These things happen whether bathrooms or coed or not. Got to get from bathroom to room somehow 
Those towels likely covered a lot more than one would see at a beach. Much easier to dress in your room than that shower stall area.
Dorms are home to these kids, not a continuous hotel existence. Their floor mates become like family members, not the strangers they start out as. You do not need to like or be friends with your sister/brother but you learn to coexist. You tell them to cover up their underwear if it bothers you in the halls just like you wish you could have growing up in the family house. Any visitor is entering their home, not a public place (and given how security measures keep things locked up now they are even more private than they were in my day).
College is an education that far exceeds what is learned in the classroom. An ideal setting for determining which family habits to keep, which to discard and new ones to be aware of. One reason college “fit” is emphasized- all of the students have much in common by being at their school.
For those with coed bathrooms, can I ask if they are coed throughout the college, not just in dorms? In academic buildings, theaters, libraries?
For the most part, i feel like “whatever” for co-ed bathrooms for college age kids. But - there’s lines that can be drawn with it all to me . . .
My S’s fraternity house – nope, wouldnt want my daughter in there. The have no DOORS on any toilet stalls or in the showers, no walls between urnials. No curtains either. it’s old and grimy and cleaned by freshmen. yuck.
And multi-stalled unisex bathrooms in public places – no way. I do not want my middle school D, nor would have wanted my daughters when they were younger, sharing a large bathroom with adult (male) strangers.
For the most part other parts of the campus will have single sex bathrooms, though their will probably be some unisex ones available.
I think it’s best that students get a choice. I grew up in a prudish family. Seeing my mother fold my father’s underwear was a bit too much in our family. When I went away to college, I absolutely, positively hated the shared bathrooms and would have been mortified if it had been a shared co-ed bathroom. Now, I was living in a dorm that had recently gone from all boys to co-ed by floor. The showers were like those in a boy’s locker room, but someone had sorta partitioned them off with shower curtains, but they were still just shower head with a curtain hanging in front - no changing areas attached. If you wanted to shower in one of the back two showers, it meant dropping your towel on the bench by the first two showers and then walking past the first two showers to get to the back ones. In other words, there was no way to shower with modesty unless you wore a bathing suit. I was mortified, as were many other girls, and we soon developed a schedule where there was almost never more than two girls trying to shower at one time - so no one had to use those two back showers. Seriously - girls would get up at 7am to shower alone.
I’ve tried hard not to be so prudish with my family. However, when we were looking at colleges and came across one where students voted on whether bathrooms were unisex, DD said no way. She did not want to be changing a pad with a boy in the stall next to her. Maybe she would have got more comfortable with it, maybe not. Either way, it would have brought more anxiety to moving away to college than need be, and she’s happy in her dorm where they separate by wing and she’s only sharing with females. I’m glad she had that choice. I do know that she would happily allow a transgendered student who identified as female in the bathroom, just not any boys.
Outside the dorms, multi-person bathrooms are single sex (There’s probably an exception somewhere in the world). Single-user bathrooms may be labelled as M or F or Unisex. That said, if it’s a single-user bathroom labelled F and I have to go and there’s no men’s room close, I’m using it.
Just curious, but why the distinction? It is the same group of students using the dorm and academic facilities I assume. They can go coed in one building and not the others?
Probably because they want to put urinals in the male restrooms to get users through more quickly.
Coed gang bathrooms in dorms seem like they exist mainly due to old single-gender dorms with one gang bathroom per floor being converted to coed.
There are plenty of reasons for people to be on campus who aren’t really part of the school community, for one reason.
How common is it for *new/i dorms to have one gang bathroom per floor these days?
Or have they moved away from gang bathrooms and toward suites with their own bathrooms, or single user bathrooms in rooms-off-a-hall situations?
“Just curious, but why the distinction? It is the same group of students using the dorm and academic facilities I assume. They can go coed in one building and not the others?”
I’m guessing that the bathrooms in your home aren’t assigned to genders, but the ones in your workplace are. Same thing.
Yes although it is getting more common to see female, male and one marked male/female or family. I am not sure why colleges need to have wings or floors mixed gender causing the community baths mixed gender…doesn’t seem like that is an essential need nor an enhancement of the residential college experience.
Not really, Hanna. The restroom in my house is single use, so like almost all single use facilities, is gender neutral. The group facilities are in dorms and near classrooms, so I don’t see a difference. Colleges build facilities with their own populations in mind, not general members of the public. If their populations are fine with coed bathrooms, what possible difference could it be whether that’s in an academic building or a dorm? Actually far easier in a non dorm as no shower facilities are needed.
“what possible difference could it be whether that’s in an academic building or a dorm?”
There are two possibilities. One is that the people who run colleges are idiots and don’t know what’s good for them or their own community members, but you do. The other is that they have reasons, and you don’t value those reasons, so you are denying that they could have value for somebody else.
" I am not sure why colleges need to have wings or floors mixed gender causing the community baths mixed gender…doesn’t seem like that is an essential need nor an enhancement of the residential college experience."
My guess is because this is what the vast majority of students prefer. Single gender dorms are often hard to fill at some colleges if populated just by those that requested them. That’s why there are so few offered.
No need to get snarky, hanna. I think the difference is likely that the colleges do recognize that maybe gender separation Has some utility in these situations. Pointing out that they have their secret reasons isnt terribly helpful .
The “audience” for bathrooms in non-residential buildings is different than that of the dorms. That’s pretty much all there is to it.
Skieurope wrote: “Outside the dorms, multi-person bathrooms are single sex (There’s probably an exception somewhere in the world).”
Pretty sure there’s an academic building at Bard College at Simon’s Rock that is the exception. If I remember correctly, there were 1 or 2 urinals inside a stall that was signed with the image of a urinal, and a few stalls with toilets. I know I’ve been in a bathroom like this, can’t swear it was at Simon’s Rock but I’m pretty sure it was.
No need for single gender…all the colleges my kids were at had dorms where it was gender by wing or gender by floor. No essential reason to go boy girl boy girl by room except of course it can be done in suite style easily. I would challenge the notion that the “vast majority of students” want or like mixed gender bathrooms. Even if it sounds exotic on week one I would challenge the notion that the concept holds the same appeal weeks and months in when you get up in the middle of the night and step in pee in front of the toilet or a shower curtain sticks to your wet skin when you are wrapping up in a towel because you have no idea who is standing at the sink.
Sometimes ideas sound good on paper but not so much in practice…and I think colleges and unis pushed an experiential envelope on coed bathrooms and showers but whatever floats peoples boats…my family not so much on the simultaneous use of the bathrooms during showering and toileting. Try that in K-12 locker rooms and see where that gets you…so why is it suddenly A-OK for colleges? But most colleges let students choose their dorm style so eyes wide open and kids should think about how they feel about it.