<p>Had coed bathrooms on a coed floor 30 years ago for 3 years. No issues whatsoever. Showers had an ante-area curtained off to change in, couple of urinals, couple of stalls, several sinks. </p>
<p>Most of the dorm mates were like siblings. Don’t think the bathrooms had anything to do with dating vs not dating dorm mates. I think we voted every year whether to keep it coed or not. Don’t recall a single person voting for single sex. Even the most sheltered ones got used to it PDQ.</p>
<p>We did have one guy who wore only his birthday suit before/after showering but he marched from his room that way so single sex bathroom would not have protected anyone from that display. I don’t think anyone, including the dorm administration, ever said anything to him. He’s a minister now, I hear. Never saw anyone else in anything less than a bathing suit would cover.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be nearly as bothered if there were locking doors to the shower and changing rooms, as some people have described. We have flimsy shower curtains that pretty much open up when you turn the water on.</p>
<p>I think we can take it as a given that any configuration that does not include securely private spaces for functions involving nudity or genital exposure is a non-starter for coed bathrooms. It really should be a non-starter for any communal bathrooms (many people may feel less inhibited about being seen naked by others of their own gender, but this is a matter of degree and is not universal).</p>
<p>I agree with that, and think it should be true of all communal bathrooms, single-gender or otherwise. A college bathroom isn’t really supposed to be the same thing as a locker room.</p>
<p>Another reason I’m so happy with the coed floor, single gender suite setup at my sons’ dorms. It’s been the best of many worlds for many reasons.</p>
<p>I did not read this entire thread – cannot believe so many posts since yesterday. At the risk of getting into too much detail, I feel it must be pointed out that a lot of guys just don’t care where they aim and don’t bother to clean up after themselves when they miss. It’s bad enough when you are raising your own sons to have to deal with this and make an issue out of it and turn them into socially responsible creatures who realize a bathroom is not the Great Outdoors, but I would not want to share a toilet with a bunch of 18 year old guys whose mothers maybe fell down on this part of the job.</p>
<p>umm just a ?, but why would a mom? be the one to teach a boy bathroom habits?</p>
<p>And BTW, my D had co-ed bathrooms, and they were always really clean- the showers also were really nice- private showers with doors to the floor and lots of room inside for dressing. I realize not every bathroom is like this, my D in public school has co-ed by floor, and single sex bathrooms- but they also have a bathtub!</p>
<p>I went to a school that had coed bathroooms. The toilet stalls were behind locked doors, as were the shower stalls, which also had curtains behind the locked door. no urinals in coed bathrooms. I’m a very modest person, and I never felt uncomfortable- thats what bathrobes are for. Its not like people would be walking around naked in single sex bathrooms anyways.</p>
<p>Honestly, it was extremely rare to even be in the bathroom at the same time as another person.</p>
<p>I spent a semester at a school that had single sex bathrooms, and there were no doors on the showers, just curtains. this made me EXTREMELY uncomfortable.</p>
<p>umcp11 - The operative words in my statement were “in your dorm.” These are not random people on the street; they are living with you, including all of the men. I find it hard to believe that coed bathrooms pose any more of a safety issue than coed dormitories themselves. (Your comfort concern is a different matter, and one that I’ve already addressed.)</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - An office building is not a dormitory. You do not live in an office (or at least, I hope not). Do you keep your own home’s bathrooms under lock and key as well when you have guests over?</p>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with having single-sex floors, just as there’s nothing wrong with having rooms alternating by gender, or for that matter mixed-sex rooms if both parties consent. Indeed, most colleges that have coed bathrooms also offer the option of single-sex floors.</p>
<p>The “benefit” of coed bathrooms is for the comfort of students who are otherwise excluded, just as (here I dare venture into politics) homosexual people are mostly excluded by the word “marriage.” Whether you agree with such a political opinion or not, I hope that everyone can acknowledge it as at least an opinion held by some portion of the populace.</p>
<p>I honestly would not be any more or less (un)comfortable if I saw a naked female body in the bathroom than if that body was male. Nudity induces discomfort regardless of gender.</p>
<p>Emeraldkity4, I was influenced by my own experience when I wrote my post. My husband did not pull his weight in this department; therefore I said mother. In general, I have noticed that women are more tuned in to bathroom cleanliness than men, although I acknowledge that for the horribly un-PC stereotype that it is.</p>
<p>Most people, at one time or another, are very sick in the bathroom – whether they are moaning from menstrual cramps, have food poisoning, the stomach flu or something else. Sometimes the misery is very obvious to those who are nearby. Many girls I have spoken to would rather be sick with only girls nearby than a mixed group. I think there is a big difference between a co-ed bathroom with one toilet in it versus one where there are multiple stalls, because the one toilet-one shower type tends to afford a lot more privacy.</p>
<p>Because the dad has rotten aim LOL. My girlfriend actually takes the cake, she not only got her sons to hit the actual inside of the toilet, but then take tissue and wipe down the edges just in case before they put the seat down. I clearly failed to achieve this level of male bathroom perfection, but try I did.</p>
<p>And boys, too, I suspect (would rather be sick in a single-sex setting). I will grant this as an actual preference. But I don’t think it’s healthy, or worthy of too much respect. </p>
<p>That’s why I hated woody’s comment about “the mystery”. The mystery may be there, but it’s not my business to preserve it, and I don’t want to pay for my kids’ college to preserve it, either. In my view, the mystery is bad; screw it. And I think there’s something wrong and unhealthy about a fear of appearing sick or vulnerable in front of a broad category of other human beings, if you happen to be sick or vulnerable that day. If it takes co-ed bathrooms to educate teenagers out of that kind of preference, well then maybe there IS a positive argument for co-ed bathrooms, rather than just the lack of a strong negative. (Besides Keilexandra’s more esoteric positive argument.)</p>
<p>You want mystery, go someplace with single sex dorms, and stop whining about co-ed bathrooms.</p>
<p>Separately, I am fascinated by Keilexandra’s comment about being equally discomfited by nude male and female bodies. I think this reflects a serious decline in high school sports culture since I was young. Everyone I know in my generation spent years showering naked with lots of other naked people of the same sex long before we got to college.</p>
<p>Both I and my Ds have vomited from menstrual cramps. Girls who suffer this way should not have to share the experience with men they barely know, and there is absolutely nothing wrong or unhealthy about feeling this way.</p>
<p>True, and my understanding is that the practice of requiring middle- and high-schoolers to shower nude after PE was banned due to issues that included a negative impact on self-esteem and privacy.</p>