<p>I looked over the OPs posts, but couldn’t find any place she talked about her son being harrassed. Another boy, she says he said, was shouted at, but I don’t see anywhere where she suggests that her son has been harrassed, although she says he is afraid to speak up. At this point, what the OP is reporting is from her son’s complaints and nothing she has witnessed firsthand. I think we need to be careful, here. I would suspect that we don’t have all the facts.
I agree with inparent that her son needs to pursue his options. I know this college, and it is not hard to find a supportive ear.</p>
<p>Bay - yes. I went to college in the late '70s, at a school that had been all-male. There were co-ed bathrooms in some dorms and I had them my junior and senior years. I’m a private person and I don’t remember any problems at all.</p>
<p>If my daughter had male floormates looking at her in the bathroom and commenting “yum!” or deliberately putting hands on her while she’s at the sink, I would probably feel that constituted harrassment.</p>
<p>I’m assuming that federal student loans & grants constitute federal funding . . . but I could be mistaken about that.</p>
<p>By the way, if the harassment discussed above is brought to the attention of the school administration, and the school takes no action to stop it, then the school is potentially liable for sexual harassment . . . and that’s an even more serious issue.</p>
<p>I was going to comment on that too. Yes, that is inappropriate behavior, and OP should tell her son to take that up with the RA or someone at the school. In addition to firmly saying “Please don’t touch me” or some such if touched in that situation.</p>
<p>That is a separate issue from the gender neutral bathrooms, however. A gay person doing the above with a person of the same gender would be equally inappropriate. And as I said, I had coed bathrooms all through college and nobody ever touched me in the bathroom (or anyone else as far as I know). </p>
<p>Nobody even presumed to try to use a sink while someone was at it, at least not that I recall. Wait your turn!</p>
<p>While you may offer you son some advice/pointers, this really needs to be his fight as this will be a good way to learn negotiation and conflict-resolution skills he’ll need in his post-college life. </p>
<p>I attended Oberlin which had gender-neutral bathrooms in dorms for a long period before my arrival in the mid-'90s. </p>
<p>While I can see the shouting about oppressor PC rhetoric* among some at my college, it wasn’t evident in the dorms I was in. </p>
<p>While we had gender-neutral bathrooms, they also had to be voted on by majority and always included a sign which allowed those uncomfortable with the arrangement to make it single-gender by flipping the pointer to the desired single gender. </p>
<p>The latter along with respectful students was what made the system worked well during my time in those dorms. It also helped that some of the dorms also had single-sex dorms. </p>
<ul>
<li>Such shouted rhetoric never worked with me because my mind instantly regards anyone shouting as acting like an overgrown tantrum throwing infant to be ignored/mocked accordingly. Was especially fun to throw the argument back as nearly every student who tried that argument on me happened to be much more socio-economically privileged and/or White. Did help I was a FA/scholarship kid. :)</li>
</ul>
<p>DestPotato-Yes, harrassment if it is true as described, but the OP says, “Whether it’s true or not, some of the guys seem to think…” which is not very definitive, imo. The Op is stating, second hand, what “some” guys seem to think. She never says it’s her son, but other guys that tell him about it.</p>
<p>And I have a daughter. So I guess I am so used to my Dd being starred at, whistled at, even commented on, openly and sometimes some pretty unsavory ways, that a comment from one young adult to another like the one mentioned really is tough for me to get excited about. If it’s her son, and he feels harrassed, then by all means, he should speak up about it. I just didn’t get the impression that this was the issue.</p>
<p>I’ll bet you, moonchild, that if your daughter said she was, “being starred at, whistled at, even commented on, openly and sometimes some pretty unsavory ways,” in the bathroom…you would get excited about that.</p>
<p>If those incidents happened, it is absolutely harassment. But a quiet teenage boy will be unlikely to make a big deal about it or report it, the same as a similar teenage girl. They will just try to ignore it and get along, being too embarrassed to make an issue of it. Seems that a bathroom should be a safe zone for kids, a place to not have to worry about this. What next, gender neutral dorm rooms only?</p>
<p>I think the entire college should be a safe zone for kids, and if these things happened, bathroom or not, and the student feels harrassed, something should be done. Yes. But the bathroom itself is not the problem; the behavior is. IF it happened.</p>
<p>And just like we teach our girls(women) to speak up, the boys(men) need to do the same. They are adults, starting now, and now is a great time to start looking after themselves.</p>
<p>I was going to say what moonchild said. The problem is not the gender-neutral bathroom. If it was a male-only bathroom, and he was being touched and commented on walking down the hall that would be inappropriate. If anotehr guy did that to him ina male-bathroom, or if he had a gay roommate who did those things in the room, that would be inappropriate as well.</p>
<p>I don’t know. One instance of being shouted at/down, even in public does not constitute harassment in the legalistic sense from what I’ve seen. </p>
<p>If that was the case, a sizable portion of my hometown(NYC) would be locked up…including some of my middle/high school teachers, HS/college classmates, a few neighborhood cops, etc. </p>
<p>Moreover, Vietnam Vet childhood neighbors, friends, some relatives, and colleagues who went through boot camp/service academy would have a fine claim against their drill instructors/older classmates. :)</p>
<p>I am thinking about this as a role reversal… and if a boy in the co-ed bathroom said “Yum” to my daughter or brushed a hip against her hand, I probably would not be calling the college (honestly). I would be advising HER to talk to her RA about it, though. If she was truly creeped out and afraid, that would be a different story, but I just don’t get the feeling that the OP’s son feels threatened. He just wants to be back in his comfort zone.</p>
<p>At my age, I still hear inappropriate things going on all the time. If it affects me, I can easily put someone in their place, after working with 98% men for almost 30 years. It took me a long time to get to that point. But there’s far more of that kind of thing going on in college, with both boys and girls, hormones raging, and this is a small enclosed space, with people in various states of undress. If this was a school that had only a male bathroom and two gender neutral ones, there would be plenty of yelling going on by the girls and their parents.</p>
<p>It occurs to me, that if the girls are in the majority and this situation happened against some of the boys wishes, they are being pigs. Not only do they want their own bathroom, but access to the other two. Now maybe they’d have a point if there is only one guy on the floor, but if there are enough guys to utilize a bathroom…pigs. I think now would be a great time for these girls to learn a little bit of empathy and unselfishness.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean the shouting down, cobrat, if that was so there would be plenty of town hall meeting where everyone would be arrested. I mean the comments and touching.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t have to go out of your comfort zone in the bathroom.</p>
<p>I still think OP’s son needs to be the one to take the lead on this…though OP can offer suggestions/pointers on how to go about it if asked. </p>
<p>Don’t know about nowadays, but back when I was an undergrad in the mid-late '90s, having your parent(s) do this for the undergrad…even a first-year tends to reflect very negatively on him/her and sometimes even backfire…especially if undergrad is male.</p>
<p>As such, calling in the parents was always regarded as the option of absolute last resort.</p>
<p>I wonder what would have happened if the son had spoken up in support the kid who got shouted down. Perhaps if he went around quietly to drum up support for this, it could be brought up again without the intimidation factor. It’s not just the bathroom that ought to be a safe zone. Those dorm meetings ought to be too.</p>
<p>To the OP…try contacting this organization [The</a> Foundation for Individual Rights in Education - FIRE](<a href=“http://thefire.org/]The”>http://thefire.org/) It sounds like a cause they might be interested in…I wonder if your son’s school already has their RED warning label.</p>
<p>I think a lot of boys would be very embarrassed to claim harrassment, my son included – and it’s entirely true that he simply wants to have a comfort zone about using the bathroom, something which seems very basic to me. (My son actually likes girls a lot – but finds the stall proximity, the showering while girls come into the room, and the touching, to be somewhat unnerving.)</p>
<p>And yes, moonchild, of course we want our young adults to be able to successfully advocate for themselves. Still, when they are being told on the basis of their gender/skin color/sexual orientation that their voices don’t count (because their ancestors supposedly took part in oppressing others?), this is wrong – and sometimes it helps to have adults point this out to them. When the message the boys receive is, “Your space is mine, I can touch you as I like and your opinions don’t matter,” I can understand why these students are upset. Girls and their parents would never accept this bias in reverse, nor should they.</p>
<p>this would seem to be sexual harassment, yes?</p>
<p>of course, the school might be one of the ones that paints all males as guilty and that women can do no wrong. If that’s the case, it’s unfortunate.</p>