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Do you trust that your child can make an educated decission about his/her living space? For instance, some colleges have adopted a residential policy that empowers students to decide how they want the bathroom on their floor to be used. This programs work on a consensus basis and not a majority rule. How do you feel about your son/daughter deciding to have a unisex/coed bathroom? What are your concerns and is there any information that could be offered to inform your oppinion? Also, how large a factor would this play in you supporting your childs decision about where to go to college?

By Rhino (Rhino) on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 04:47 pm: Edit

This question is odd. They are in college, for pete's sake, making all sorts of decisions on their own. Of course we must trust our kids to make their own decisions about their living space (and much else). And, by trusting them and supporting them in these next few years, we will learn a lot about them... and oursleves.

By the way, was this question really serious??

By Emeraldkity4 (Emeraldkity4) on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 04:51 pm: Edit

My daughters school has coed dorms and coed bathrooms. Not a problem.
Some dorms have opted to have one bathroom for each sex, but in most dorms they just use the one that is closest.
I didn't have any concerns about it, in my opinion privacy is a personal issue and not linked to what sex someone is.

My 13 year old has stayed in the dorm with her sister for the last two years when visiting, and beleive me if there was a problem I would have heard about it!

By Emeraldkity4 (Emeraldkity4) on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 05:17 pm: Edit

Well I don't think it is a prank question, but I do think that the parent who posted it, is going to have to come to grips that his/her child is a college age adult and will be making many more decisions than where they use the bathroom.
Whether the factor of having coed bathrooms was even on the radar as criteria for selecting a college, kinda says something about the criteria.
can we say anal?

By Sandiegomom (Sandiegomom) on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 05:30 pm: Edit

And your bathrooms at home aren't coed?
Hmmmmmm.

By Emeraldkity4 (Emeraldkity4) on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 06:06 pm: Edit

hey I know people who have more bathrooms than bedrooms. Not sure why, but I didn'thave to clean them so I ask no questions.
Bathrooms at home are different since you generally use them one at a time, maybe someone is in the shower while you are using the sink, but even in a house with one bathroom, it is one at a time
A dorm by contrast has people using the sink, shower, and toilet all all the same time although I have only run into people in my daughters dorm once or twice in the bathroom. They each have a shelf to leave their personal care products so they don't have to get out of the shower and run down the hall. Only the dorms are coed, public bathrooms on campus are single sex.
When staying in Portland I actually used the shower in her dorm instead of the hostel ( it was a little scary looking)
The shower is a nice big size, the walls between toilets go all the way to the floor, much more privacy than say, camping.

By Rhino (Rhino) on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 06:14 pm: Edit

this actually is a prank; the poster is a student at F&M (a good, undiscovered school BTW)

By Thedad (Thedad) on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 07:01 pm: Edit

If parents are going to flip over bathrooms, what are they going to do about potential recreational and sleeping arrangements their child makes? Sheesh.

What's the word, what's the word...let me look in the Kidspeak Dictionary...ah! here it is: Chill.

By Crbanks (Crbanks) on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 09:40 pm: Edit

I don't know whether the OP was for real or not, but some of the responses surprise me.

FWIW, each of our bedrooms has an attached bathroom, so our kids do not share w/ anyone else at home. With the shrinking size of American families, I don't think it's so rare for college students to have always had a private bedroom & private bathroom...or maybe we just know an unusual bunch of folks.

Quality of housing has been a factor that my kids consider when evaluating colleges. As it is, my firstborn hopes to spend no more than one year in university housing before moving into a 2/2 or larger apartment or condo w/ our next one (who will attend the same school.)

I've encountered quite a few concerned parents who are not happy w/ coed dorms, much less coed bathrooms; neither are their kids. There still are teens, and not just Fundamentalists, who have traditional moral values that include a commitment to celibacy until marriage. The same kids seem to understand the phrase "...and lead us not into temptation..." But I have a feeling that this board doesn't welcome or respect such different beliefs and values.

By Magicdragonfly (Magicdragonfly) on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 09:52 pm: Edit

I think that the parents have no right to say anything about coed things at colleges their kids are attending..They may be teenagers but they are adults. You can make your own choices and be held responsible for them. And I personally think the whole celibacy until marriage is BS..but..I won't go into that. Stop living in Pleasantville. People need to learn from their own mistakes, their own experiences. And you also have to learn to compromise and deal with situations you don't quite like.
I really think everything SHOULD be coed.

By Momof2 (Momof2) on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 10:28 pm: Edit

I'll tell you our somewhat related experience - hopefully without inserting any judgments: We are from a conservative Christian part of Texas - are there any others? Our family is pretty strict about dating, etc. My S toured with a coed drum & bugle corps for 11 weeks the summer he was 16. There were 128 young men & women together about 16 hours a day all that time. Although they slept in separate gyms, they practiced outside 12-13 hrs. a day in the heat and humidity. Both sexes wore the smallest amount of exercise clothing that is marginally socially acceptable. (sports bras, shirtless boys, etc.) It looked like they had about 5% body fat between all of them - these were some pretty buff kids by August! On performance days, everyone took turns changing on the buses.

Anyway, when we visited him on tour, I couldn't stop myself from asking: Doesn't all this skin make you a little uncomfortable?

The answer: "Uh, you get over it pretty quick. They are all as tired, dirty and sweaty as we are." After that we felt a lot more comfortable with the idea of coed dorms.

By Crbanks (Crbanks) on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 10:31 pm: Edit

"And I personally think the whole celibacy until marriage is BS..but..I won't go into that. Stop living in Pleasantville."

Seems as if tolerance for other's beliefs is rather lacking around here. I guess some folks cannot appreciate that others have different value systems from their own. It appears that learning to "compromise" really means that anyone who holds traditional values should give them up.

By Hautbois (Hautbois) on Wednesday, July 09, 2003 - 10:57 pm: Edit

"I think that the parents have no right to say anything about coed things at colleges their kids are attending."

Maybe you're right. I think I'll reconsider giving our children any money for college. Thanks! They are adults. They can deal with it.

By Magicdragonfly (Magicdragonfly) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 12:09 am: Edit

Maybe I just really think parents have little right for 2 reasons:
1- I'm not going to be getting any help w/ college
and
2- I have this crazy notion that kids should be happy with where they are going to school and that should be what matters most..and parents shouldn't have that much to do with it because the child is who is going to have to be at the school. Besides- something like coed dorms should be trivial

By Magicdragonfly (Magicdragonfly) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 12:18 am: Edit

Maybe I just think people are pathetic. I've given up on the human race. People are idiots..and you really can't deny it. Americans are extremely stupid at least- I can't say I know too much about other places. Compromise doesn't mean give up on beliefs..and stop living in pleasantville..the world has changed. Accept it. Not like it was ever perfect anyway..esp with things celibacy-wise.
Let your kids be themselves..not like that's too possible since kids are generally forcefed one set of beliefs and seem to think it wrong to think for themselves..
I *personally* believe things should be coed just because..it's more like the real world. It's more educational. That probably sounds screwed up, but you probably don't get what I mean by it.
Some people should stop assuming they know the meaning behind what others say..some people should do a lot of things though, and it's all usually hopeless..because people are ridiculous.

By Magicdragonfly (Magicdragonfly) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 12:29 am: Edit

the online personalities of those on this particular board seem to epitomize almost everything I hate about people

By Thedad (Thedad) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 12:48 am: Edit

I sincerely hope my D isn't celibate until marriage.

Celibacy-until-marriage tends to promote early marriage...duh. I'd rather she wait until she's 25-30, figured out who she is and what she wants to do, before getting married...and I think celibacy that long is simply untenable.

Moreover, particularly for a woman, enjoyment of sex tends to be very dependent on individual sexual chemistry...which you can't know much about unless you've had sex and know what you like or don't like. In this light, celibacy-until-marriage is yet another kind of subtle discrimination against women.

The choice is, of course, hers. And if she is sexually active, I'm sure there will be details that I really don't want to know.

By Fender1 (Fender1) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 01:12 am: Edit

Those are some interesting viewpoints. I would really really like to find a place to have a friendly debate on the issue with some of the people on this board.

-Matthew

By Magicdragonfly (Magicdragonfly) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 01:19 am: Edit

I think Thedad just restored some of my faith in people...

By Magicdragonfly (Magicdragonfly) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 01:24 am: Edit

Although I've always known that some manage to slip through the cracks and avoid becoming mindless conformists

By Fender1 (Fender1) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 01:29 am: Edit

Magic, have you ever seen Dead Poets Society?

-Matthew

By Magicdragonfly (Magicdragonfly) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 01:32 am: Edit

Part of it...I remeber seeing part of it one time (was on tv) and wanting to see the rest..I'm pretty sure it was somewhere near the end of it but this was a while ago so..I don't really know

By Fender1 (Fender1) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 01:40 am: Edit

Just wondering because you might find the ideals of Mr. Keating similar to your own. All based on what is almost hearsay, so take it with what you will from it.

-Matthew

By Magicdragonfly (Magicdragonfly) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 01:57 am: Edit

The name Keating automatically makes me think of The Fountainhead..heh..and you used the wrong here..hearsay..but in any case I'm stopping now because I refuse to discuss in detail reasoning behind my 'ideals' which strangers.

By Fender1 (Fender1) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 02:20 am: Edit

Rest at ease that I am not prompting you to, just suggesting a movie you might enjoy.

-Matthew

By Momcat (Momcat) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 09:11 am: Edit

This thread is making me laugh. We did the campus tour at Univ. of Wisc.-Madison this week and I swear, there was a mother on the tour who seemed more concerned about the bathroom situations than anything else related to the school. I seriously started thinking she had problems.

A beautiful campus, btw. The ds and his friend put it in their top 3.

By Fender1 (Fender1) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 09:21 am: Edit

If really concerned about the co-ed situation, there's always frats/sororities.

By Rhino (Rhino) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 09:25 am: Edit

We are off the track-remember that the original post asked whether we thought our our college bound kids could make an educated decision regarding bathroom facilites. I'd be interested in some of the more conservative posters to this thread offering their views on when kids can be trusted to make their own decisons. When can our kids be trusted to think independently?

By Boysmom (Boysmom) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 10:28 am: Edit

I'm not a fundamentalist but considering the other parents I know, I'm pretty darn conservative. I think the point of raising children is so that they can make their own decisions at adulthood. I might not always agree with their decisions, but if I've done my job correctly, they should do a fairly good job by 18.

I believe this is a gradual process. At 2 or 3 they can decide what juice they want and which cartoon to watch that morning. At five or six they can choose the outfit for the day (out of what is available in their closet). At seven or eight, they will wear a sweater when cold without my insisting. At nine or ten, they will do homework when necessary. At eleven or twelve they will eat what they want on their plates and decide whether to sleep or read at night. At thirteen or fourteen they will choose friends they are comfortable with and classes they want to take at school. At fifteen or sixteen, they will decide which events to attend that they will be comfortable with, how to handle their disposable income and what interests to pursue.

All of these decisions will be made by them but after having heard our opinions their whole life. We have discussed with them money management, career choices, smoking, drinking, sex and drugs. They know our opinions and for the most part, are more influenced by how they are raised than what they see on tv.

By the time they are adults (18) I don't go to parties with them or choose their friends. Their decisions on drinking and sex must be made on the spot and without our input. They know how we feel, but we can't (or shoudn't) be there with them. So I have to trust that they will choose something I can live with. And to be honest, if they don't, I can't follow them around 24/7 anyway.

So whatever living arrangements they choose in college, including bathroom accomodations is probably not big on my list of worries. I know we raised them right and so far have been very lucky to see that they not only generally follow what we believe, but might even be more conservative than we are. Not to say they are perfect kids. But we openly and frankly discuss every issue with them and so I know that they don't stray too far.

I think if the parents are too strict and make too many choices for the kids, they either just don't tell the parent what they are doing, or outright rebel. Trust the job you've done and let them grow up.

By Hautbois (Hautbois) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 11:14 am: Edit

I was just being sarcastic (or was it silly?) with my post. If y'all knew me, y'all would know. But I guess i can't expect you to know me by that one post.

That being said, it's fairly obvious that our kids are gonna do what they are gonna do. I'm not going to withdraw funding simply because my child doesn't follow my belief system. And if my d or s don't mind the opposite gender watching them pee, that's their business (becoming everybody's business).

That being said, the whole coed bathroom thing would interest me. Shoot, I wish I didn't have a coed bathroom right now ... I like my toilet seat down, than you very much. (insert another grin here for the "I can't read your posts with a twinkle in my eye")

Anyhoo ... just though I'd write all this and then exit this bathroom. It's stinky in here.

(Does the summer bring slighty defensiveness and hostility to the boards, or is it just that I avoided those threads earlier?)

By Emeraldkity4 (Emeraldkity4) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 12:11 pm: Edit

I do not un derstand what celibacy has to do with bathrooms.
I don't see anyone having sex in the bathrooms, nor anyone inappropriately dressed.
Like I said earlier, privacy is an issue in a bathroom, no matter what the sex of the people sharing it.
I prefer the closed stalls of my daughters dorm, to more open ones that may be found in single sex dorms.
I also do not think students need to be going around undressed no matter who is living in their dorm if there are people that might beuncomfortable with that.
I restate that I am comfortable with my younger daughter staying in the dorm, the students are totally apprppriate, and actually really wonderful.
they do have a housekeeper/dorm mother who is fantastic and who helps pick up after them, but the bathrooms are always clean and the only place I ever see stuff laying around is in the common room where people often kick off their shoes under the couch and forget about.

Reed is big on personal responsibilty. The students are expected to police themselves and they do. They make their own signs to remember to flush and wash, to turn the lights out and alert operations if there is a drippy faucet.
I realize a small liberal arts college where everyone knows everyone will be different than a big university where dorm privacy and security may not be all that it could be. It could be a safety issue to often have other sex students in the bathroom that you aren't sure if they belong on campus or not.
Freshman year my daughter was in a dorm of about 28 people, the common room was next to the door but if noone was there, no one could hear if you knocked so they often propped the door in nice weather. They have changed all the doors to key cards, and enforce students keeping the door closed, this is much safer as if a card is lost, it can easily be voided from the system and reissued.

By Magicdragonfly (Magicdragonfly) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 01:48 pm: Edit

It doesn't..somebody said something about it though..then I mentioned something in response to it.etc

By Boysmom (Boysmom) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 02:59 pm: Edit

I think one of the main problems with this forum is that the way you post makes it unclear who you are replying to. So sometimes people get all cranky because they think they are bieng insulted or whatever, when really the other person wasn't even replying to them. We all need to be a little patient and not rush to judge the poster who you think is posting in reply to you. Or CC could find a way to make clear who is respnding to whom.

By Thedad (Thedad) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 03:02 pm: Edit

I don't always succeed but on touch subjects I try to respond to the issue, not the poster, which makes for a slightly different--and I hope less confrontational--post.

By Emeraldkity4 (Emeraldkity4) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 03:49 pm: Edit

I don't always c&p the post I am replying to, but I also try and respond to the general tone if not to the original question posted.I don't think the posts have been less polite but some are more blunt than others

By Onel2l (Onel2l) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 04:21 pm: Edit

I appreciate all of your repsonses. Here are some of my thoughts

I think one of the real issues that was kind of alluded to in some of the posts has to deal with privacy. If someone doesn't feel comfortable dressinng/showering/pottying around their own sex then the anxiety only increases if the opposite sex is added. Those feelings have to be respected and understood.

Another reason these questions exist simply have to deal with the fact that colleges can't financially as well as spacially keep up with the american housing trends. And the mission of most colleges for the four years that the student is on campus is somewhat counter to general society practices. Our communities have increasingly become individual oasis. Acreage and fences are staple items in a lot of our surban communities. College residences have to accomodate large amounts of people in limited spaces. which means in that some students have learn how to live with other people. Students are thus forced to deal with issues of space and respect for others. This requires uncomfortable conversations and personal sacrfice; two huge no no's.

So where do we go from here. I think there's a lot of educating that needs to be done about College in general, as i said in another thread. True and effective College admission and selection is not game its a relationship.

Thoughts?

By Morgantruce (Morgantruce) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 04:50 pm: Edit

After living on a very remote farm in a very rural state for 30 years... I would not know where to begin discussing co-ed bathrooms!

By Thedad (Thedad) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 05:05 pm: Edit

Well, for starters, I think the whole individual oasis concept is stunted and unhealthy. I see a lot of people who live that way freak out when they have to deal with *them*, whoever the *them* of the moment is. My response would be: Get over it. But that's just me.

By Magicdragonfly (Magicdragonfly) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 06:16 pm: Edit

I just realized that I said which strangers up there..I meant with..a product of writing something at 2 in the morning

By Hautbois (Hautbois) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 06:27 pm: Edit

Thedad: But I love my oasis! It's clean and it's private and it's mine, all mine. I allow visitors every so often. Then I send them back.

Then again, I'm stunted and unhealthy. (insert grin here please!)

Okay. I don't really have my oasis. I have told the family, though, that when all the kids are on their own I'm grabbing their bathroom and making it mine alone!

Seriously, I know what you're saying, but I also think that with our different personality types some of us can handle only so much. I need alone time. I thrive on privacy. I like things in order. I can't even practice until the house is clean!

Man, I gotta get out of this bathroom again. Doesn't anyone besides me know how to clean it?

Oh wait ... sorry ... thought I was talking to my family.

By Thedad (Thedad) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 06:38 pm: Edit

Hautbois, I'm not talking about introvert oasis...I'm talking about the gated suburban community oasis, separating that housing from the outside and then acreage, landscaping, and generous setbacks separating the houses therein carefully from each other.

By Hautbois (Hautbois) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 06:44 pm: Edit

But my fence. I want my fence.

Oh wait. I thought we were talking about bathrooms.

Oh sure, I knew what you were talking about. Really I did. Sort of like our older son when he was young and tripped and fell. "I meant to do that," he'd say.

So yeah, what you said, I knew that.

Not to worry about landscaping; we killed it all. Now we just have weeds.

By Momof2 (Momof2) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 10:39 pm: Edit

No - not weeds! Our motto: one man's weed is another man's wildflower.......

By Emeraldkity4 (Emeraldkity4) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 10:51 pm: Edit

on communal living, don't kids go to camp anymore?
my daughter only went to camp one year before she started as a
wranglerintraining , but they not only have to all sleep in one big room generally, they share bathrooms including sometimes very rustic ones, they eat together and clean up after each other.

She loved camp so much that she has been working at the same one for about 7 years ) albeit some summers only a weekend or two)

I am struck by the resemblance of her college to camp. They have the same games ( capture the flag-and human chess at college, jello toss at camp), goofy names, sparrow, zen, zebra, not sure if that is camp or college. They all pine for the day when they can be together again, and complain about the food. But they sure eat a lot of it when they are there. They get to wear sandles and tshirts to work. They have to get up in the middle of the night to comfort a camper/classmate, who misses their family/doesn't know what they are doing there/just can't go to sleep.
we only have one bathroom at home and at school like at camp if one is in use there is another nearby

We are so spoiled as a country,Istood in awe at the grocery store yesterday at all the types of water that were for sale.

this just after reading a primate's memior with the descriptions of living on sardines in tomato sauce for three months.

I am curious re the same sex dorms, when people are uncomfortable with coed dorms, even when there is an honor code for appropriate behavior, would it make any difference if many of the men in the coed dorm were gay? would it make a difference if the women in the single sex dorm were?

By Hautbois (Hautbois) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 10:52 pm: Edit

Well then, Momof2, you are very welcome to come on over, check out the wildflowers, and pick as many as you'd like! Don't even bother to call ... just slip on into the backyard. We have plenty of receptacles for wildflowers; one is especially nice. It might appear to be our yard clipping recycling bin, but go ahead and fill it to the brim!

By Morgantruce (Morgantruce) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 10:59 pm: Edit

The last "setback" we had around here was when a weasel got into the chicken coop: got setback about four hens...

By Aparent (Aparent) on Thursday, July 10, 2003 - 11:06 pm: Edit

I was very taken with the president of Columbia's commencement speech, as quoted in the NY Times. He asked the kids to describe their dorm rooms and answered the question himself. "You were living in a hovel," he said. And then he asked them what they had been doing for the past four years. Again he answered: "Reading Dante," he said. I am paraphrasing. "So for the rest of your life, I hope you remember that you were living in a hovel and reading Dante, and you were perfectly happy."

Actually, that's sort of how I feel about my bathroom.

The women in our house do not think we would like coed bathrooms. Has nothing to do with, um, celibacy. We don't like to wash our faces in a sink full of shaving cream bits. We like to air-dry our laundry over th shower rod and know nobody will move it.

Now, in my son's coed dorm, the bathrooms are not coed. Nonetheless, there were signs posted everywhere that only a mother could love: "Please be considerate of the next person and wipe the sink after you use it." Etc. etc.

By Lap (Lap) on Monday, September 29, 2003 - 06:55 pm: Edit

Well, this thread died out, but it remains a relevant question. Coed dorms do no mean coed restrooms. Most students DO want to know ahead of time if they will have a choice of private, single-sex bathrooms/showers, whether the dorm is coed or not. I'd feel badly for dorms making this decision by consensus-the vocal minority always wins, the nonvocal lose,and I imagine there are many shy freshpeople of both sexes who would not want to speak up and vote for single sex.
Honestly, this should be information listed on college websites.
For the record, our attitude has nothing to do with being judgmental or fundementalist, rather than with preserving the dignity and privacy of all. Transgendered students are not the only ones entitled to privacy.