<p>Yes, I will encourage my son to get together with some of the other boys and speak with the RA or the Dean of Residential Life. The situation feels a little too politically loaded to expect that students will be able to resolve this without some adult input. Yet, I agree that it’s always best when students are able to advocate for themselves when problems arise.</p>
<p>I’m not averse to stating my opinion to the administration, however, if this situation is not successfully resolved. I don’t think the issue of fairness is obscure or unattainable in this case, with three bathrooms available. Nor do I think the administration can really abdicate their responsibility to provide equal facilities, with equally privileged access, to all students, even those who are male and straight.</p>
<p>I have sons and not daughters. But from what I’ve observed, the boys are not always as socially sophisticated as the girls – most of them are not lobbying for votes prior to dorm meetings, for example. And many of them, my own included, don’t really know how to respond when they’re told they have no say because of factors like majority race, or majority sexual orientation, over which they have no control. All of which is to say there’s a good opportunity here for them to learn to advocate – I hope successfully! – to improve their living circumstances! </p>
<p>I’ll check back in with an update when I hear more. Thanks, everyone! Really appreciate your thoughts on this.</p>
<p>I would imagine in 7 pages of posts that i only browsed that this suggestion should have already been made but with three bathrooms why not one of each? Girls, Boys, and the third one gender neutral. </p>
<p>If that didn’t fly, I certainly would be buying my son a robe.</p>
<p>All it takes is for one woman to say that she feels physically threatened by having to use a gender-neutral bathroom, and presto, one of the bathrooms will be for women only.</p>
<p>When my son was in college, there were two bathrooms on the floor. His first year, one was for girls, and the other for boys. The second year, they were both coed. </p>
<p>The issue I’m reading here is NOT whether the bathrooms are coed/gender neutral, or whatever. The OP stated that her son did not feel comfortable with who was looking at or touching him…which could happen in ANY kind of bathroom…regardless of gender. THAT is the issue the OP’s son should be dealing with. And if he doesn’t want to be stared at when he is not wearing a shirt…he should WEAR a shirt. The dorm is coed. If he doesn’t put a shirt on…the girls might stare at him in the hallway…or is that OK?</p>
<p>^^An enclosed bathroom is far different than a hallway. You don’t have the opportunity to just keep walking faster. And you aren’t disrobing, emptying your bowels or taking care of personal grooming in the halls (I would hope).</p>
<p>I find the idea of sharing a bathroom with a guy I’m not sleeping with, just gross. I’m not even crazy about sharing it with other women, but I can live with that. I am thankful my son has his own bathroom connected to his room and doesn’t have to share with anyone…though they definitely don’t have mixed gender bathrooms at his school anyways.</p>
<p>In my college dorm quad complex it was easy. There were 4 wings, and two of them had third floor girls-only (with two community bathrooms each floor). The other 10 floors were all guys-only. </p>
<p>Of course things were more lax on the short breaks, when most students went home. One friend dropped her soap, and when she picked it up she noticed two sets of feet in the adjacent shower.</p>
<p>I’m old school so it’s no surprise how I feel about this. But that aside, I’m curious as to the details - do they have stand up urinals or not - I find these far more efficient and hygienic for number 1, but then they are gender-biased (I think), so must they be replaced by stalls (albeit fewer) that are gender neutral? </p>
<p>What’s the protocol for toilet seats? I like every toilet seat in any men’s room to default to up to avoid it getting sprayed by some guy who didn’t bother to raise it to pee. Perhaps if the men are mandated to pee only in the gender-neutral posture everyone that counts will be happy.</p>
<p>PS: Haven’t colleges also started having women-only hours at gyms too?</p>
<p>I do agree with Thumper, privacy is not really the issue here. Whether the bathroom is men-only or gender neutral, he cannot expect to have privacy there–it’s a group bathroom. I’m sure if one of the other guys started staring at him or touching his butt he’d also feel uncomfortable. The problem is not “women in the bathroom”, it’s “students acting inappropriately in the bathroom.” That is what I’d recommend addressing.</p>
<p>Regarding the women’s only bathroom, I wonder if it is related to “that time of the month”? Like maybe some girls prefer to unwrap the tell-tale, crinkly pads in a women’s only space. Just a random thought.</p>
<p>It is still not clear to me what is wrong with having gender-specific bathrooms. I understand if it is a mixed hall and there is only one bathroom, but that is not the case here.</p>
<p>I think a lot of new college students get excited about the prospect of sharing a bathroom with the opposite sex because they <em>can.</em> It feels “risky” and radical compared to the life they led as a high schooler. Once reality hits, and men are peeing on the floor and the seats, and women are leaving their feminine products in full-view, the excitement probably wears off.</p>
<p>I don’t see the appeal of creating an environment where men and women end up feeling like brothers and sisters.</p>
<p>There’s a world of difference between walking around sans clothes in a group people of the same sex and being in a mixed group, and it’s got nothing to do with people staring or groping. “Privacy” would refer to privacy from people of the other sex. In our gym, some prefer weighing themselves without anything, some shave, or tan, or sit in saunas that way. There certainly would be world of difference if the area was mixed.</p>
<p>As to women needing a space to unwrap their crinkly pads, they have stalls with doors, don’t they? The only reason women have their own is because they can. If the diversity police deem it necessary to keep gyms off limit to men, will there really be a problem keeping bathrooms women only?</p>
<p>We had shared bathrooms in the 1970’s. You elected to be on a floor with that, but the bathrooms weren’t locked so anyone could walk into any bathroom. It was never an issue. At all. The arrangement was sinks, 2 shower stalls at either end and some toilet stalls. It wasn’t a big deal to converse with a girl who was showering. Or brushing her teeth.</p>
<p>The reason we designated our bathrooms as gender neutral on our floors, if I recall correctly, was that our corridors were long and there were people who would have to walk quite a long way past the nearest bathroom to reach the one designated for them. The floor was never equally divided into men and women, either. It was more convenient for everyone to permit each resident to use the bathroom closest to his or her room.</p>
<p>Depending on the architecture of the building, that might also explain why the residents have chosen to designate two of the bathrooms as mixed and one as women-only–perhaps all the rooms in proximity to that particular bathroom are women’s rooms anyway? (I’m wondering if their visiting boyfriends won’t use it?)</p>
<p>As for the lack of urinals, the dorms were built as women’s dorms and the bathrooms did not have them. I don’t think any of the young men in my dorm had grown up in homes where there were urinals in the bathrooms, so I’m not sure they felt a lack.</p>