In 1958, the University built Kinsolving Hall on the northwest corner of campus as the largest all-female dormitory, housing over 700 residents. According to an article from the Alcalde, it was considered groundbreaking at the time, designed for the comfort of its female residents. Large living spaces, elevators and air conditioning set Kinsolving ahead at a time when many dormitories on campus maintained barracks-style sleeping accommodations and lacked air conditioning.
When Jeri Kinnear moved into Kinsolving dormitory in 1961, she lived with a set of rules and expectations not well known to today’s residents. Men were barred from upper floors, and the dorm maintained strict sign-ins and curfews, according to the Alcalde. These rules were maintained by house mothers, or head matrons, who were live-in adult supervisors.
Although UT has never mandated on-campus housing, Kinnear had little variance in her choice of where to live as there were only single-sex dormitories open at the time.
“In 1965, a woman couldn’t buy her own car,” Kinnear said. “She couldn’t buy a piece of property. She couldn’t have credit cards unless her husband or her daddy got them for her.”
While rules for dorm residents may have shifted, Connie Campbell, who lived at Kinsolving from 1965 to 1969, said her experience was shaped not just by curfews and house mothers, but by pranks, shared routines and friendships that endured long after graduation.
Campbell described enjoying her time in Kinsolving and she recalled one specific prank by her suitemate, whom she called “a cut-up and a practical joker.”
“One night she filled … the whole hallway with bottles,” Campbell said. “We all went to bed, and so the first one up the next morning was leaving and just walked out … and she hit one of the bottles, and they all fell.”
The connections Campbell formed through her time in Kinsolving proved enduring beyond her years in campus housing, she said.
“I’m still in touch with my freshman roommate and my junior roommate, but we were all pretty good friends,” Campbell said.
With the opening of co-ed dorms on campus in 1969 with Jester, policy restricting life in single-sex dorms underwent some changes. Curfews were extended, and co-ed visitation was loosened.
Nearly two decades after Campbell’s time on campus, Kinsolving attracted residents whose families valued the maintained structure of an all-female dormitory. Claris Sukkar, a resident of Kinsolving from 1989 to 1990, recalls that this feature appealed to her parents, even as co-ed dorms grew in popularity.
Sukkar’s older sister attended UT first, and her parents found a single-sex dormitory like Kinsolving appealing. The dorm allowed men to access the dining hall on the first floor, but they were only allowed upstairs with an escort.
“It meant socialization with boys, but not too much socialization,” Sukkar said.
Sukkar experienced Kinsolving’s rules from both sides of the front desk. As a resident who also worked the mail room and as an overnight student supervisor, she remembered the procedures that shaped how students entered and exited the dorm.
According to Sukkar, residents maintained much more freedom than in previous decades, as they could come and go without the previously upheld curfews. In place of a curfew, all residents had to sign in and out with the overnight student supervisor. Men at the time were still not permitted upstairs, and Sukkar recounted how if men attempted to leave after visiting hours, they would be forced to sign a sheet and face a disciplinary council.
Sukkar’s time in Kinsolving wasn’t remembered purely by her time working. In fond memory, Sukkar recalled a few of the many pranks she and the other residents would pull on one another.
The horseshoe architecture of the building allowed residents to see one another from the north and south towers. Sukkar and her friends would sit in someone’s room and use the landline to prank call an unsuspecting girl they’d spotted from across the tower windows. In a time with no caller ID and no mobile phones handy, the prank often went off without a hitch.
“You can’t bother people like we used to be able to,” Sukkar said.
Sukkar said the pranks were a part of the life and friendships she built in Kinsolving. Like Campbell, she remembered a dormitory where shared experiences brought residents together.
By the early 1990s, the social side of Kinsolving remained central to residents’ memories. Joey Roberts, a 1995 alumna who lived in the dorm from 1993 to 1994, said she remembered most vividly the time residents spent together, from evenings in the dining hall to Halloween decorating.
Roberts said the initial appeal of an all-female dorm was obvious and that Kinsolving seemed to fulfill every initial wish she had about living in a residence hall. The dining hall was particularly central to this experience, beyond the food offered there.
“(The dining hall) was kind of our sense of community,” Roberts said. “We’d eat there, meet up for lunch or dinner, and we spent a lot of evenings there together … eating way too much ice cream.”
Decades later, the dorm continues to house UT students. Kinsolving’s resident rooms have undergone renovations. Beginning in 2025, the south tower was the first in the phases of renovation, with replacements of the rooms, built-in furniture, new wall-mounted sinks, movable furniture and updated flooring. North tower renovations will continue through 2027.
For freshman government major Aditi Karvekar, a current resident of Kinsolving, the dormitory’s reputation as a social residence, echoed by residents from across the decades, was a major draw. Karvekar explained how the all-female environment and shared spaces helped her build friendships early on.
“It’s just a big bonding thing,” Karvekar said. “My group of friends now are all girls that we all kind of met because we live together.”
More than six decades after Kinnear first moved into Kinsolving, the dormitory has certainly changed. The dormitory has undergone construction, overnight co-ed visitation is allowed and curfew is a thing of the past. Rules that once governed former generations may have changed, but the residents all describe the same experience: friendships formed over shared spaces, late night hangouts and small traditions that grew a sense of bonding across the dormitory.
“It was a really nice place to live … we were all pretty good friends,” Campbell said.
