During Miami University's 200-year history, residence life on campus has drastically changed.

Bob Schmidt, university archivist, said the first residence halls were Elliott and Stoddard Halls, but when the university was founded, some students lived in town.

According to the "150 Years of Service to Students" booklet, made by the department of residence halls, rooms in Elliott and Stoddard were rent-free but students had to provide their own furniture.

Students also went into the woods to cut firewood to heat their rooms.

Miami did not admit women until 1887 so until then residence halls were all male, Schmidt said, but sometimes faculty members and their families would live in the halls as monitors.

According to Jerry Olson, director of the office of residence life, faculty members managed Miami's earliest residence halls.

"As universities expanded, the role of the faculty in the lives of students outside the classroom diminished to the point that curricular and co-curricular offerings were seen as nearly mutually exclusive," Olson said via e-mail.

Olson said that today, Miami infuses curricular and co-curricular activities for students on campus with things like living learning communities so that students learn in the classroom and in their residence halls.

"University faculty and staff work together to make the campus experience for students as fulfilling as possible," Olson said.

When women were first let in to Miami, they boarded off-campus.

The first residence hall for women was Hepburn Hall, which was located where King Library is now, according to Schmidt.

He added that there were not a lot of women on campus until after 1902. Bishop Hall was also built for women.

According to Schmidt, the university did not have enough room for women to live on campus so they often boarded in cottages from 1910 through World War II.

The first women's sororities also lived off campus, Schmidt said. Eventually the university moved them into sorority suites on campus.

"It had nothing to do with Oxford anti-prostitution laws or anything," Schmidt said. "It was a case I think of where the university was trying to be kind of protective towards the students."

Schmidt added that they were having problems accommodating all the women, however the goal was to get as many women into residence halls as possible.

Schmidt said that eventually it became financially easier for sororities to keep the sorority suites instead of trying to build or buy a house in Oxford.

"If a sorority actually wanted to go out and have a house off campus, they probably could," Schmidt said. "On the other hand, you may go bankrupt trying to do it."

Derrell Hart worked at Miami for 28 years in various parts of residence life. He spent time as the head of the first-year academic advising program, director of residence life and dean of students.

"What I believed strongest in was that the first year is the key," Hart said.

Hart said men weren't required to live on campus after their first year and most went into fraternities, but women were required to live in campus housing for their entire tenure at Miami.

According to Hart, before the 1920s, men would come to school, live somewhere in town and then disappear after their first year.

When Miami took over Oxford College-often called Ox College-located on the corner of High Street and College Avenue, the Miami president decided all new students would live in the facility with some faculty members. Hart said this was the start of the "freshman program," which had the goal of keeping students in school.

Hart said that in the 1960s and 1970s, each residence hall had a full-time first-year adviser, a graduate assistant and resident assistants (RA) to focus on the students in their corridor.

Hart said his goal was to hire many RAs so that someone would know every student.

"The bottom line is try to get personal attention (to the students) and have somebody in a responsible position know every student," Hart said.

Schmidt said the university used to have curfews. The curfews were mostly for women.

"Women generally tended to be more closely supervised than the male students initially," Schmidt said.

Hart said the idea was that women had to be protected. Women had an 11 p.m. curfew-which was later pushed back to midnight.-that was very closely monitored. He said women had to sign in and out.

According to Hart, the average GPA for a male's first semester was about a 2.0, while women had about a 2.4 or 2.5 on average in the 1960s. He added that grading was probably tougher during this time period.

"(Women) were just more mature," Hart said. "They were sharper. They were very well organized.

Hart added that the women's organizations, like the Associated Women Students and the sorority system, were strong.

"They did not move off (campus) so they always had the support group of their sororities," Hart said.

Hart said women were first allowed to live off campus after their first year in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

The first co-ed residence hall was Thomson Hall, which was built in the 1970s, according to Schmidt.

Hart said when Miami began experimenting with coed residence halls, they were coming out of a situation where women were protected, even though they were often more responsible in many ways.

"I think we just kind of put it in as moving forward," Hart said. "You wanted to see how it worked."

He said the idea was to make sure someone would know every student. Hart said that if first-year students got off to a good start, they would be more likely to stay and graduate.

"I just feel like residence life was very important to having a high retention rate and to knowing our students and to getting the academic support they needed to be successful," Hart said.