Coed dorms, not on my watch. :)

Parents Forum
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in regards to #270 - @mom23g8kids - I don’t know how this got off track. If you read through CC, you will see most parents feel the same way you do about a lot of things including the fact that we don’t want our students to have bad experiences (whatever that experience may be for them) at $50,000+ a year of our money. Again, it should be easy enough to navigate around the party schools, even though there are kids that go there that are not a part of that culture. I don’t understand how CC parents giving real advice, usually from experience, on how we too adjusted to letting our baby birds leave the nest, is somehow being construed as excusing bad behaviors or acknowledging that our kids are human. I can’t control other people’s kids, at this point I can’t even control my own 20 year old. But wow, my D is actually more serious about school than I ever was since I was always in the throes of a distracting romance.

I think it is telling that you are now saying you are having second thoughts about having your child live on campus at all. While not our business, I would be curious to know how your daughter is doing in high school socially. Mine didn’t party or drink in high school either so I did not think she would start in college. I am sorry to say that our kids grow up and we have to let them have some degree of autonomy. Are these fears yours or hers? As parents we have to grow along with our kids. But they will not stray far - as I type this my kid is sending me text messages about a psychology class she wants to take since she knows that was my major and she still values my advice.

I so wish that we could talk to you. The psychologist in me wishes that this was not a war of words on paper. Do you have parents in your child’s school that you are close to and that you all can sit around and commiserate about the changes that are happening? I know I found this group of friends invaluable. Misery does indeed love company.

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@Sue22, I’m guessing that your toilet at home doesn’t have 20 guys, sometimes quite drunk and perhaps prone to missing, using it every day. Personally, I find unisex public bathrooms much more likely to be gross than single sex ones.

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I’ve been married for 21 years to a guy who lived in my freshman dorm, 2 floors down. :slight_smile: Our dorm t-shirts said “Avery Dorm, where the girls like it on top!”

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@mathyone you say that like women don’t miss.

I have been using toilets for over 20 years and STILL cannot figure out why women’s toilets so often have pee (and sometimes blood! but that one I get…) on them.

Both of my male “housemates” are much cleaner than me lol.

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^Because women like to hover to avoid toilet cooties. I get that but clean up after yourself please!

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I just put down toilet paper on the seat if it’s somewhere where I would feel the need to hover lol

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Back in the Stone Age, I lived in a coed dorm (by floor) that had previously been a men’s dorm. There were urinals in all of the bathrooms. It was no big deal.

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Me, too, but in our dorm, the urinals were boarded up in the bathroom intended for women. Some of the women wanted the boards removed so that they could grow plants in the urinals. This request was not granted.

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Our utinals were fully functional. The drinking age was 18 when I went to college in the Stone Age. Those who had to barf used the urinals. It was better than taking up a bathroom stall! Barfed…and flushed away.

I know…TMI…but my floor thought we were mighty creative!

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I think this thread has jumped the shark. Who agrees?

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I DO!

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mom23g8kids, I don’t mean to put words in your mouth or speak for you, but I think people are getting the wrong impression. If I am wrong, please accept my apology, but I think I have been in your shoes before and can relate to what you might be going through…

I don’t think mom23gr8kids really meant to accuse anyone here of anything. I think she knew certain things go on in college, but not the DEGREE to which they can go on today. Maybe her experiences in college were on the tamer side, maybe not. I remember hearing on the news when my daughter was beginning her search that a school (I don’t remember which one) made a rule that students couldn’t have sex with someone while their roommate was in the room, if their roommate was not ok with that. That was not something my friends and I at our non-flagship state U ever heard of, let alone was it necessary to have a rule stating such. I’m sure someone has anecdotes of much wilder things than that from ‘back in the day’, but the degree of this kind of activity does seem to be more common place and accepted.

Also, you can vaguely KNOW certain things go on when your kids are playing Little League and in the Brownies, but when your child is on the verge of being in that realm the reality can hit you much harder. For example, you can hope for years that you want your child to go abroad, but when they are a sophomore applying to programs and terrorist attacks are happening left and right, you might become more concerned. You always knew there were some dangers, but the benefits of the experience were always important to you. But if you then spend 3 days researching and reading about ISIS and nightmare abroad stories, one might panic and say my child is never going abroad.

I think mom23gr8kids had concerns, then came on here and other sites and learned an awful lot in a short period of time that disturbed her. I have gone through similar things. I have freaked reading accounts of things, date rape, you tube videos I had never watched with kids jumping off roofs… I mentally ruled out schools and often, in that moment, you don’t think IF certain things will happen… You feel that they will. Without really thinking it through, on a gut level you think ALL of these horrible things will happen all at once and with great frequency.

I think most of us experience it, but maybe mom23gr8kids is experiencing it in the middle of a debate on CC and while still trying to formulate her opinions. You know the story of the 5 year olds mixed up by the airlines? I imagine if I had a 3 year old and I had been thinking I would need to send my child unaccompanied, I would start researching the heck out of that issue. I would likely find a ton of information and stories that would make me think I would never do that after reading certain sources. I would wonder how anyone could do that, but I wouldn’t be trying to insult anyone.

Sorry this is so long, and I’m sorry to assume what you might be feeling, mom23gr8kids, but life is scary and some things can shock us. I allow myself to step away when I would stress out too much. There are lots of precautions you can take, conversations you can share, but you do have 3 great kids and they will be fine. My eldest had a great time abroad and I never ruled out a school permanently…

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@T26E4 - yes, but it has been the most interesting one I have read in a long time!!

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It was – but now with the veering to drips on the seat – yeech!

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Welcome to CC - a community of people with a tendency to overthink every single little tiny insignificant thing (myself included).

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ugh, sorry that post became so long! My take home message is, I don’t believe mom23gr8tkids was trying to be critical or judgemental. I think she just knows what her high school aged daughter needs and feels at this point, and it’s easy to catastrophize when you see too much info too soon…

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@prospect1, I think it is easy to overthink things that don’t matter much in the end. In this case, it rules out a whole bunch of colleges to insist on a single sex dorm.

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I feel OP, I really do. I would not let my daughter do People to People in high school because I was afraid for her to leave and go overseas. This is the same kid that went to college in September 2014 and spent last summer in Germany and this summer in Korea. All in programs that she found herself, and in the Korea one, found total funding which took us out of the loop. Her Dad was livid and I asked him realistically what we could do to stop her? Only thing was to refuse to pay her tuition. Something she knew was not going to happen. Trust me, my eyes were glued to Flight Tracker the whole time she was in the air and I was a basket case for 3 months. If you had told me at the end of her senior year that my child would be a world traveler, or that I would have survived, I would have thought you crazy.

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OP, my daughter has been living in co-ed dorms and she isn’t drinking, doing drugs, and bringing home a new guy to sleep with every night, even though guys are living in the building and are around a lot. Yes, I am sure this is going on with some kids, but not with the roommates she’s had.

There were other kids from my hs when I went to college, and I think it was pretty predictable who would get into this sort of lifestyle and who wouldn’t.

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I think @intparent has it right in a very succinct way. The title of this thread says it all. A defiant statement that has no substance in real life, except possibly as it pertains to their own children. I doubt that more than 1% of the general population that is even remotely informed about these things thinks that coed dorms are going away, and there are still very many colleges that have single sex dorm options. This thread has been an opportunity for those for and against the idea of coed dorms to vent their opinions, but that has clearly now been done ad nauseum. Closing thread.