My son’s dorm has gender neutral bathrooms. It doesn’t phase the kids.
@gearmom it’s funny because my son isn’t particularly modest! I think it was just the newness of being around a bunch of strange girls in the bathroom. I’m sure he would have adjusted if he was assigned there. I think he was more concerned with the toilet and "taking care of business " with a pretty girl right next to him!
@NJWrestlingmom Yup. That is exactly it. No problem at the beach. And he is a three season athlete so changes with the team or at scout camp. He is a big sporty kid, looks like Bjorn from the Vikings series but would definitely prefer privacy if given the option. Or would try to go when people were not there. He is still shy around the girls.
Now that little I have has far too many close girlfriends. And they share every detail of their lives.
I don’t understand. If you want to not walk around in a towel, don’t. Throw on some clothes before coming out of the shower.
With guys, they’re showing less in a towel than they would in a bathing suit.
I’m not at all judging people who don’t want co-ed bathrooms. To each their own. But I’m not sure why some are making it seem like there’s a large percentage of exhibitionists and peepers.
Also- everybody poops 
D16’s month old dorm building has 49 residents per floor with 16 separate full bathrooms (toilet, sink and shower). It’s low stress for everyone.
I think everyone has different personal space requirements. I was used to a family which shared everything. My husband was for all practical purposes an only child ( second family kid much much younger than the older two) . He likes his things to be private rather than communal. If you are raised to expect privacy, that can be hard. Everyone does poop but not everyone is comfortable doing that so publicly. Kind of seems that schools sometimes go out of their way to make transgender and non binary kids comfortable. But kids that are really uncomfortable with coed ( many reasons listed trust, previous sexual assualts, cultural, religious, modest), who cares? Personally I think they all should be respected. Just as it would be wrong to coerce a transgender kid into a certain bathroom, it is also wrong to force an uncomfortable students into a coed situation. And that is totally fine that peop!e are different and have different needs IMO.
And people wonder why the cost of college keeps rising.
(Not meaning to pick on you personally, @boulders. This just seems excessive to me.)
For a new or substantially remodeled dorm with the traditional rooms on the hall with shared bathrooms, why not just put a sufficient number of single-user bathrooms instead of gang bathrooms?
On a related subject, why is it that some places with two single-user restrooms make them gendered instead of any gender?
Could be worse if those guys use the toilets, do not bother the lift the seats, and cannot aim.
I would assume because it’s much more expensive and takes up more room.
Hopefully those guys learned to aim in the 18 years they used a toilet at home!
@Sue22 They probably do alot more drinking at school than at home. If they’re not walking a straight line, they are probably not shooting straight either.
I went to Wesleyan in the early 80’s. Sophomore year I lived in a house, an actual wood-framed 2 story house a family would buy, but owned by Wesleyan and converted for use as student housing. It was a co-ed house with 8 students. The school had made 1 big bathroom for all of us. There were 2 toilets in stalls, an alcove with 2 urinals and a curtain across it for privacy. The showers are hard to explain. It was 2 stalls, back to back. There was a curtain on each stall just as you’d see anywhere. When you stepped out of the shower, there was a wall on either side of you and another shower curtain in front of you. This was where you’d hang your towel or robe or whatever.
I’m a woman. Having it be a man in the next stall or in the other shower (of course, you’d only know if you were talking to the person) was weird for the first week and then it was fine.
Now, one of the guys was a bit too comfortable with the whole co-ed housing arrangement and would walk around in his tighty whites. None of the women cared for that, so we told him it wasn’t ok and he started putting on pants or shorts.
OP, my bet is that your daughter would get used to it pretty quickly, but of course, she’s entitled to decide that this is just not for her. Please just make sure that it’s her decision, whatever the decision is. As you can see from all the posts, many many thousands of college students have lived with co-ed or gender neutral bathrooms over the last 5 decades or so. If it created significant problems, colleges would be doing it less and less, not more and more.
And please don’t think a single sex bathroom means nothing will ever happen to make your daughter uncomfortable. My freshman hall had a single sex bathroom. Every once in a great while, a late night trip to the bathroom meant I overheard a couple in the shower.
I honestly can’t even remember whether the bathrooms on my floor in college were single-gender or not!
So interesting to read the variety of responses, and illustrative of my own kids’ differences . . . . my older son is hyper modest. We have not seen him shirtless since he was about 10, 8 years ago. Hw would never walk around in a towel at home, let alone in front of other people. However, he would almost certainly prefer a gender neutral
bathroom in college because most of his close friends are girls and he doesn’t feel super comfortable around a bunch of guys under neutral circumstances, definitely not half naked. He would actually prefer a gender neutral room.
In contrast, my younger son hangs out in his underwear as much as he can (to the great annoyance of my older son), and is constantly in settings where groups of guys are changing, etc. We would prefer he steered clear of coed bathrooms because he has already expressed curiosity and interest in kissing a girl at the high school’s coed bathroom (this is, unfortunately, kind of a thing that has developed this year with the placement of all gender single bathrooms in semi-remote locations around their large high school - ugh).
My husband and I neither super modest nor exhibitionists, so we just shake our heads at their preferences.
It’s probably our antiquated building codes. I designed a yoga studio recently and was required to label the drawing male and female on the drawings, but the building official assured me they had no issue with both bathrooms becoming unisex as soon as the inspectors left!
My kid’s school just put signs on all the single restrooms making it clear that they are for any gender to use. Must vary by state, if it’s OK or not.
Fun reading through the responses. Makes me feel old- in the early ‘70’s coed dorms were just beginning on progressive campuses. Mine became coed by floors my sophomore year and the immature boys dumped a guy in a girls’ floor shower. If it had been the norm they would not have done it. Society changes. And once upon a time there were visiting hours- extensive but I certainly would never have counted on not seeing someone of the opposite gender in the hall in the wee hours. Or, I would have figured whoever was there when I dashed to the bathroom in my night wear was not interested in me.
Regarding strangers- after awhile these are your dorm mates, you know them, at least by site. More like brothers/sisters than otherwise.
When we went for son’s summer orientation the parents stayed in one part of the dorm used, couples together. There were two bathrooms at either end of the hall. The ladies’ was at the other end- as an old married lady I did not care if some other student’s stranger father caught me in my robe. During the school year each half of the hall was same gender. That dorm was built in 1940 for women and had a men’s room in the lobby area- but none for women there. Many different styles of dorms over the ages and all security locked. Had to figure out a place to park semi-legally so I could use a bathroom in one of their dorms when making the trip to bring/take son and friends. When son had his apartment it was a LOT cleaner to go next door to the comp sci tech store area bathroom. There is a lot to be said for shared baths that get routine cleaning by housing (a work study job in my dorm).
OP- I certainly would not let the bathroom issue determine which college works best. I would never compromise top academics just because the dorms were not to your liking. Your child needs to like the place, not you.
We just got back from parents’ weekend at our daughter’s school. The non gendered bathrooms flipped my wife out. It is not that she didn’t know they existed, and in fact she has been a “soft” supporter of the idea in the larger culture. In the breech however, things were a bit different. When she finished making use of the facilities she opened the stall door and saw a guy wrapped in a towel brushing his teeth. She said it was a totally unexpected shock and made her feel a bit uncomfortable. I think this is probably a much bigger deal for parents than students.
“I think this is probably a much bigger deal for parents than students.”
I can honestly say that this is definitely a much bigger deal for my student than it is for me. D20 won’t even walk around our house in a towel - she dresses and undresses in a locked bathroom when she takes a shower, and she is mortified to see anyone else in a towel or bathrobe. But, she doesn’t want to live in a co-ed dorm, so she most likely won’t have to worry about it.
Single sex housing, good idea. My sib has a kid that is a super privacy “needer.” I chose single sex all four years of college and the payback was that I got to spend the last thirty years of my life living with all men LOL. God works in mysterious ways but we all keep out of the bathroom when someone else is using it and we do just fine. No one says you HAVE to enjoy showering, brushing your teeth and toileting with someone else in the bathroom uninvited let alone someone of the opposite sex…it’s not being maladjusted to not want that it’s more personal,and who wants to be part of a big social experiment on campuses - which BTW I think the colleges are doing an abysmal job of executing.
I have really enjoyed reading all the responses, too. I lived in a single sex dorm my freshman year then in coed by room dorms but with single sex bathrooms. We had old dorms so single sex baths meant walking pretty far to pee in some cases. Our family is fairly European about nudity. When it is just us, we don’t worry about covering up. The family I grew up in was very modest. When I was in my twenties I was more modest than I am now.
Having said all that, my LAC kid is in one of those coed bathroom settings and completely unfazed. I, on the other hand, was shocked when I went to visit him and passed a girl dressed in just a towel coming from the bathroom.
I think young people are pretty adaptable.
If OP or her child or anyone else has issues with the bathroom arrangements, best to deal with them now. Not all colleges are so liberal. I have a kid at a Big State U and they have fabulous new dorms in which there aren’t many big communal bathrooms anymore. Kids or parents who don’t like coed bathrooms can avoid them.