tradi- tional marriage where the male has the primary incomejf she continued, but be- cause on the marriage market, it is 'OK' for a man to marry his equal or lower, but not to marry up. So the further a woman advances, the fewer the men who are avail- able as partners to her if she wanted to marryf'