The administration at Bowdoin College believed that participation in the Twelve College Exchange would enable members of the college community to determine the viability of coeducation at Bowdoin. This article (Document 14, GB) from the student newspaper reveals that the program had significant limitations. One of the most significant problems with the Twelve College Exchange was the number of women who came to Bowdoin. In the first year, only 12 women came and there were 900 men already on the campus. Most men did not even attempt to make contact with the women. The placement of women in housed on Federal Street isolated them from everyday flow of the college.
Today, forty years later, not only are all dorms home to both males and females but each floor of first-year dorms are half female and half male as well. The ratio of men to women has also changed from the first years of coeducation and is now 47% male and 53% female. In 2010, Bowdoin made yet another housing accommodation: students can now choose to live with the opposite gender in gender-blind or gender-neutral housing.
