<p>Odd man out here! It seems to me that the issue is NOT the gender neutral bathrooms. It is the behavior of the other students in the bathrooms. This IS something that the OPs son can discuss with the RA. It doesn’t matter what the gender is…the kiddo should not feel bothered when he is brushing his teeth or shaving.</p>
<p>We had coed bathrooms in the early '70s and not everyone was thrilled with the idea. But you know what? We all got used to it. Honestly, when I go to a large venue where the women’s bathrooms are always having long lines and no one seems to be in the men’s, I wonder why the bathrooms aren’t gender neutral. I mean really… There are stalls on the doors.</p>
<p>havent read the whole thread.
oldest attended a school with gender neutral bathrooms, although the dorm voted each year to have them neutral. some dorms may have voted to have them divided by sex.
the way the showers were installed there was plenty of privacy.</p>
<p>it sounds like the behavior in the bathroom needs to be dealt with at a dorm meeting.</p>
<p>Wow. Just wow. If the roles were reversed, and it were men harassing young women in the bathroom, no one would ever suggesting dealing with it in a dorm meeting. It would be dealt with in disciplinary proceedings . . . and, depending on the nature of the harassment, in criminal proceedings.</p>
<p>But because the victims are men, there’s an assumption they should just take it. What kind of [insert your expletive of choice here] is that?</p>
<p>Unwanted touching is NOT okay. “Accidental” unwanted touching is almost worse . . . how can you complain when you’re not sure if it was deliberate or not?</p>
<p>Sounds like a practical idea, and would probably be a very illuminating discussion for all concerned. And yes, if the sexes were reversed, I’d feel the same way.</p>
<p>as the OPs son seems to have done nothing regarding unwanted behavior in the dorm besides letting his mom know that he finds it “unnerving”, i fail to see why a disciplinary proceding is more practical than a dorm meeting, being that he doesnt seem to be able to tell the girls to back off, himself.</p>
<p>how is saying that the student needs to handle it himself the same as saying he should just take it?
what has he tried so far?</p>
<p>When I was in college decades ago, the university owned dorms had only co-ed gang bathrooms in the co-ed halls (a few all-female and all-male halls and floors were available, and suites with their own bathrooms were either all-female or all-male). But the gang bathrooms had individual toilets and showers; they were not like locker room arrangements.</p>
<p>The situation described by the OP does not seem to make too much sense, but a possible reason is that they are trying to make do in getting around capacity problems. For example:
Hall was built with two equal size bathrooms, one for each gender.
College has significantly higher female enrollment than male enrollment.
Females tend to take longer in the bathroom, causing complaints about bathroom capacity.
Most expedient thing to solve the capacity problem do is turn the male bathroom into a co-ed bathroom.
Of course, that creates the inequality described by the OP. (A better solution would be to make all of the bathrooms co-ed.)</p>
<p>Gender neutral bathrooms are not something only “politically correct” liberal arts colleges embrace- the USNavy has found them to be practical as well.</p>
<p>i have to admit, the thought of a young adult who isnt able to tell a dormmate that he needs more personal space, is disturbing. What did he do in high school when he had this issue?</p>
<p>Some people don’t deal well with confrontation. And having seen another floormate get screamed at for bringing it up is more than enough reason for the OP’s son to be concerned about brinnging it up with his dormmates. </p>
<p>List of schools with gender neutral housing/bathrooms and perhaps some illumination on why that is desirable.
[gender</a> neutral bathrooms](<a href=“amplifyyourvoice.org”>amplifyyourvoice.org)</p>
<p>re the students in the dorm- the incidents are third hand or second hand at best.
no- no one should be screamed at but is this not something the student can learn to handle themselves?
i ask again- how did he handle people infringing on his space in high school?</p>
<p>most schools have self defense classes available, learning how to protect himself may give him enough confidence to speak up.</p>
<p>It may be that he doesn’t really want to speak up because it’s not as big a problem as his mom thinks it is. I have a hard time imagining a healthy 18 year old who can’t bring up a legitimate issue that is seriously affecting him when there are clearly avenues to do so- private avenues where he could be heard.</p>
<p>Sometimes our young adults just want to vent, and we’re the receptacle for their venting, like it or not.</p>
<p>Isn’t is frustrating, when trying to deal with what you feel is a difficult situation, when you get comments that amount to “Well, it wouldn’t/didn’t bother me, so it shouldn’t bother you!”
Everyone is different and has different levels of comfort and that should be respected.<br>
The situation described is not acceptable. The dorm voted on it?..on whether to take away the right to privacy?..that is difficult enough for me to accept, but assuming that voting on this was policy up front, therefore accepted ( although I imagine reluctantly accepted by most families)…but why on earth should the girls get to vote on whether the boys have to share their bathrooms? There was no downside for the girls, they weren’t going to be forced to share! Seems like it could be difficult for the boys who want single sex bathrooms to get a majority vote.
Seems kind of like…Let’s have the whole neighborhood vote to say whether the few neighbors with pools have to share them with everyone. Yeah, gee we’d all like to have access to those pools!..Hey and if they don’t like it, just remind them that people have been swimming with strangers in public, hotel and club pools for years, then I’m sure they will come around. I mean we voted on it after all! lol</p>
<p>Exactly, shoboemom! We can bicker all day about whether it’s just fine to harass young men, and how they should handle it (very few are going to make a fuss over it, at any age), and whether they should deal with it themselves…but it sounds like the girls who were in the majority voted to steal the boys bathroom. And that, is very probably the root of the problem. Majority rule isn’t always acceptable.</p>
<p>No, emeraldkity, my son had hopes for Pomona, but he is attending another school – liberal arts, private. I haven’t disclosed the particular college, because I don’t think it’s particularly relevant to the problem at hand.</p>
<p>There are more women in attendance (though not by a large margin). Correspondingly, there are more women than men on his hallway, a fact which has certainly affected the voting process.</p>
<p>It does seem odd that the girls have a single sex bathroom and the boys do not. But typically this is due to the layout of the bathroom and how it was constructed. Gender neutral bathroom require privacy. If the bathroom has open stalls or showers, it cannot be gender neutral without modifications that can be costly. Therefore, the decision to make one a single sex (given to the majority on the floor) and making the other one which allow privacy, makes sense. </p>
<p>If the bathrooms are equal in construction, then both should be gender neutral. Either way, it shouldn’t be subject to a dorm vote, but a decision informed by the policy of the College. Since a gender neutral bathroom does allow privacy in stalls and showers, one may need to use discretion by covering up at the sink if they are not comfortable being observed while exposed. If harassment is taking place, complaints do need to be filed.</p>
<p>^^ The OP stated that there are THREE bathrooms. One single sex (women) and two voted gender neutral. Thus the situation allows for all “equalities”: women only, men only and gender neutral.
Btw, to answer someone’s question of why the transgender people cant decide on their own which bathroom to use (male or female), (and skipping over the time when women were integrated into male colleges and the need for gender neutral bathrooms arose since dorm renovations have taken place since then).-- the idea is that the “questioning” part of the GLBT population hasnt figured out their gender yet and thus needs a neutral bathroom. And yes, AllenbyTate, you should get to vote with your 65K per yr.</p>