Why do people still insist upon calling female students coeds? I know for a fact when my alma mater started matriculating men, they didn't start calling them coeds. By all rights they could, since the admittance of men made the school coeducational. But, men are the default, so they get to be students. And even though it's not 1953 anymore, women are still the add ons.
I had a similar conversation my freshman year of college working in the college's publications office. My male supervisor was writing a news piece about a female student at a neighboring coed school and referred to her as a coed. I pointed out that he was using language that othered her. It made her something other than a student. It connotes that only men could be students and women are only coeds, something less.
I know I really shouldn't expect much from a piece that's all about woman as fashion hound or a tongue in cheek shoe blog, but come on. If you've got the column inches to spell out she's a college freshman in the first graph, you can say the students have done their homework later on.
It's not like anyone's going to assume the writer of the original piece is talking about men.
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