Co-ed bathrooms in College Dorms (or public offices): A poll.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m on an admissions committee here at my school that is responsible for coming up with workable guidelines for incoming freshman and transfer students. We work in a variety of arenas from researching Dorm life, to social trends on campus, to community involvement of the freshman class. We do all of this to ensure the questions we have for incoming freshman and transfer students truly reflect what living on campus is all about. There needs to be clear and concise guidelines for freshmans entering school here.

One of the more controversial things we need to explain to incoming students, particularly the ones living in the dorms, is that we have co-ed bathrooms here on campus. Most people who want to enter school here know this and say that it will be no problem. The unfortunate side of the whole thing, many students are not being honest with themselves when they say things like: “…Oh thats not problem at all…Co-ed bathrooms are fine, I don’t mind …” etc…etc…

Ah, but for young Constance Middlewoman things are a little bit different. Her mother went to this school as did her grand mother. They were both outgoing, very active Sports oriented people. So when young Constance Middlewoman came into my office yesterday evening saying she was very concerned about having to … you know (#2) … next to boys in her dorm. [total paraphrase she didn’t actually say that]

I tried explaining to her that it has been this way for many years and people generally got used to it after a while, or they got sick of too many showers and bathroom runs to the gym across campus.

[Then Phlosphr thought about something very important. There is a young woman sitting at my desk and I was not really giving her any help with her dilema at all]

So I quickly changed stance and asked her how she thought she may be able to deal with it in the future. She said she has never been a very outgoing person and never really been very social.

I immediately looked at the dorm she was in and realized her problem. She was in a very active social dorm. Happens to be the same dorm her mother was in. :rolleyes:

Anyway, I knew that the quiet “study” dorms were all full. Quite a few people want those rooms because they are all singles and there is a quiet curfew of 9pm.

Constance Middlewoman’s dorm has no curfew and quite a few doubles, triples and a spattering of quads. I will meet with her again in a week to see how she is doing and in that time I will see if there are any partiers in the quiet dorms that want out. Or if there are any people being forced to move out. (it happens)

So all you college students who do not live with co-ed bathrooms what say you?

How about all of you private sector workers out there in the concrete jungles of the world; what if your company decided to make more office space and consolidate the bathrooms to Ally McBeal style, co-ed bathrooms? Would you be OK with that? why or why not?

2

MIT had coed suites when I lived there, and at least one co-ed bathroom in a school building. Didn’t bother me at all. N0oplace I’ve been to school or to work since has had co-ed bathrooms, though.

3

As someone with particular notions about modesty, my choice on co-ed restrooms in the workplace would be “no.”

My opinion isn’t so much about the actual use of the toilets in the presence of people of the other gender, but it’s the things that are done outside of the stalls – because there’s more light, or because the act requires a mirror or simply because the act requires more space than available in the stall – that would bother me, and I think bother many women.

I’m specifically thinking of things which involve some measure of “exposure” like fixing a messed up bra strap or adjusting a slip or straightening out pantyhose, things which require a woman to open or lift her top a bit or hike up her skirt. These manuevers wouldn’t leave her standing there in her underwear, but they still involve an immodesty which most women I know (especially in a very professional setting) would be uncomfortable with if their male co-workers, clients and visitors happened to see.

But it seems to me that outside of the college dorm (which I’ve already opined to be a bizarre communal living experiment which makes little sense, at least to me) the only places with “co-ed” bathrooms actually have private bathrooms which are used by people of both genders, but only one at a time. I’ve never encountered anywhere that actually had the Ally McBeal model public restroom in practice, and I’d be curious to find out if any company ever actually did try it or if it was simply the fecund mind of David E. Kelley at work without any particular connection to real-life.

4

I haven’t had much experience with co-ed bathrooms. I can’t imagine it would be too much different than using the same bathroom as my sister. I would think that the party dorm would be more of a problem for me personally rather than the bathroom.

5

Modesty is an interesting personality trait to bring up. So you want to be free from another person’s vanity?
[devils advocate hat on]
We are all people. Males and Females of the same species, why is it so difficult to express ones true self in the presence of someone from the opposite sex?
[devils advocate hat off]

Personally, I am quite comfortable with co-ed bathrooms. My own experiences in them are just that, experiences. So what if the person next to me in the stall is wearing a stiletto heel shoe. They are still doing the same thing I am, and they most likely do it everyday right?
There are no urinals in any of the bathrooms so you do not have to worry about watching the men micturate on the walls.

Modesty huh? I can see your point.

6

At my college, we do not have co-ed bathrooms, unless, like TeaElle said, it’s a private “one-seater,” and even those are rare. Of course, all our dorm buildings are pretty gender-separate. We have one all-female dorm (where I live), and the co-ed dorms are divided by floor (say 1, 3, 5 and 6 are male floors, and 2 and 4 are female, or something like that), or in one building, by wing (the North and South wings are separated by two short hallways, an elevator and a lounge).

I honestly don’t know if I would be content with a co-ed bathroom. If it was in a workplace, where it’s just a potty-room, then maybe, I could deal with it, but in a college dorm, where the bathroom is also where you shower? That would make me a little uncomfortable, knowing there could be guys in the next shower stall over, and if my robe isn’t large enough or my towel isn’t big enough when I get out… that would bother me.

7

We had coed bathrooms at my school. It was a bit of a surprise to me, but I’m a pretty adaptable person. There were a few people who were troubled by it initially, but once you came to grips with the fact that people are going to see you at your morning ugliest worst, and vice versa, it was a pretty easy adjustment. I am not a particularly social person and even so it was not so hard to get used to. There was never an issue of inappropriate behavior, as we all saw each other every day and respected each other’s privacy as best we could. I would say it was a good experience.

8

First of all, I would hate to see the state of a co-ed bathroom in a “very active social dorm” (which I’m reading as “party dorm”) on Sunday morning.

As a sophomore I sometimes showered in the men’s bathroom, only out of convenience. Due to the floor layout, the women’s bathroom lay at the other end of the hall, around a corner. I’d often get to the women’s bathroom in the morning only to find all showers occupied. The men’s bathroom was right next to my room. I didn’t have a problem showering in the men’s bathroom; I found quite a few surprised and maybe modest men waiting when I stepped out, clad in a towel and robe.

So are these co-ed bathrooms co-ed showering facilities as well?

9

Yes, most co-ed bathrooms have shower stalls, often including a little alcove where you change and leave your clothes for privacy.

I was a residential living professional staff for several years in a network of dorms, and 80+% of our bathrooms were co-ed. I think that was essential as a cost-saving measure (especially in towers, where space is a premium) and most concerned parents realized (eventually) that it’s like sharing the bathroom with a host of siblings.

Work environments are different. You’re not living with these people, and the level of intimacy with such a set-up is bound to make people uncomfortable. It doesn’t apply to my work situation (the bathrooms are single-user), but I think you’d have to have a pretty open-minded group to accomodate such an effort to change the levels of privacy they’d come to expect at work.

10

As a second-year male student attending a well-known public University, I’d have to say that co-ed bathrooms would be no problem.

Then again, I’m gay. :wink:

11

Civil Defense stole my point. What if you’re gay? Would it not be more uncomfortable to shower, get ready, etc. in front of people of the same sex? Intersting thought, anyway.

I’ve never used a co-ed bathroom, but I find the continual segregation of people by sex (not gender) kind of strange. What really amuses me is when I go to a restaurant and see male and female bathrooms, but they are one-seaters. It’s especially funny when there’s a line for one and nobody in the other. Very odd.

12

The college that I attended did not provide dorms for its students, but a nearby university allowed other schools to enroll students in its dorms. I stayed in those dorms for two semesters my sophmore year.

The dorms were gender divided by floor, but everyone was allowed to have guests, overnight or otherwise, of either gender. Because of this, it was pretty common to be in the bathroom with someone of the opposite gender in the next stall.

I never had a problem with it, excepting the few obnoxious, shower-peeking guys who turned up from time to time. (Fortunately, they were usually removed promptly by RAs- and once by my knee.)

Growing up with a pack of boys probably made it easier on me than it might have been on other girls, though. I don’t know how I’d have felt about co-ed bathrooms had I been used to a single-sex situation. It might be very difficult for a more modest girl.

13

The building I work in was built in the Sixties, when either female astronomers did not exist :rolleyes: or the shunned eve-numbered floors :rolleyes: :rolleyes: so there are men’s rooms on all floors, and women’s rooms only on odd-numbered floors. The fact that the majority of people currently working on our floor are women prompted a petition to turn the standard, two-stall two-urinal men’s room into a coed, so they put a lock on the door and did just that.

One time, some dufus forgot to to lock the door and I ended up in the bathroom with him. He then left, and another person came in and started using the urinal (a male person, obviously) and that freaked me out, mostly because it took me by surprise and I thought it would be embarassing for him if I emerged from the stall. Also, I think most standard co-eds don’t have urinals. But I think even with the urinals, it’d be a little odd at first, but I’d adjust to it.

OTOH, and can totally see TeaElle’s point–the stalls would have to be roomy enough to that you could partially disrobe to fix a garment difficulties. I don’t want to be standing out in the open with my shirt rucked up under my arms to deal with a bra that’s blown a hook when my boss walks in, for example.

14

Pffft . . . Eve-numbered? And the other bathrooms are Adam-numbered? :wink:

EVEN-numbered.

15

I was in two situations kind of like this.

The University of Pennsylvania (where my sister and then one of my best friends attended) had co-ed bathrooms/shower facilities. Truth be told, I wanted nothing more than to be in and out of them as quickly as I could. Nobody thinks they’re at their best in a place like that, and the modesty that mindset engenders eliminates any worry about ogling. I’m trying too hard to get toweled off and back to my room to get dresses to take time to ogle some girl who’s doing the same. And even if I were to catch a look- sorry, not sexy.

I visited a friend at Wellesley last year. For those of you who don’t know, it’s an all-women’s college. I am not all-woman, in fact, ain’t none of me woman. But I had to shower and… ummm… “eliminate,” and I was told with a certain degree of teenage glee in the face of my old-man reservations that they weren’t “women’s” facilities; they were “co-ed.” Now, maybe I’m just a stick-in-the-mud on this one, but I did not exactly relish the idea of trying to shower and/or shave my face while troops of brassy, forward, Wellesley “wymyn” worked around this wrongly-gendered interloper. Which is exactly what happened. And they were not “modest,” in fact, I got the distinct impression that they were less so than normal for the shock value. It was awkward. Decidedly un-sexy.

Boys and girls, it’s only a fantasy because it’s in your head. Once you are confronted with the logistics, the titillation fades quickly.

If anything, co-ed facilities are a time-saver, because everyone I know that has experienced them just wants to get in and out ASAP, so that they can meet that pretty girl or boy down the hall in better circumstances than “mid-maintenance.”

16

Hmmm… sounds a familiar tale. Our new offices have men’s rooms on every single floor. There is one set of ladies’ rooms - on the second floor. All the women astronomers in our department work on the first floor. There are very few women apart from the female astronomers in our building. Our solution? We use the men’s room. :stuck_out_tongue:

17

When I was at Haverford, the bathrooms were coed. However, my freshman year, we wound up having single-sex bathrooms because there were 2 on the floor and the 6 guys got the one with the urinal and us 10 girls got the other one. Sophmore year, however, there was only one large bathroom on the floor, and it was fully coed. It was a shock going to Howard and being in a women’s dorm: I wasn’t used to seeing girls walking around in towels or going to breakfast in their pajamas with curlers in their hair.

18

Actually this is the point we look to most for making it easier on freshmen. We use ultra-double-stick-blinding-light-reverse-psychology on them and they get used to it very quick.

There a few that can not handle it as I said, but on the whole most do pretty well.

And yes the bathrooms have showers in them, and they do have closed changing areas so people don’t feel awkward coming out of the shower.

19

No, I don’t want men walking in on me when I’m trying to fix my twisted pantyhose and have my skirt hoisted up mid-thigh in the process. Also, as a nursing mother, I had several instances over the last year when I needed to adjust my bra or adjust – not replace – the nursing pads I was wearing, and I’d duck into the ladies room to do that. But since I didn’t need the facilities (we only had two stalls) I didn’t use a stall. I wasn’t taking my blouse off, just moving/opening it enough to do what was needed, but that generally exposed more of me than I’d want my male colleagues, especially, to see.

These are things that women do, from time to time, in restrooms, especially if they work in a company with an open floor plan and no private offices. The headquarters of Alcoa, a Forune 500 company, is like this. No one, including the CEO, has a private office, everyone at every level has the same sized cubicle, and the entire building is made of glass. The restrooms represent the only place where a person could go and deal with clothing problems or the like without being seen by everyone around them.

And there are cultural questions as well. While I’d merely find it extraordinarily uncomfortable if a man saw me fiddling with clothing, an Orthodox Jewish woman or a hijab-wearing Muslim woman would, I imagine, not only be mortified but feel religious implications that transcend mere embarassment. I imagine that they’d have objections on the same grounds.

And none of that even gets into the gender politics issues that women, even (especially?) high-ranking women face in the workplace, where any vulnerability – like being seen or heard by a male co-worker when physically unwell (“weak”), crying (“being overemotional”) or fixing hair or makeup (“being vain/overconcerned with appearance”) – can have negative repercussions on that woman’s career. Easing the ability of one’s male colleagues and/or superiors to be aware of certain things women might do in the restroom (other than waste elimination functions) might provide them with awareness of personal, medical and reproductive matters that are not their business and could, again, negatively impact on a woman’s career.

It’s just a bad idea.

20

There were co-ed bathrooms in the dorm of my close friend, where I spent a lot of time in college.

It was wierd the first couple times I used it. But then I really liked it. All my friends were guys, and co-ed bathrooms meant we could still laugh and joke while showering/brushing teeth etc. instead of me being exiled alone into the girls room. And I think the co-ed bathrooms really did work to keep boy/girl relations de-mysteriousized and smoother.