I lived in a mixed-sex dorm and the dining hall tables were also mixed. I remember sitting with the people from my floor (lots of guys) quite a bit, or people from other areas, but I don’t remember tables being segregated by gender.
I went to a huge Midwestern university, and stayed in a coed dorm (common “den”/TV room between the gender-separated wings). There was still some gender division to some extent; I think there were some “us vs. them” sorts of feelings going on. I spent a fair amount of time in the guy’s wing of my floor as I’d made some friends there (having “geeky” interests like video games and D&D didn’t hurt), and one of my female floor-mates asked if I was a lesbian because I was spending so much time with the guys. Um… no? (This was especially funny because I was having sex with one of those new male friends.)
So…nooooobody else sat alone and read the paper/did the crossword? Just me?
Ok… 
I went to an East Coast State School. The only notable things I remember from our dining halls were that the sports teams and fraternity and sorority groups tended to sit together. Other than that, it was pretty mixed. The main cafeteria had lots of long tables and fewer small tables and booths. We had three smaller cafe’s scattered across campus with small tables.
I got lucky in that a girl I met the first day of school that lived on my floor was dating a guy on the hockey team, so we ate with them more often than not that first year. By the second year, I was dating a guy in a fraternity, so I sat at that table with him and his friends. After two years, I moved off campus and used the cafe if I ate on campus.
That stuff you described isn’t sweetening the deal.
Hey, it wasn’t that common for me to actually have lunch with friends unless I was done with classes that day. Otherwise it was grab-n-go.
We had fraternity and sorority tables, so I sat at my sorority table. They were firmly established. Even if you were dating a fraternity guy, you would not sit at his table. It was Not Done. Stopping by a fraternity table to sell raffle tickets or distribute party flyers was cool; stopping to ask your boyfriend a question was pretty brazen. It was Not Done. Sit at your own table, woman.
This is PSXer we’re talking about.
Is he also a Vorkosiverse fan?
I met mrAru gaming at Campaign Headquarters in Norfolk VA. maybe 10% of the people gaming any given weekend might be female. I was the only female sitting at our table for 2 years of regular gaming. I always preferred dating military guys. If they do something bad you can grass on them to their command, can’t do that with a civilian unless it is actually criminal. [Back in the 80s violence towards females tended to get ignored unless it landed you in the hospital. Unless he was military, the command would land on the guy like a ton of bricks.]
Very much so. He told me that he’s seen this thread and is planning on saying, “Hi, honey” when he has time.
We had our own fraternity tables too. They were in our big mansion-like fraternity house on a gated hill separating us from the rest of the campus where our meals were cooked by a hired chef*. What’s the point of going Greek if you still have to eat dining hall food with the GDI peasents?
*It sounds a lot more fancy that it really was. Our particular house was unfortunately in the newer architectural style that more closely resembled a dorm / Motel Six than the classic Animal House mansions. And our chefs tended to be a revolving door of ex-cons and other weird dudes.
Hi, honey. In fact, I introduced you to the stories of Miles Vorkosigan and associates…
You guys on Lois’ email list?
If you rounded up every girl at my college, you could fill one lunch table. There were onlt about four or five tables total, anyway.
Actually, no. Been thinking of signing up, but I’m already on a few pretty active email lists.
Yep it can get pretty busy, I have seen weekends with over 200 posts, but you can filter out threads you don’t want to red, we are pretty stringent with proper tagging of subject lines. Though Lois does participate quite actively =) Can’t say that about a lot of artists email communities 
When I was in University (Illinois Inst. of Tech, '93-'97), my dorm was co-ed. Cafeteria seating was gender-mixed, but racially self-segregated.