By Amber Hardy and Jake Holmes

For years the women of Carlow have ruled the campus with their overwhelming numbers compared with the men. However, we serve to shed some light on the men on campus .
While women are still in the majority at Carlow at 89 percent, the amount of men has increased, currently at 11 percent. Still, men have their place here. They have taken over the 10th and half of the fourth floors at Frances Ward Hall. There is varsity men’s basketball and men’s cross country.
College is an experience, and the men of Carlow just have a few more women in the mix than others.
Still, at times the divide is great and evident.
“I’d say for the most part it’s entertaining, but there can be times where the guys may feel left out,” sophomore Eric Morris said.
The Chronicle decided to take a look at the perspectives from both the male and female side.

She said

I’m only a sophomore, so I’ve been here while the male population is on the rise. While I don’t feel a divide personally, I can still see one.
Men will be scattered here and there among the girls, or in a large group of just men. Maybe this is not such an unordinary occurrence, but in a school this small it gets attention.
Making male friends is just like making any other friends; smile and be funny. However, if the dating pool were a concern of mine, I’d have to point out that there are slim pickings.
Still, Carlow feels like home, and the friends that I’ve made here feel more like family. And like any family, gender is irrelevant.

He said

Several people don’t know that men have been able to enroll at Carlow since post World War II. However, men were unable to live in Carlow’s residence halls until 2011.
When applying to Carlow, I didn’t know how drastically low the male population was. Four years ago, when I walked onto the men’s floor, only 7 percent of Carlow’s population was male.
A lot has changed over the past four years with our new University Commons and the amount of men on campus nearly doubling. This is in large part due to the addition of men’s basketball and cross country.
Although sports have brought in around 25 male athletes over the past two years, others came to Carlow before athletics were even an option for males. In 2012,  my maiden voyage to Carlow, I clearly remember playing five-on-five with the women’s basketball team and entering the Pittsburgh Sports League as men’s basketball was being contemplated by the university. That was the extent of men’s athletics. Now we’re adding men’s soccer and golf for 2016-17.
Going to a school where the population of women heavily outweighed that of males never was an issue. I had lived my whole life with my mother and older sister, therefore I was used to women.
Although I had a lot of female compadres, it felt as though I had 15 brothers. The men’s floor (first floor of Frances Warde Hall) wasn’t just ‘a group of guys;’ it was truly a brotherhood.
We knew we were the minority and we had to stick together.
One of those “brothers” I have had over my time at Carlow is Tirrell Harris, a senior business major who loves the friendly environment at Carlow.
“Carlow is so small, that’s an advantage.” Harris said. “When I came here it was definitely weird for some people that guys were living here. But the people here are so great, everyone got used to it.”
Harris agreed that things have changed over the years, the sports community is growing and Harris said these changes are “for the better.”
Although now there are twice as many men at Carlow than there were a few years ago, there is still a sense of family among mean from the “pre-athletic era.” Even though I only have six more months as a student at Carlow, I’ll never forget my experience here. It is something that only a few people can really understand — Carlow’s male alumni.