The College Dorm -- Vast Social Experiment?

Parents Forum
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<p>It’s stressful, but dorm living is probably as old as civilization. In ancient Sparta boys left the care of their parents and moved into a harsh military dorm (the “agoge”) at age 7, and never went back. 19th century England had its equivalent with the rise of the boarding school, many of which still exist.</p>

<p>Dorm living is certainly different from home living, but I don’t think of it as some odd, modern experiment. It’ just one of several living arrangements that humans have used for thousands of years. In fact, I’d say the “nuclear family” - parents-and-children-only living arrangement is more recent and and much more “experimental” in a social sense than say a bunch of soldiers living in a barracks.</p>

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<p>Don’t forget kibbutzes. And don’t forget the living conditions many of our ancestors experienced, in their home countries, coming over on the boat, or when they got here.</p>

<p>Personally I think this new trend of private bathrooms is a bit “soft” and I would be none too pleased if my kids thought they couldn’t hack a bathroom down the hall. </p>

<p>I’d also add that there has been an explosion of residential summer programs like CTY for middle and Hs students, as well as soccer camps, etc. (in my day you didn’t go away to practice a sport!). plus exchange programs, charity volunteer trips. If anything todays kids have more opportunity to have gone away prior to freshman year. </p>

<p>It’s also easier now to establish a network and get to know your roommate ahead of time via facebook etc than it was in our day where we showed up, shook hands and that was that. Freshman orientations and new student weeks are far more all encompassing than they were years ago. RA training is far more serious today vs years ago when it was simply making sure the dorms didn’t burn down. I just don’t see this as the “hello cruel world” scenario.</p>

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<p>Calmom – I don’t see that my statement “we often expect our kids to do things that we would never do at this stage of our lives and we expect them to be okay with it” has anything at all to do with your comment -</p>

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<p>Woah! All I said is that I have always found it strange that kids are forced to live in the same room as a stranger in dorm living situations in college. When sharing an apartment with someone, I would think you would have your own bedroom AND you have a
CHOICE as to who that roommate is.</p>

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<p>S1 spent four blissful summers in a camp where housing was 16 per room in bunk beds whose springs were creaky, the chest of drawers (1 chest for 2) missed knobs and was too small for all their gears (including for weekly performances), and where the showers only had cold water. When he no longer could attend that camp he actually cried. College dorm life by comparison was luxury hotel!</p>

<p>S2 began going to sleep away camp at 10 and was always in a college dorm and with a roommate. Again, he would much rather have that situation than be on his own in his big bedroom. </p>

<p>In times past, not only did most children have to share rooms but often, they had to share beds. The idea of one child one room is a recent very middle class one.</p>

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<p>D is in a freshman only dorm. They are in doubles with a community bathroom which is co-ed. I still find it a bit odd- coming out of the toilet/ shower area and there is a boy in a towel at the next sink. The school does a good job matching roommates with a pretty extensive questionnaire. Our D’s roommate and her are very similar as far a living habits. They were not allowed to connect prior to arrival at campus, since the name of your roommate was not known ahead of time. They are comfortable roommates but not friends. D says it’s easier that way.</p>

<p>D is already thinking about next year. Housing is done by lottery after freshman year. Housing is guaranteed for all four years. Does she want to enter lottery with a block of friends? Go into themed housing? A co-op? Should be an interesting experience. She has treated dorm living as an adventure- which I think it is.</p>

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<p>I think the co-ed bathroom thing is odd, too. D would not have been comfortable with that at all. </p>

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<p>I agree, however the dorms at D’s school all have private bathrooms. When I tell my kids that I met my best friend in the dorm bathroom (at the mirrors putting on makeup) they think it’s really odd. The added bonus to the communal bathrooms was that they had a cleaning service every week and we didn’t have to clean them!</p>

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<p>If your kids are of different sex, aren’t their bathroom "co-ed?’ Or do they each have their own bathroom?</p>

<p>S1 was in dorms that had co-ed bathroom. At no time did he ever encounter a woman either going to or from the bathroom or in the bathroom itself. And it had only a couple of showers, toilets and sinks for 10 people (2 bathrooms per floor of 20). It really was a total non-issue.</p>

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<p>My kids have their own bathrooms at home.</p>

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<p>I’ll also chime in - it’s no experiment. UW stopped doing any habits questionnaires- they say it didn’t make for any better fits than random assignments (with a total no smoking policy that is fine). Our son had his own at home bathroom by default- only child. We built our moderately upscale house with no intention of bedroom suites for kids. He had a twin bed at home and in the dorm, then a full sized one in a furnished apt (wonder if that was to accomodate possible sharing, I don’t recall that being a common furnishing in apts in my day), now back to a twin bed since we let him have one from home for his unfurnished apt. I am surprised at the large beds so many people put in their kid’s rooms- takes up so much floor space and for most years the child is dwarfed by it. </p>

<p>We parents stayed in a dorm room for son’s summer orientation- brought back memories and the down the hall bathroom is something I no longer care for (especially since the floor used for parents had coed floors but single sex bathrooms- one in each wing and, you guessed it, our end room was in the opposite wing of the designated women’s bathroom, although so close to the men’s). Cafeteria dining is a tossup of not having to cook or clean versus the standing in line and walking through the service area to get food.</p>

<p>I believe it is great for parents to have home luxuries their kids don’t get. I think far too many parents spoil their kids in this era. Most kids wouldn’t even care about sharing a bathroom unless they were taught differently. Creature comforts abound instead of plenty of books and other intellectual pursuits in too many homes. Those kids are in not only for the college dorm shock, but the post college apt shock as their standard of living will be far below their parents’.</p>

<p>Here’s another thought- I imagine it must be a good thing that young couples now commonly live together before deciding to get married as they then don’t discover all sorts of annoying habits in their partner after it’s too late to get out of the arrangement…</p>

<p>Addenda. College dorms are not shared with complete strangers with nothing in common- all have chosen that school and many will find more in common than with a sibling they were forced to share a house with for too many years.</p>

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<p>I remember the apt my H and his best friend shared after graduating from college. Describing it as a hovel is being charitable. The apartment did not have a shower: they had to install it at their own expense. And of course, there was no on site laundry. The kitchen was ancient and mostly freezing. Their dorm experience was luxury by comparison!
My H made friends who have remained in close contact for more than 40 years. That would not have happened if he had had a single room. I remember the time a few years ago when several of these roommates got together and told uproarious stories of their freshman year dorm experiences. S2 also made good friends in his freshman suite (he had to bunk for three years!) and they remain close despite having graduated. Perhaps having a single room in a suite with a shared bathroom is ideal (that was what S2 finally ended up having) but rather expensive.</p>

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<p>My kids (3boys/4girls) have always shared bathrooms at home, but I think coed bathrooms in dorms are “unnatural.” From a girl’s point of view, sharing with your brothers–who don’t actually come into the bathroom with you–is completely different than knowing that some random unrelated guy (who might be your lab partner or your crush) could be at the sink gargling as you’re getting out of the shower, or sitting in the next stall when you’re changing a tampon. . .Call me old fashioned, (I am) but. . .No. Just too close for comfort with unrelated persons of the opposite sex. This is a situation that we (especially women) would “naturally” avoid. </p>

<p>Even if you “never” run into someone, I think that knowing you “could” increases the level of awareness/discomfort (students–women, especially–probably avoid the bathroom when someone else is in there to get more privacy. . .I did this even with single sex bathrooms in college–and I grew up in a big family/sharing. Not running into people isn’t purely by chance.)
Ladies: If you went to a professional conference with people who were around your age, your educational level, many common interests, etc.–and you were staying in a dorm with down-the-hall bathrooms, would you want the men in the bathroom with you? I wouldn’t want to see my male colleague in a towel/robe/t-shirt/shorts, standing at the sink, shaving, brushing teeth etc. --or hear him in the stall. We have so much in common and are friendly at the lunch table, but I don’t want him IN the bathroom with me. My guess is that most adults wouldn’t. So why does anyone think it is cool at 20, when it is creepy at 50? (Is it just that a 20yo looks so much better in a towel than a 50yo?)</p>

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<p>I was leery of the co-ed bathroom when I first learned of it. But S told me that he bumped into one of his female floormates in the dorm. So I stopped worrying about it.
In his last year, he moved to an apartment shared by five girls and five guys, and the guys’ bathroom was a real pigsty. It was next to his room, too. I also suspect he saw his female apartment mates in their dressing gowns quite often as they went into the kitchen (also close to his room).</p>

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<p>atomom - I agree with you, coed bathrooms in dorms are really unnatural and IMO make no sense</p>

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<p>I would imagine the vast majority of American children either share a bathroom with their parents, or share with one another (that is, there’s a master bathroom and another bathroom). While it may be common in newer developments for each bedroom to have its own bathroom, you can’t deny it’s quite privileged for each child to have his / her own bathroom.</p>

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<p>Do you find it strange in the military service? And it’s a heck of a lot more spartan!</p>

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<p>They remain strangers for how long? A week?</p>

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<p>“All I said is that I have always found it strange that kids are forced to live in the same room as a stranger in dorm living situations in college.”</p>

<p>Being in the military --and in the enlisted military barracks – would be a lot more strange. There’s also a wider variety of people in military barracks.</p>

<p>I think of college dorming as a usual rite of passage for our society. Many students already have had to share rooms with strangers in summer camps.</p>

<p>I think that overall, freshmen sharing rooms have more in common than do newly enlisted people sharing military barracks.</p>

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<p>Not to mention prisons.</p>

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<p>I’m glad you did, dbwes. Really, I was just thinking out loud. I wasn’t making a value challenge, as in “is dorm living good or bad for kids?”. I am marveling that despite the unnatural circumstances it seems to work remarkably well for millions of people for years. I’m thinking of Samuel Johnson’s remark about the dog walking on its hind legs – the wonder is not whether it’s done well, but that it’s done at all.</p>

<p>Of course you can pull out other examples of people brought to live together, summer camp, kibbutz, whatever. But think deeper about what is unique and remarkable about the college dorm phenomenon. We are talking about VAST numbers of disparate people (i.e., not in same families, religions, or genders), the only sure common factor being that they applied to a university and found a way to pay for it. In the case of some colleges, the goal is actually to mix up everyone so they do experience living with people very different from anyone they are used to.</p>

<p>What’s remarkable is that it actually seems to work!</p>

<p>Threads on CC about roommate troubles seem fairly uncommon, considering the numbers. Both my college kids mentioned issues between roommates (not necessarily theirs) or their floor, but they all worked it out amongst themselves. This seems to be by and large the case among college students everywhere. Remarkable, right? At least I think so.</p>

<p>Just when you think my observation is fairly anodyne, I will mention a situation that is unusual, but as far as I know actually happened. Someone I know told me that his wife applied to and was admitted to a top Ivy League college with a full ride. Friend’s Wife had been fired from her health-care job for sexually aggressing female colleagues at the workplace. Friend’s Wife moved into the dorm as a freshman student at age 32.
A couple of years later Friend’s Wife ‘washed out’ of college, went back to her husband. Some time after that she applied to, and was admitted to another good college, not Ivy League, but she was able to start again as a freshman. She was in her late 30’s and on full scholarship. Again she quit, but started a 3rd college again as a freshman, this time in her early 40’s. She has since quit and ‘gone home’, and her husband is trying to sort all this out. She didn’t involve him in her plans.
How was she able to do all this? I do not know, but I can tell you that this story sent me into orbit, as the parent of college students. Do I want a woman in her 30’s-40’s (with a history of sexual aggression) living in a tiny dorm room with my kid? You are not supposed to ask – does this person have a mental condition? What is his/her story?</p>

<p>A parent can’t help but worry. And yet…and yet, millions of students come out of college with great memories and great experiences and nothing too terrible. </p>

<p>Please don’t jump all over my case about this. I’m not looking for a fight. These are just thoughts and observations. You have your own, I’m sure.</p>

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<p>Actually, anudduhmom, I have been thinking that the “roommate trouble” threads are quite rare considering how many students there are in college! Granted, not everyone with roommate trouble vents on CC, but still, one would expect more, since, as your write, it is quite a social experiment!</p>