It’s a rite of passage at JMU to pause and ponder the male-to-female ratio. We know the numbers, but honestly, we men don’t even really care about it too much. Whatever your reasons for coming here, I would applaud my fellow men who have made a wise decision to come to JMU.
Why? The environment at this university is perfect. Where else would you rather be?
Our university and its location meet the very essence of college: freedom that we yearned for 18 years. We are no longer bound by the rigid K-12 years. The Shenandoah Valley provides the ideal surroundings: a good home away from home, mountains to hike, campfires to light and waters to fish or boat in.
Hence, it’s a must that before every JMU male graduates, he is to go to the wild and remote places anywhere, and explore it to satisfy the innate and untamable desire for adventure.
Ladies, please let us enjoy some real adventure in manhood before you try to domesticate us again; simply relegating us to be “nice guys,” making us produce in the corporate boardrooms or on the lawn. Enjoy the fruits of sisterhood with your bridal magazine parties, because once you join that union with the man of your dreams, you’ll look back and wish you could savor it again.
So why don’t we all chill out a bit and not worry about how many sons and daughters of the last of the baby boomer generation come to JMU. Let’s face it — we live, study and work in one of the most beautiful landscapes that could surround a college environment, and if it is approximately 60 percent female, then doesn’t that make the beauty of our campus 60-percent-fold? So, as a good friend of mine says to me when it comes to worrying, “relax, baby, relax.”
Jeff Genota is a junior political science major.
If you ask a young woman the thing she dislikes most about JMU, she will probably say, “There aren’t enough guys here!” Ironically, JMU is hardly abnormal in its male-to-female ratio, because it is only slightly varied from national higher education statistics. We exacerbate the perceived “problem” with the male-to-female ratio by making it a constant talking point.
The current ratio at JMU is 61 percent female, 39 percent male. However, percentages can appear more frightening than they really are. What this actually means is that in a room with ten people, six of them will be women and four will be men. That doesn’t sound too awkward to me — it’s only one person away from being evenly split.
In a broader scope, this isn’t even unusual. According to a 2005 “Postsecondary Education Opportunity” report, men haven’t outnumbered women in college since 1978. In 2005, females accounted for 57.4 percent of national college enrollment. JMU is only a few points away from this statistic.
I personally don’t see much of a reason to complain about the gender ratio at JMU. The most popular majors at JMU — namely education and nursing — are traditional “female majors,” not just at JMU, but all over the country. If you choose to be an elementary education major, don’t be surprised that your classes favor the female population.
Talking about how much JMU is a predominantly female school doesn’t exactly entice more men to enroll. In fact, by making JMU — and college in general — appear to be a “girl thing,” we are discouraging young men from becoming more involved in higher education. We need to realize that JMU isn’t an aberration, but rather that it follows a national trend. And ladies, if being with so many women is really that upsetting, VMI is only an hour away, and you can always switch your major to computer science.
Kathryn Manning is a senior political science and history major.
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