In addition to curricular changes, the student body saw massive shifts as many college-aged men were drafted or enlisted to fight overseas. Campus social life was radically changed as a result. In an article in the Mac Weekly reflecting on his experience as a member of the class of 1945, senior Gordon Deegan remarked that the war years were “strange ones” where “men were almost an oddity” and that during the second semester, “Macites began the grand exodus to the four corners of the earth. We hated to see them go but that couldn’t stop them. We had made friends and […] we had to start over again.”¹

Women now outnumbered men on campus, and previously enforced rules were suddenly thrown out the window.² Men and women dined together on campus for the first time when Kirk Hall was vacated to make room for army air corps trainees, and later on in the war, Kirk Hall would accommodate female residents for the first time, considering that they now made up the majority of the student body.³ And wartime simply meant that the college experience was more turbulent than usual. Despite these shake-ups, gender inequities remained a reality on campus after the end of World War II. Halls remained segregated by gender, and women consistently faced stricter curfew rules than men. It would take decades for similar changes in policy to return to campus.