I attended college in the '70s, and at least one or more dorms had co-ed bathrooms, officially or by default since students didn’t want to walk a bit farther. More of an issue was GF/BF taking a shower together, generally in a single sex BR. They would take FOREVER. I lived in a dorm that was co-ed by floor, and our urinal was decorated with artificial flowers.
As to crime? Our small, safe community had a serial killer. One of his victims was a good friend of a dorm mate. The killer was the son of a campus employee so drove a car with a university sticker. A week or two before she was killed, the friend joked that she should write a book about hitchhiking as she could identify safe and unsafe rides. Not. 
Cost/finances was our only limitation. That being said, DD was being pursued by a LAC we’d visited that DD ultimately decided was not a good match. She and I decided that the school might throw so much money at her that it would be difficult to turn down. I told her she didn’t need to apply. I also determined that room & board were a lot more expensive on the coasts than in the Midwest and South. To reduce the research, I asked her whether she would rather attend school in a Blue State with snow or a Red State without – not taking into account what climate change has done to regular weather, LOL. Republicans are apparently a deal breaker for my kid.
If the school was not on the West Coast, she was told she couldn’t come home for Thanksgiving due to time and cost constraints, and that she should also consider the school’s distance to the airport. Not deal breakers, but things she needed to consider.
I think DD had more deal breakers than I. I have no problem with gender neutral bathrooms but I think she would have been uncomfortable. She is straight but is an LGBT ally, so LGBT hostility would have been a deal breaker. She is a person of color who attended a multi-racial high school, but pretty much all LACs are darn white, maybe hers less than others. But still. She is followed in stores and stopped by cops when she is in town, and all students of color are advised to wear school insignia when in town. It hasn’t been enough to want to make her transfer, but the racist YikYak comments have been concerning if not alarming.