US college first year describes her experience of mixed dorms

@PAND0RA definitely the norm for my two recently graduated kids. In Dirham and Cambridge - mixed sex corridors and toilet and shower facilities. I believe there were en-suite options but they were Uber expensive and rare as hens teeth.

Incidentally ds was in a mixed accommodation block last year, one bathroom shared with six others. Within said bathroom a lockable shower, open plan sinks and a lockable toilet. So entirely possible for female student to be in the shower, and one male student in the loo and another shaving. Although I think they were respectful of each other need for space.

We had mixed sex floors and shared bathrooms but they were individual toilets and showers other a locking door. Totally fine and 100% different to sharing a row of showers or toilets with dividers in one big room.

Therefor sharing is being forced

En-suite are the highest in demand

Says it all really, people want their privacy and therefore is being forced upon them

The US seems to be much stricter culturally with dorms - sharing a bedroom for example is the norm there, but not here.

My student accommodation (30 years ago) was in a block which had flats of 10 students, single sex, 8 singles & one double room, en-suite shared between 2 (so accessed by doors from the bedrooms either side).

We were on the top floor, so actually 4 of our singles were duplexes - a second loft bedroom reached by a ladder inside your roommate's space, so there were actually 14 of us, & 4 of the bathrooms had to accommodate 4 people.

The biggest rows we ever had were over bathrooms - boyfriends staying over & hogging them, or wandering into the room on the other side 🤨, people being sick in them, people not cleaning them. Second only to occupants of upper berths bringing back ONSs via their lower berth roommates' spaces.

There was no actual perving that I can remember - it was just a bit crowded, chaotic & party central - we rapidly acquired a reputation as the party central flat.

I remember occasionally escaping to my mate's naice women only hall when living in a National Lampoon sequel got a bit tiresome.

However any boyfriends that pissed off other occupants were roundly dealt with - there were several dramatic rows over one girl's light fingered drug dealer bf, someone else's bloke who pebble dashed a shared bathroom & didn't clean up, & one girl whose upper berth roomie brought a different chap back every other night.

In every case, the house rule was that your roommate/bathroom buddy had the right to veto any males in their space, & if you didn't like it, you could go back to his for a shag, or move out.

My worry these days would be that my dds would feel they had to be 'kind' & 'inclusive' rather than saying No, you're NOT bringing skanky Dave back ever again' & feeling confident that the rest of the flat would back them.

Is bathroom cubicles have large gaps.
Dorm showers are often In a row with just a flimsy curtain that doesn’t ever stay properly closed. There may be solid walls between, but sometimes they dividers are the same cubicle walls with gaps.

I was at uni in the US in the early '90s. The default for housing was mixed sex dorms (but single-sex rooms), with very specific and protected single-sex carve-outs.

In reality - the mixed-sex dorms had at one point been "co-ed by floor" - all women on one floor, all men on another. By the '90s, the floors were mixed, but the Housing Office still allocated space by sex - men on one end of the hallway, women on the other. At my school, the hallway "sections" were typically marked with (non-locking) swinging doors - installed mainly to meet modern fire codes. So the closest "bathroom" to anyone's dorm room would normally be shared by people of the same sex.

My freshman year (year 1/4), in a mixed-sex dorm: my neighbour's roommate dropped out and eventually her boyfriend moved in. (The Housing Office allowed mixed-sex room assignments as long as it was by request/consent of all roommates - they just would not assign strangers to a mixed-sex room). He may very well have used the closest lav for a quick wee, but he also schlepped his stuff down the hallway to the de facto "men's" to take a shower. This was the pattern, as far as I remember, with any men around - somebody's boyfriend staying overnight, someone's brother visiting for the weekend, etc. This wasn't spelled out - men weren't banned from the "women's" facilities, or vice versa - it was just normal non-creepy behaviour/good manners. There certainly was the opportunity to creep, but there was also no hesitation about loudly calling out (or even reporting) questionable behaviour. A very new fresh(wo)man might have gone through the motions to placate a creepy dude chatting to her through the shower curtain (and yes, they were/are literally curtains) as Olivia describes - but as soon as she mentioned what had happened, she'd have received clear and unambiguous support and advice to call it out and shut it down next time.

There were single-sex accomodations on campus - one dorm was still "co-ed by floor" and another dorm was all women. There were also group (4 or 5 person) flats available on campus - but much in demand, so usually people couldn't access these until at least their junior (3/4) year; you'd go in as a group to request a flat. I lived in one of these flats for my last two years. At the end of my junior year, two of my housemates graduated, so the remaining three of us were looking for two new people so we could keep the same space. One flatmate, R, was a foreign student (from a South American country) whose strict Roman Catholic parents wouldn't let her live with an unrelated man, so we had to look for only female potential flatmates. It limited our options, but wasn't at all controversial. R said that if she hadn't had the all-women dorm her first two years and the all-women flat her last two, her parents would not have let her go away to university.

Beyond the potential for sexualised violence in mixed sex intimate spaces, which we know is a huge issue - this is what I worry about, specifically (I know there are a great many things to worry about, and not dismissing other concerns):

(1) women being discouraged from recognising and calling out sexualised creepy (and potentially dangerous) behaviour, regardless of the source
(2) women (like R) being denied educational opportunities because they are not allowed to choose/gatekeep boundaries regarding their living space.

I was in mixed sex halls in the early '80s, it was completely normal. There was no ensuite either, just bathrooms on each floor. You just locked the door behind you and got on with it. I can't remember any sexual harrassment at all.
Obviously there were no tiny hidden cameras then to worry about. I guess that might make a difference.

My accommodation around 10 years ago was mixed with floors for women and men. To be honest I never had an issue with it, had my dressing gown and would run back to my room. At the time we all respected each others privacy and it worked.
These halls have now been demolished and were replaced by ensuites in every room.

My accommodation in the 90s was mixed, but the rooms and toilets/showers were on male and female floors so not mixed sharing. Only the TV room was for everyone to use.

The new buildings were all en suite.

It’s NOT the norm in the Uk. People just like to suggest it is to promote their personal agenda.

Yes lots of accommodation is mixed sex. But it’s usually en-suite ( or other individual facilities ) or single sex shared bathrooms.

Remember Lots of universities don’t run their own accommodation anymore. It’s done by large companies like Fresh, sanctuary, Vita, CRM, Student Roost. They know what their costumers want and it’s not what the writer of that article describes.

I was in mixed sex halls in the early 90s

It was one floor male one floor female so the toilets and showers on the relevant floors were single sex.

Which isn't to say that there weren't blokes nipping for a pee if they were drinking with you.

But generally most male and female students would feel pretty uncomfy coming out the shower with a towel round with the opposite sex there doing their teeth etc

I'm surprised this is the norm in the UK tbh

Men need to sort other men out before they start calling women exclusionary or discriminatory for not wanting to be around them and their dicks.

Absolutely right Sarah.

US 'bathrooms' have really short doors with massive gaps top and bottom that a 6'3" guy could peer over without going on tiptoes. They also have wide cracks down the hinge and latch sides so anyone could peer in and see everything if they were determined and intrusive enough. I was shocked to the core and felt way too vulnerable even in single sex loos.

And often students can chose to be in single sex or mixed sex Accommodation. Along with other choices such as quiet / noisy and alcohol consuming / alcohol free flats.

Oh so what chloe said

When we looked at accommodation for ds1 there was either en suite or individual shower rooms and toilets which were obviously mixed sex

But there wasnt a row of cubicles...just individual bathrooms, with locks

Lots of student accommodation in the Uk is en-suite.

I had mixed sex halls at uni and shared shower/bathrooms (15 years ago). The bathrooms were all designed for individual use, like a bathroom in a house. Nothing like what is described here.

I don’t understand how a random bloke from down the corridor would have access to the living space she shared with her roommates. Surely they would be behind a proper front door (requiring a key) just like a block of flats?

Apologies, wrong screenshot.

She explains her reasoning here:

twitter.com/terfalicious/status/1284594799748800513?s=21

Not sure I agree with her, but she’s certainly a thoughtful young woman. It’s disgusting that the college is putting young women at risk, and exposing them to sexual harassment so as to appease a tiny group of utterly unreasonable people.

DD had mixed sex corridor and bathrooms/showers in her first year at Durham four years ago. So did DS five years ago. I should ask her if it was as appalling as this. She hasn't said it was. I understood it was pretty common at uk universities.