OT: Gender-Blind Dorm Rooms (LINK)

http://www.buffalonews.com/city/article900678.ece

This is just a follow-up on that thread last month about dorms with co-ed showers and co-ed floors.

Here we have co-ed rooms.

It's a new day.

It may sound good but living with the opposite sex ain't a cakewalk (male perspective). Its probably good move for the uglies though.

No it's not. It's all been done before. The U.S. is just getting to it now. Cycles, cycles, cycles.

I'll believe that "it's a new day" when colleges across the nation implement a policy that all incoming freshman get randomly assigned roommates of the opposite gender.

Until then, it's just kids being kids, which they've been forever, and I'm sure there was an uproar in Rome when the first dual gender public bath opened up or some silliness.

Fact is, I'm attracted to females and I don't want to be around when they're blasting diarrhea into a toilet after a hard night's drinking. Fact is, most females feel the same way about that. The fact that a certain portion has no problem with it is immaterial to the general concept that separate crapping stall areas for men and women appeal to most people and always will.

Personally, I don't want to be around men blasting diarrhea either, but we may be different.

Just spent a week in Paris. Other than at the airport and the Pompidou, I ONLY saw unisex bathrooms. Universities, restaurants, places of business, conference centers, etc. all unisex. So, maybe you mean most Americans, and not most men and women.

Co-ed floors seem fine, but I think the bathrooms and dorm rooms should not be. As a parent of a daughter, would you want her going to school in that environment? No way in hell. It's one thing to know, deep down, what will likely transpire at college and another to seemingly encourage it. This trend (especially in places like France) of treating the genders as if they are the same is absurd. Men and women are vastly different in many ways, and it is appropriate to respect and embrace those differences rather than denying them.

Are they denying them? If anything, gender is reinforced more in a place like France than it is in the USA. The average French male's attitude toward women is more traditional than the average American male's, which I guess shows that sex is not necessarily the main theme in these co-ed arrangements.
I went to school in the 80s. We had co-ed floors and shower stalls. It didn't necessarily have anything to do with sex. Because of some publicity about sex on campus, one of the dorms instituted a rule about no opposite sex guests past midnight. Great... for gay people.

Co-ed floors are no big deal. At UConn in the 80s I had two girls in the room next to me, who were technically in a different "dorm", but same floor, same building. But bathrooms would be a problem. People do a lot of things in those bathrooms outside of the stalls in various states of undress that they might not want to do in a co-ed environment. Co-ed rooms make that issue even more accute. Based on the article, my guess is that relatively few heterosexual kids are opting for that dorm @ Buffalo.

You're the most irrational poster on this board, and I include JaYeRoSnTaE in that group.

I say most men and women wouldn't want to share toilets with the the other gender, side by side.

You then pick France of all places and say, "they have side by side ones there," and then extrapolate that to the rest of the world.

It's no wonder education sucks in this country.

It's your education that's wanting. I never said the rest of the world wants unisex toilets. I pointed out that your experience in the USA is quite limited and the world is much bigger.

Is this news? We had coed floors, showers and even roomates in the early 80's (and earlier I believe) at UConn. It was called IDC and because it wasn't filled with jerks we not only coexisted but maintained the building and the kitchen. It wasn't perfect but there was certainly some value in having grown-up responsibilities even in a somewhat artificial environment.

I wouldn't recommend it for a freshman or soph, but in the right situation among responsible students I think a mature young woman might consider that a safer environment than some other dorms on campus.

No. Again, your logic is MIA.

You said, "maybe you mean most Americans." You clearly took your limited experience in France and extrapolated it to the rest of the world outside of America.

Your logical flaws are appalling:

1. Thinking the French represent anybody outside of France.
2. Thinking the mere existence of unisex toilets in France somehow indicates that most men and women prefer it/want it. Has it occurred to you that A. It's ofter a question of space and money. B. Most people have no choice in the matter?

Throw in that the "unisex" crappers in France usually have floor to ceiling walls, and . . .

Let me school you because you need it badly.
I never said either that most of the world prefers unisex bathrooms. I said that the French example shows that your puritanical notions are perhaps shared, at best, in America.
Now we get the ludicrous idea from you that France is perhaps a country that has little space and little money for single sex bathrooms, when the reality is that this is something that is constructed into new buildings. Office buildings, new university halls, restaurants, etc. People are simply not as hung up on these issues as you imagine. Hell, they have naked beaches over in Europe. Imagine that!!! You're the guy ogling everyone's junk.

And save your petty inbox emails. If you get mad again, just go have a beer instead.

It should not be allowed for anyone under 21. By the time most college kids turn 21, they have had at least 3 years of drinking experience under their belt, have a good understanding of what to drink, how much to drink, etc., and is not as invested in going out and getting as destroyed as possible (which was very often the case for myself and many of my colleagues freshman and sophomore years). If I were an 18 year-old college freshman, just from what I've seen the idiots I used to drink with do, I would not want to live in a room where 3+ nights out of the week my room mate comes home obliterated and may try who-knows-what

Based on my recent trip to Paris, and extended time in a modern office building, there were no unisex bathrooms. They did have floor to ceiling stalls that were much more conducive to privacy that American stalls, with their 2-inch gaps, and heights than many males can easily see over. In restaurants, I did not see unisex bathrooms as any more prevalent than in U.S. restaurants. It seemed about the same. Small inner city bistros had no room for separate men's and women's rooms. But I did not see any restroom where both men and women were expected to use the facility at the same time. The same is true in Boston. Larger establishments, and those in hotels did have separate facilities. If they need to serve more than one patron at a time, they were separate. If not, they had one or two unisex toilets with locking doors. I see the same thing in the U.S., even in gas stations.

Unisex bathrooms in dorms present challenges. Much better stalls, like those I saw in our building in Paris, need to be used. There would be no urinals, which wastes space. Shower stalls also would both need to be much better constructed, with far greater privacy than seen in most dorms, locker rooms etc., and would also need to be constructed with an additional private area adjoining for the individual to dry and dress. Additionally, some women prefer not to dress fully before drying their hair. Yes, it could be implemented. In a dorm environment, is it smart or efficient to do this? I doubt it.

Are you talking about Boston? Or Paris?

I was inside U. Paris 4, 5, 6, and 8 (Sorbonne, Descartes, Charles, Diderot). I used unisex bathrooms in the headquarters of BNP-Paribas, as well as Editions Gallimard Office Building. We saw the same thing in performance spaces.

Did you miss all the people in this thread other than myself who LIVED this in the 1980s? We had co-ed showers. Private area for dressing? Uh--people would get in their bathrobes and then head to their rooms. They wouldn't sit around the showers drying their hair. It was NBD.

It doesn't matter, there is little difference. I was in Paris 1, and at the HQ of Atos and EMC France, in a three year old building with no unisex bathrooms. I went to college in the 80's as well, at the Univeristy of Connecticut of all places. There was none of this. Hell you weren't even allowed to use a hairdryer in your room, as it would blow the fuses.

Anyway, what Buffalo did was largely an effort to allow GLBT students to pair up in ways that may actually more closely align to what has traditionally occurs, e.g. with a sex to which they are not attracted.

There was one other person here from UConn in the 80s who said it did exist there.

The introduced a couple coed floors while I was there, in either Alumni or Hilltop. But not coed bathrooms. As I said, I had girls next door to me, though technically a different dorm.

you can sign up for gender neutral housing, meaning you can live with a member of the opposite sex i think. idk why you would want to do that unless it was an apartment or something where you could have your own bedroom.