gee, how shocking to think that someone might have a personal preference for single-gender dorms. you have your reasons and it’s your business and you shouldn’t have people openly speculating what’s “wrong” with you.
as mentioned before, Ole Miss has a number of single-gender dorms.
http://studenthousing.olemiss.edu/traditional-halls/
@Hanna has a number of helpful suggestions so check out her posts on this thread.
My daughter’s college has one single-sex dorm for freshman women, and the only reason why it’s single-sex is that the building was endowed as women’s housing and can never be used for any other purpose. There are no single-sex men’s dorms and no single-sex dorms for upperclassmen.
This is a college where many upperclassmen live off-campus, though, which raises other possibilities.
Would she consider a women’s college? My daughter is at Wellesley and loves it there. The bathrooms are mostly single gender, but on weekends or during parents weekend, when people have guests, usually there is one bathroom on a floor that is changed to all gender. Of course, all the dorms are all women!
My son is at Oberlin, and in his dorm, there are all gender, male only, and female only bathrooms, but his floor is co-ed. He’s pretty shy, so he did feel a little awkward about going down to the shower in his bathrobe at first, but he got used to it very quickly.
I know you say you aren’t religious, but don’t rule out religious schools unless you are really opposed to them. Some can be welcoming to non-religious people and nearly all have single gender housing. The ones to steer clear of are those that have mandatory chapel or rules against dating.
There are many schools that offer single-sex living arrangements. My daughter chose single-sex and substance free with no input or pressure from me. She moved her second semester and chose co-ed substance free. When I asked her if she was sure, because of her previous insistence, she told me she decided that substance free was more important than co-ed. I think a lot of her first choice had to do with adventuring into the great unknown where she had no idea what to expect. Once she had a better idea the realities, she modified her position.
Finding a school that is a good academic and financial fit is primary. This then becomes one of those things that I suggest factoring in toward the end of the decision-making process (though you could check availability during the initial search). For us, this would fall in the quality of life category along with things like the weather, ease and/or cost of transportation, etc. In other words, once you have your admissions, if all things are equal, these kinds of issues can be the differentiators.
Since at least the mid-70s when a relative of mine attended Vassar, it has had just one dorm that’s for women. The rest are all mixed gender–including the bathrooms. There didn’t seem to be a lot of stuff going on in the bathrooms except for, you know, bathing, teeth brushing etc. Once I saw the feet of a young man under the stall of the claw-footed tub in one bathroom. He was reading to a young woman in the tub. Oh my.
The singe sex dorm had a lot of men in it, visiting the women.
No one cared if they were in pajamas or whatever walking down the hall . . . . And the showers are individual stalls. It all worked out.
I seem to recall a lot of people wearing pajamas to classes for that matter as they got less and less sleep as exams approached . . .
@mom23g8kids, Purdue’s dorms are coed, but the sexes are separated by wings; there is the boys’ wing and the girls’ wing. A couple of the dorms are purely single sex. The bathrooms are single sex only.
@emilybee My experience is different.
My S went to a Jesuit/Catholic college and there was not one single sex dorm on campus. There were single sex halls in dorm buildings where there was a shared bathroom, but that was it. And my D’s LAC also did not have a single sex dorm. In fact of the schools we toured, largely on the east coast, it was the exception, not the norm, to have single sex dorms.
Not an appropriate response. OP is a new poster and had a legitimate concern, the thread is not even a day old. And OP is back.
@mom23g8kids In the end you have to go with what you feel is right for your children. Hopefully the big takeaway is that options do exist which might allow you and your children to retain a comfortable privacy level in a coed building (ex. single sex by hall with single sex bathrooms, private bathrooms in suite etc.).
Three years ago as a freshman my son lived on a coed floor with gender-specific bathrooms. He’s remained friends with floormates of both genders until this day. Sophomore year he had a four-bedroom suite with their own private bathroom. He’s a senior now.
I’ve always been in the what’ the problem with co-ed bathrooms camps - and the ones I experienced in the mid 70s were the one bathroom with multiple stalls off a hall of singles and doubles. I’ve also experienced bathrooms in suites which we usually used one at a time. My suites were never officially coed, but like some have posted, since someone (sometimes me) always seemed to have a boyfriend they might have well as been.
My son at Tufts lived freshman year and I think sophomore year on floors with male and female wings, so the bathrooms tended to be mostly used by the sex they were designated for.
What does “Not on my watch” mean in the title, then? That your kid can’t use a bathroom stall next to someone if the opposite gender? That doesn’t make sense. Sorry… but I think you did imply sexual activity in your choice of title.
The OP did respond- she has been reading. Wisconsin (Madison) started with coed dorms back in the fall of 1972- I had to switch floors to stay in my dorm. The last/only all female dorm changed to coed in the fall of 2006- finally men could live in that coveted location. UW followed supply and demand- not enough students wanted all same gender buildings.
OP- “not on my watch”- huh. You will be sending your presumably adult (my kid was still 16, most are 18 or older) child away to college. By the time your child is a HS junior you have instilled your set of morals et al, or not. The rest of the parents, no matter how liberal/unreligious/etc, have also instilled good morals in their kids as well. Unless, of course, you don’t trust your own child to behave normally.
As posted somewhere above the reports are that students in the same housing unit/floor tend to treat each other more like siblings than otherwise. Actually seems healthier than separation from my college start. Living through the newness of the coed movement I saw behaviors one did not see later when the concept was taken for granted (there were some immature behaviors that first year). As to curfews- meant to be broken. Remember- the same things happen in parents’ homes in the middle of the afternoon as can happen at night.
OP- your child will continue to mature in the next two years by the time college life comes. The child you see today is different than the one you send off to college. Look first at the academics. Your child’s internal set of values will not be corrupted. If you do see changes that you dislike it means they did not internalize your mindset while living at home. Remember how you changed compared to your parents and the household you grew up in. Remember how your husband’s life was just a bit different than yours. You compromised/adapted to your own set of norms instead of being an exact copy of your parents. Trust yourself that you did a good job raising your child.
I think students who live on coed floors find ways of dealing with that. On D’s hall, for example, it was an unwritten rule that you did NOT get involved with someone who lived on your hall. They even had a name for it: “dormcest”. D actually became good friends with a number of guys on her coed floor and having good “guy friends” was something she wanted from her college experience. A coed dorm made that easier.
OP, I assume you and D have visited colleges, as opposed to just doing research? I have to say that at one of the first colleges we visited that gave a dorm tour, (or even mentioned the bathrooms) I was surprised and concerned when the guide said the bathrooms were co-Ed. I hadn’t thought about it at all, and I hadn’t kept up with anything related to colleges in the 25+ years since I had graduated. I guess I assumed bathrooms were single sex at college. I mentioned it to my daughter, who didn’t care.
Many months and many colleges later, (and many co-Ed bathrooms later) the subject came up. I had forgotten all about my initial surprise and my daughter had to remind me about it. My point being that this issue was so low on the totem pole of importance, that I truly can’t believe it bothered me a little at the time. In fact, I have no idea if there are coed bathrooms at the college my D is now at. By the time your D gets to college, she will be over it within 24 hours. To use this issue as a criteria for eliminating colleges is going to lessen her chances of being at the best college for her.
I am glad you pointed out that it was my word choice that was a problem. I thought I was being funny, but I will be more careful next time. My daughter is also very concerned with having “down” time away from boys. The goal is not to keep her encased in bubble wrap and away from anyone of the opposite gender, obviously I am sending her to college so I know for a fact that is not possible. 
I just found this forum. What do you mean by ‘went fishing’?
My primary concern, and my daughters, is that she would like to have down time away from boys. From my perspective there is no good reason to make dorms coed. So, why all the fuss? Since the beginning of colleges they were not coed, why must they be now?
That is a good point and was one of my original concerns. I see that many colleges allow for an option of single sex dorms but then you can not be assured of getting that assignment.
OP, it sounds like you’re concerned that coed dorms force “sexual tension” on students even if they’re not looking for it, and that single sex dorms alleviate that. Have you any experience with single sex dorms? My boyfriend my junior year was in an all-male dorm, and well, there was PLENTY of “sexual tension” all over the place anytime a female walked in. There were no rules about opposite sex visitors, nor curfews, so really, there was plenty of visiting going on, even a few girls who had moved in with guys in single rooms.
And not to be a killjoy, but my parents went to college in the early 50’s. My mom was at a single sex college, dad at a large college in an all-male dorm. Mom lived at home her senior year and commuted because she’d been caught one too many times breaking the male visitor rule-and she was about as straight-laced as they come.
Hopefully your D will find a single sex dorm at a college she likes and you can afford, but please don’t go into this plan thinking that the distractions of coed dorms won’t exist there.