Old fart here: My sister entered OSU in the fall of 53. There were 2 dorms, Baker and Canfield and new dorms were just beginning to rise. She was assigned to Baker and wrote home about the johns with urinals still in them as Baker had been the mens dorm until that year. The next year she was in Bradley, one of the new dorms for women. (Jesse Owens was NOT allowed to live in Baker Hall even though he was a student, OSU housing was for "whites only.")
When I entered in 61 Steeb, Stradley and Park were mens dorms, Baker remained a girls dorm and there was talk of new dorms to be built on the north edge of the campus.
What gets lost in all of this is that the classroom buildings around the oval had been built for a school of somewhere in the vicinity of 10 to 15K. Thus, though the number of dorm rooms shot up dramatically between 1945 and 1970, the amount of classroom space did not. Rooming houses and Greek houses were abundant and solved a good portion of the upper class housing needs. I can't remember many kids who lived in apartments. I moved into one as a sophomore and I remember how different that was from what most of my peers experienced.
The lack of classroom space led to bigger classes and to the famous, "Look at the person on your left, look at the person on your right, two of three of you will not be here next year," speech. Open enrollment meant you got in, English 411 - 413 and Algebra 410 made sure you didn't overstay your welcome.
When I left in June of 67 the north campus complex had been completed and the towers were on the rise, but little had been done to fund more classroom space. Rhodes kept promising the folks at all the county fairs that, "When your child finishes high school and wants to go college, there'll be a room there waiting for him or her." He didn't bother to mention that there wouldn't be enough classroom space or that his bonds (sold by The Ohio Company, the financial wing of the Wolf Brothers [WBNS, Dispatch]whose plane flew him around the state) did not contain provisions to pay for classrooms and professors to fill those classes. This was true at BG, Kent, Ohio and Miami as well as OSU.
We often referred to OSU as the Big Farm. The Ag school owned all the land that is now West Campus, Schottenstine and the Woody Hayes Center. The Sundial, the campus humor magazine was dying, but still made money selling sweatshirts that read "Ohia State" mocking Rhodes accent.
Under the category, Can You Believe This?, when I entered OSU female students had hours. As freshmen they had to be in the dorms by 10 on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and by 1 on Fridays and Saturdays. They were given something like 7 or 8 11s per quarter to use on Wednesdays and Sundays and three 2s for Fridays or Saturdays. As sophs they had as many 11s and 2s as they wanted to take. BUT, the dorm monitors and the dorm councils sent out "goons" to watch for PDA, Public Display of Affection, kiss a little to hard or allow your date to fondle your buns and you could be hauled before dorm council and they'd take away your late hour privileges! God help you if you were late... like the time I got a freshie back at 1:05... she lost her late privileges for the rest of the quarter. (and I stopped dating her... who wanted to go out with someone who had to be in by 10 all the time?) Further, all female students had to sign in and out any time they left the dorm if they knew they would be out past 7PM, stating where they were going and how long they anticipated being there. Lord help the girl who failed to sign out, or claimed to be staying at a friends house and was discovered someplace else. Need I add that men were never allowed above the lobby of any of the girls dorms, certainly never in a room except on move in day, nor were male students allowed to have females in their rooms. Winter could be awfully long for those without cars and access to the submarine races.
Oh, and walk? Hell, ROTC was mandatory for ALL male students for the first two years... or you could take an extra 9 hours per year in upper level math, science or language. That meant an hour of close order drill per week either on the parking lot behind the ROTC building or in the east side of the stadium in inclement weather. On the first Monday in May we had a huge review with Army, Air Force and Navy ROTC, the corps blanketing the Oval.
By my senior year things had started to lighten up. Female seniors were given keys to the front doors of their dorms and sorority houses and were allowed to come and go as they pleased on weekends. There were still no visiting priveleges for the opposite sex. Apartments were being built all around the campus and no one wanted to live in a dorm. The fraternity houses were clamping down on members and forcing them to live in the house or pay a fee equivilant to the cost of the rent.
If you ask me what killed the dorms, rooming houses and Greeks in the late 60s and early 70s, it was the "en loco parentis" rules the university tried to uphold at the height of the sexual revoultion.
By the time I returned to school in 69 the student rebellions had forced the review off the oval and when the Vietnam War ended compulsory ROTC was gone.
