Decline

The annual report for 1972-1973 indicates that State's Mates had to cancel the annual Mrs. NC State beauty pageant due to a lack of participation.

In the 1972-1973 annual report, the Mrs. NC State pageant was cancelled due to lack of participation.  This was foreshadowed by the drop in audience attendance in 1968; by 1972, there were not enough State's Mates members interested in participating to justify the pageant's continuation.

This is in part because there were not enough State's Mates members at all.  The number of married college students was declining, and State's Mates no longer had enough members to run those social activities that had made it popular in the first place.  In 1973-1974, State's Mates discontinued the yearbook by a vote of all members.

Meanwhile, coed student numbers were on the rise, as Porterfield's article indicates.  State's Mates was hurt just as much by a population that challenged its definition of womanhood at North Carolina State University as it was by a decline in its own numbers.  Even among student wives, ideas of married women holding careers meant that individuals no longer had to define themselves solely due to their marital status.  As a result, State's Mates no longer held the social necessity it once had.

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