A few good men

Word ’round the quad is that male first-year students are outnumbered. Rumors have echoed as far as a 5:1 split, girls to guys. But King’s students don’t buy rumours—King’s students hunt for truth. It is therefore the Watch’s pleasure to herein quell the recent hysteria and provide some stats and insight into how this imbalance is affecting first-year life.
The official numbers from the registrar’s office are 212 females to 96 males—that’s a 2.2:1 ratio. This is substantially higher than the 1.6:1 ratio (767 females: 492 males) of the entire school. Imagine all those upper-year guys now, reading this with one hand scratching their beards and the other resting on their mini beer bellies, sighing, “…Oh, to be young again.” Well, perhaps their jealousy is well-founded; all first-year females interviewed used phrases such as “They are so very lucky,” and “They don’t know how good they’ve got it.”
“Compared to the all-boys culture of Toronto private school Upper Canada College, the balance here is quite comfortable,” first-year Jake Danto-Clancy said, with a twinkle in his eye. Suave first-year Owen Woodside agrees that the prospect of reading the Epic of Gilgamesh while hoards of sundress-draped beauties parade past your window can be rather daunting. It seems the numbers are most noticeable in FYP tutorials and on busy nights at the Wardroom.
However, one should not be so quick to believe all males will reap the benefits of this phenomenon.
Female sources confirmed the existence of a list titled ‘The 5 Hot Guys in FYP’. “See, a lot of guys here are way too forward and really just need to rock suspenders more,” says Claris Figueira. “So the already narrow margin of guys available is further diminished by the lack of desirable traits.”
It appears guys who are too aggressive or nerdy just won’t make ‘The List’. For all those who are wondering: yes, a tireless search for a hard-copy of this sacred document was conducted. However, it appears the original was destroyed, and its existence now remains solely in the female libidos from Chapel Bay to Alex Hall.
But all jokes aside, how is this plethora of estrogen affecting the social dynamic among FYP women? Rachel Cohen, a mysterious first-year, says she’s seen it go bad already.
“You can’t have rights to guys,” she comments, “and that’s just becoming accepted.”
Basically, unless he’s built you a shelf, sanded, polished and placed you both upon it as an item for viewing, no one’s safe. The natural breaking-up of first-years into smaller cliques has also highlighted this ‘eye for an eye’ philosophy.
“If you want to win over a ‘Hot Guy’ in another group, you can expect a territorial reaction,” says an anonymous female source.
With such a lack of men around, it is evident that pressure is mounting on FYP women to act fast. Aggressive females are on the prowl, and one can wind up feeling isolated if they’re not down for one-night stands—‘Why am I not being noticed?’ ‘Why is he so uninterested?’
If there were a line of healthy competition, have the 2011 FYP demographics gone too far? Well, when asked about how she sees the year playing out, one invaluable source responded, “I feel like most girls either end up going to Dal, or experimenting with bisexuality.”