That may be true at small LACs where everyone lives on campus for 4 years, but at many schools, large schools, it’s the freshmen who are guaranteed on campus housing and everyone else takes anything left over (and there often isn’t much). Most live off campus and it is the most organized who get the best apartments, rental houses, etc.
College is not 100% about learning. It’s still 4 years of your life. You don’t suddenly put your life on pause and book learn 24/7.
I slept with my boyfriend in college. We even lived in the same dorm! Then lived together as upperclassmen. We’re married now and I’m getting my PhD at U Michigan so I must’ve done something in the way of learning…
OP- Does it all have to be black or white, all or nothing? No one is "all good’ or “all bad” just bc a person might go to a frat party doesn’t mean they aren’t an intellectually stimulating, driven person. Same with their sexual habits, just bc they may have sex w a boyfriend doesn’t mean they will be inconsiderate…
What my kids have found is there is a little bit of everything and every type of person on campus and some people change their priorities as the year or years progress- they may party first semester but not second semester or some weekends but not all weekends or any variation.
Just because you want to live in a coed dorm doesn’t mean you are going to have sex or drink or be loud and inconsiderate towards your roommate, same with a single sex dorm or any other variation.
If the schools start to impose strict curfews and visitation rules , guess what - there will always be kids that will try an break the rules. Isn’t it better to teach your daughter how to negotiate with her roommate and or hall peers to help life be more enjoyable for all involved? If negotiation doesn’t work out there are RA’s and other staff that can help.
Also my son is at a school this year that changed its housing to be entirely random -same price for every type of room - it was luck of the draw as to which type of room you got (suite, triple,double single ) and in which building. (The exception being gender neutral housing was all in one dorm and you had to apply to be selected there).
Once room assignments were handed out guess what -The kids organized trades of rooms on their class Facebook page… also If they have a real problem with their situation they can switch later in the semester or for next semester. Yes they might have to suffer for 1 semester , but in the interim they have learned real life negotiation and that suffering is temporary and perhaps they can find some positives out of the situation… its real life.
I feel your fear might be more about losing control of your daughter’s environment… which is something we all fear but sometimes its better to teach them the skills needed to deal with these things instead of controlling their environment.
One comment which I think everyone will agree with (assuming I state it properly) - we want our kids to challenge themselves, grow, and (where possible) overcome things that make them uncomfortable.
I feel like this thread has gone in the opposite direction. I believe the genesis was OP’s D was uncomfortable with a mixed-gender bathroom for a 2-week camp. One approach would be “well, don’t restrict your college based on this, because worst case you would only have to deal with it for a semester or two”. But it seems like instead it has gone from single-gender bathroom requirements, to single-gender floors, to single-gender dorms (to single-gender schools?) - and apparently that might not be good enough either, in case there are ever any boys in the dorm?
I personally think trying to isolate your D from anything that could indirectly lead to making her uncomfortable is a very bad goal…
Either a gap year, or a commuter school, might be a consideration if you and your D are not comfortable with the housing choices most colleges offer for first year students.
“I am honestly starting to feel very confused and befuddled by what I am perceiving as an excusing of an environment that is not really about learning anything…”
I don’t think anyone is excusing anything. They are trying to tell you what the reality is like at the vast majority of college campuses, whether public, private, large or small. Since colleges are still graduating young people who go on to earn high-level elective offices, become doctors, lawyers, patent holders, rocket scientists and global change agents, I think we can put to rest the assumption that coed living halts all learning, or that some level of partying or even underage drinking dooms students to become ditch diggers.
Your posts are getting more and more out of hand, but I’m going to assume that despite having gone to college yourself, you’ve not been aware of the world of higher education in the last 3 decades and this is all a shock to you. Coed living has been the norm for decades. But couples sleeping together outside of parents’ control has been going on since the beginning of time. So has underage drinking, partying and yes, even drug-taking. My father was in college 60 years ago and there was all of the above even then, even at one of the top schools. And I heard plenty about his peers doing the same. This is reality.
Look, I get that you’re scared. Whatever is behind that fear, you need to get a handle on it or you will never be comfortable sending your D anywhere, and she will pick up on that fear and have trouble adjusting.
Seems like there’s only one solution. In the words of Shakespeare’s Hamlet,
So why is it “trying to isolate” a student to look for dorms with single sex housing/bathrooms if that makes the student more comfortable but it’s OK for people to have single race dorms? Shouldn’t all students try to “challenge themselves, grow, and (where possible) overcome things that make them uncomfortable” regardless of race or gender?
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-housing-cal-state-la–20160906-snap-story.html
@3scoutsmom First, the headline of the article you cite states, that type of housing “draws criticism.” So obviously, many people don’t view what you call “isolation” as “ok.”
Second, the housing is not single-race, it is open to all. It is interest-area housing, not racial-bias housing. So I don’t think the article stands for what you think it does. I know a white guy who graduated from Howard. We should be careful not to make assumptions about what might seem on the surface to be exclusionary, but in reality isn’t.
Here’s the thing. College, life in fact, is a learning environment. Most of it does not happen in the classroom. Even at college. Learning how to deal with people different than yourself, stretching your boundaries and knowing when not to stretch them further, negotiating relationships. THOSE are lessons that I learned in college that have been more valuable than calculus or physics in my adult life.
That’s not to say that anyone should be forced to live in an environment that makes them feel unsafe or even uncomfortable. But I would worry if my own daughter made it through college without getting to know and value people who are different than she is. And to do that, I encourage her to get outside of her comfort zone from time to time. Even if that means sometimes finding herself surrounded by “loud, high, lack of personal boundaries dodo birds”. That actually describes some of my best friends in college 40 years ago. Most of whom grew up to be hardworking, successful pillars of their communities.
My grandfather was a physician in a university town in the 1920’s and “everyone knew” where to send the Coed’s (as they were called back then) for “protection” and “the procedure” when nature caught up with their sexual activity.
This was almost 100 years ago, when colleges had single sex only dorms; housemasters and dorm mothers who turned the lights out at 11 am with no visitation by the opposite sex; and the word “hooking up” hadn’t been invented yet.
If all that stands between someone’s kid and sexual activity is the nostalgic longing for a single sex dorm- I’ve got my grandpa’s patient notes to share with you! Which hospitals would do a D&C for “cramps” or migraines. (I guess getting pregnant while you were in college and didn’t want to be would give you a headache!)
I get that the OP is reluctant to let go. We’ve all been there. But to be nostalgic about a social construct that never did what people thought it did (i.e. nobody had sex in single gender dorms) is to put your head in the sand!
Not the same thing, @3scoutsmom , at all. My D goes to a black college, which I suppose the same people getting their panties in a knot about the intentional housing you reference (like Glenn Beck and Fox mentioned in your article) would call “single-race college”. Neither the housing you reference nor the HBCU’s bar students of other races. In fact, D has Hispanic, white and Asian girls in her dorm alone. Sometimes students want to be part of a majority population, others, like the white and Asian girls in D’s dorm, are looking to be exposed to something way outside of their norm. No one is PREVENTED from this experience.
No one is stopping OP’s D from seeking a place where she is comfortable. What some of us are trying to say is that there is no one dorm that is going to be 100% safe and perfect, and that she should be alert to that and willing to accept some variance from her ideal.
Whatever OP & D feel comfortable with (be it single-gender bathrooms, floors, schools, whatever) is fine with me - obviously it’s totally up to them.
My point is that you shouldn’t “err on the side of comfort”. IOW, if you are very confident that something will make you very uncomfortable, you should avoid it. But if you start trying to completely avoid anything that might make you uncomfortable, well, that just seems like a Bad Idea to me.
The OP should investigate colleges that allow freshmen to reside off campus. It sounds like her daughter would be happiest in a small studio apartment with a private bath.
@ClaremontMom - there may be an answer to your question about actual coed rooms somewhere upstream - but I will pipe in that it was an option for me back in the early 80’s. Any multiple person suite can be configured anyway the students choose since after freshman year they pick their roommates and what living arrangements they want. Then they bid on the rooms in a lottery. There was an 8 person suite that my BFF and I were going to bid on with our boyfriends and 4 other people. I thought that degree of constant closeness was too much and ultimately we scrapped the idea. But yes, even today, that is still an option at Yale after Freshman year.
Yes, @Tperry1982, a link to a whole list of schools that allow opposite sex roommates was posted…I didn’t realize it was so prevalent—even at my S’s college!
It just was never anything that came up in any admissions talk, tour or handout (and between both of my kids that covers quite a few schools including several on the list), so I didn’t realize it was an option at so many schools.
@mom23g8kids - you concerns are valid. If you read my posts you will see that I have stated often that I have an non-drinking, non boyfriend having nerd. Though I must update that after spending two summer abroad, she will now sip wine with me at dinner and sometimes at functions for her organizations.
But the sex, drugs, partying can be avoided. There are schools that have reputations as party schools. My D never considered one of them. I am sure your kid won’t either. The morals you teach your daughter will follow her to college. I find that most kids don’t stray too far despite some high profile issues that have happened with some students (then again when I see their parents on the news I feel the apple does not fall far from the tree). Most kids go to class, party on the weekends, do community service, play sports at some level, and hang out with friends (or be loners). I remember a mom on my college tour in 1978 being appalled at Yale’s co-ed dorms, lack of curfews or rules about cross gender living and its general liberalness. It has not changed one bit since I was there. It is definitely not the right place for everyone. Then again, my kid would die at a school like Liberty. To each his own.
Wow it’s hard to keep up with this thread. I think a fundamental question is how high does the dorm situation rank on the list of priorities in picking a school? It seems to me that large public universities often have the greatest variety of options in living arrangements and the ability to pick your own roommate or sometimes to request a single. For us, the dorm situation was not a priority and D selected her school without much consideration of the dorm issue. She requested a single as a freshman but was put in a tiny double. The school matched her with a roommate based on a questionnaire. Fortunately, she and her roommate were compatible. This year she requested and got a single. It’s very tiny and has no A/C but she was willing to accept that in order to have a single. While a single is nice, I do think there is value in having to work out a mutually acceptable arrangement with a roommate, especially since most middle class kids today don’t grow up having to share a room. It’s good practice at balancing your reasonable rights and expectations against those of another person.
There was no urinal in my coed bathroom in college, but then there’s no urinal in the coed bathroom in my house. :)>-
My room was coed at college. My boyfriend had moved into my single.
Frankly, if we were both girls or both guys, we could have gotten a double together easily and been much more comfortable. More than a few times we had to switch who slept with their arm hanging off the bed.
It is people like the OP who make straight people feel like they are the abnormal ones. Because some people don’t understand, or want to understand, birth control, the rest of the college students who are straight and in a long-term relationship - either romantic or not - can’t live together.
It was a huge problem for us so much that we moved off-campus senior year. We both signed the lease and the building manager was gay - and HE told us how some places would not allow in a gay couple, yet our Ivy League college wouldn’t allow in a straight couple!!!
NFN, that expensive Ivy League college had urinals in certain bathrooms that were coed based on current occupant(s) (sign flip). That’s because they had dorms that used to be exclusively for the football team, so all bathrooms were male and urinals were a good idea.
(but I hate urinals anyway, they are public nudity and disgusting - I want a “My Son Uses a Stall!” T-shirt)