<p>It’s not that big a deal. Just as some posters have said they have a strong aversion to it or suspect their collegians to have one, others just work around it. Some people quickly learn how to adjust (and not impose embarrassment on others) or to be judicious about when/where/how to use the coed bathrooms. People became friends – and no one would want to embarrass the girl/guy down the hall. It works out.</p>
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<p>Again, NOT TRUE for everyone. SOME may adjust, others simply would not or would not even want to entertain the notion period, so it would in fact be “that big a deal.” And that’s okay and should be respected and accommodated.</p>
<p>We haven’t even touched on certain religious aspects to this. There are some religions where modesty is strongly emphasized or mixing of sexes in various situations is not allowed. I’m thinking it would most certainly be “a big deal” to those particular individuals.</p>
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<p>Okay, that’s pretty funny. Haven’t heard that one before. :)</p>
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<p>Part of the difference is that if you live in a suite and someone’s in the shower, you have to wait to use the toilet because there’s only one. This may not be fun if you’ve just had a couple of cups of coffee (or beer).</p>
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<p>I think a lot of college students feel the same way – even about same-sex students that they don’t know. They don’t seem to wear bathrobes much. They seem to wander around the dorm in T-shirts and gym shorts (or a sweatshirt and sweatpants in the winter), which are probably the clothes they sleep in but which give a more “dressed” impression than a bathrobe or pajamas.</p>
<p>Yeah, I was thinking about this more and I’m really glad I had a suite situation and not community baths. I slept in shorts and a t-shirt in college, but I surely didn’t wear a bra to bed. I can’t imagine waking up in the middle of the night needing to use the bathroom and having to stop to put one on. And with shorts or sweats, you still have the issue of them getting wet while you’re putting them back on after your shower. It all just seems like too much work and too inconvenient just to get clean every morning. </p>
<p>I would be that person that would deliberately wake up super early to try to avoid encountering anybody in the bathroom when I showered.</p>
<p>When I was going to the gym regularly, I would change in a changing room, but I never showered there. I guess I have a hang up about showering in “public” places. I showered at home afterward.</p>
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<p>You don’t. You throw on a hoodie instead, just as I do when I take the garbage cans down to the curb at the crack of dawn.</p>
<p>Oh, wait, you mean there are people who don’t do that? Oops.</p>
<p>The problem with attempting to dig this information out prior to college is first of all, this is so far from the norm of many (doesn’t happen in other gym/community settings, wasn’t a possibility when parents went school or student is first generation) that there are probably huge numbers who wouldn’t even think to ask. I myself went to college in the 80’s and had done probably 2 dozen tours before I first saw this raised on CC. I just returned from tour with my third and while chatting with a mom who was touring with her senior year D had no idea this would EVER be a standard let alone at one of the colleges still on her D’s list. </p>
<p>Secondly, apparently many floors VOTE on this at floor meetings held at the start of the semester, so you may not know which way your floor will vote or how divided your floor’s vote may become.
Count me in on those who prefer not to shave my legs or use the toilet with guys I am not related to right next to me.</p>
<p>I don’t know of any other situations where there are rows of toilets and it’s shared by men and women. If it’s such a no big deal, why do workplaces and gyms still set up separate bathrooms?</p>
<p>I assume this is only a problem when you don’t have a choice? DS lives in a coed by room dorm with a coed bathroom. He knew about the bathrooms before he chose the dorm and doesn’t have any issue with it whatsoever. If you have a choice and don’t like it then don’t choose it.</p>
<p>When I first got to my freshman dorm (coed by room) 20 years ago I didn’t realize the bathrooms were coed–walked in on a dude shaving at the sink and started to back out, but turns out he was one of my RAs and he said it was cool. As it turns out, at our first floor meeting we took a vote to determine whether our 2 allocated bathrooms would be coed or single sex (mostly girls who wanted this, though I didn’t care). Single sex won, with a decision to switch sexes at semester break to make inconveniences equal.</p>
<p>Well, as it turns out, these two bathrooms were separated by a large public entryway, and after about 3 days, men and women both were tired of having to traverse this very public area in towels and robes and flip flops…we re-voted and unanimously decided it was best for everyone to use whichever bathroom was closest. We all got used to it.</p>
<p>I will say, however, that I am glad my freshman son has a semi-private bathroom shared only with 3 other men. He has a hard enough time sharing bathrooms as it is!</p>
<p>We haven’t even touched on certain religious aspects to this. There are some religions where modesty is strongly emphasized or mixing of sexes in various situations is not allowed. I’m thinking it would most certainly be “a big deal” to those particular individuals.</p>
<p>Which is why you are more likely to find those individuals at BYU or another school with strict dress & behavior codes rather than say Reed College or Hampshire. Because there is usually more than bathrooms that they have issue with.</p>
<p>Gyms are different than dorms because.</p>
<p>1) they often have group showers
2) you change your clothes in them (In my dorm we wore robes to our rooms when we stepped out of the shower.)
3) they care often very crowded (Most gyms I have belonged to have changing areas that are more crowded than most dorm bathrooms.)</p>
<p>To-be college student here- I wouldn’t care. Seriously, so what if a guy sees me carry a tampon into the bathroom? I’m the one with blood coming out my privates, he should be able to deal with the idea of it.</p>
<p>May have been addressed already but my D goes to a school with co-Ed bathrooms. I was quite surprised when we first moved her in as a freshman but she didn’t seem to mind. As the semester progressed and I asked her how it was working out she said it was no problem. The girls and guys fell into a pattern, maybe discussed early on, where the guys primarily showered at certain times and the girls showered at different times. On another note, if you’ve read “I Am Charlotte Simmons” by Tom Wolfe there is a graphic, yet amusing scenario about co-ed bathrooms and a very innocent new co-ed…</p>
<p>PG–are you saying there <em>are</em> coed bathrooms now where women have no choice but to be naked in front of guys, and vice versa? Because I can’t imagine that being the case without a public outcry which would go far beyond CC.</p>
<p>I’m saying its damned inconvenient and would not be my preference </p>
<p>If it works for you that’s fine.</p>
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<p>From what I saw of dorm gang bathrooms, the showers were separate stalls, not a bunch of showers in an open room like in a gym locker room.</p>
<p>Are there any college dorm gang bathrooms these days which have just showers in an open room like in a gym locker room?</p>
<p>This is timely:</p>
<p>[ResLife</a> to remove Keeney gender-neutral bathroom signs ? Brown Daily Herald](<a href=“http://www.browndailyherald.com/2013/10/04/reslife-remove-keeney-gender-neutral-bathroom-signs/]ResLife”>ResLife to remove Keeney gender-neutral bathroom signs - The Brown Daily Herald)</p>
<p>To sum up: administration wants gender specific bathrooms in a freshmen dorm, students want gender neutral and keep removing the gender-specific signs.</p>
<p>And then there’s this comment from a guy who describes the “man code”: </p>
<p>"Bathrooms are not places to interact, they are places to urinate, defecate and wash oneself. At no time is there interaction involved. The only acceptable form of any communication is a slight nod of the head, with zero eye contact involved.</p>
<p>Guys are not girls, they have no need to engage in flock behavior, they do not need company in the bathroom, they do not need conversation in the bathroom, they go to the bathroom for privacy and to not have to interact with anyone, male, female, trans or other."</p>
<p>My memory of the Brown bathrooms in the dorm in question – and there have been recent renovations so this might be different now – is that there is no anteroom with curtain in front of the showers. Your bathrobe and towel hang outside the shower.</p>
<p>We had single sex bathrooms in my co-ed dorm, but it was a huge dorm and some halls did not enforce this rule. My hall did typically enforce the rule, but I was in the shower once early in the semester at about 1am and a drunk guy stumbled in-- there are no doors to our shower stalls, just a flimsy curtain that blows open at the slightest draft, no private place to change. The doors were locked to everyone but the women so presumably a woman on my floor must have let him in but there was nobody with him, not even in the hallway. We were alone in the bathroom together with me basically completely exposed until I could end my shower and scurry out. </p>
<p>I posted about it here at the time and was ridiculed. It was suggested perhaps I was not mature enough for college. I wonder where all of you against co-ed bathrooms were then! I was not comfortable with the situation at all. I have heard some descriptions of different types of bathrooms that sound like they could work better for co-ed, but my bathroom was certainly not designed to be co-ed and I had a problem with the rule not being enforced. And I’d had no warning that it might not be enforced, there was no voting, it was just something some RAs liked to do under the radar that was against university policy. Not cool.</p>
<p>A group of girls from my college attended a SWE (Society of Women Engineers) student convention at MIT around 1982. I was mighty glad that MIT was on break because the bathroom we used near the common area sleeping bag room used s co-ed bathroom. In this case, there was NOT a changing area at each shower stall. None of us even thought to pack robe. </p>
<p>Funny side story - One my friends was walking through the deserted building with just her shorty nightshirt. Ha… along comes a campus tourguide with families in tow. My friend though t"I’ll just play this cool and pretend they are not there". Didn’t work - she tripped down the big open stairway with a crowd watching.</p>
<p>Sorry ema. I didn’t ever see that thread or I certainly would have posted on it.</p>