Cullman, Ala. - Another milestone is being passed at St. Bernard this week - the opening of a girl’s dormitory.

Benedict Hall East will house some 41 women students on the campus. This is the first time that St. Bernard has had resident women on campus. Benedict Hall East has been remodeled and made into a modern girl’s facility. It can hold a total of 48 girls. The rooms are nice, modern looking, and appear to offer all the comforts of home.

It’s the history of Benedict Hall that made this move at St. Bernard so unique. Benedict was the monastery for decades at St. Bernard Abbey. The Benedictine monks located here used the hall from 1908, the year it was constructed, until 1962 as their monastery. During that time it also held the library and sick room for the college and abbey.

In 1934, the monastery was enlarged with the addition of the East end. It is alleged by the monks that the contractor building the new structure used green lumber “when we were not looking.”

Most of the monks currently at St. Bernard, lived in Benedict at one time. In 1962, the new faculty house was completed and the monks moved from Benedict into the new monastery. At that time, Benedict Hall was turned into a men’s dormitory and was used that way through this past year.

During the summer a partition was added between the East and the West wings of Benedict. Since the East end is more modern, it was chosen for renovation into a girl’s facility. Construction work is now completed, and the girls have taken up residence.

Fran Kelley, of Cedartown, Ga., a graduate of St. Bernard College, will be the resident hall director of the women’s dorm.

Thus Benedict Hall completes a transition which has moved it over some 62 years. First a monastery, then a boy’s dormitory, and now a combination of a boy’s dorm on the West end and a girl’s dorm on the East.

St. Bernard will have between 80 to 90 coeds this year as the school embarks in its first full year of coeducation for both day and resident students.