oh those overflow women gimme gimme gimme the overflow blues

At my alma mater, Concord College (now pretentiously remonikered as Concord University), the two largest dorms are twin buildings on the west of campus, Men's and Women's Towers. My cousin Rusty and I roomed together in Men's Towers for the duration of my time there.

At the beginning of the new school year in both 1986 and 1987, there were more women signed up for the freshman class than could be housed in the dorm space normally allocated to the fairer sex. So both years, Concord's administration decided to clear the bottom two floors of Men's Towers to house these women.

Bizarrely, the college decided to call the women residing in Men's Towers "overflow women."

I kept expecting one to float up through our toilet, or for a torrent of them to rush out of the lobby and into the street - a cataract of buoyant females and random dorm room jetsam flooding downtown Athens. Could the administration have come up with a more unflattering term?

Both years, the situation didn't last for long. The normal attrition of no-shows and early drop-outs allowed the tide of overflow women to recede into Women's Towers and Wilson Hall within a week, probably to the disappointment of the men who wasted all the time they spent drilling peepholes into their floor.

But still... overflow women? Seriously?