When older d was a freshman in fall of 2003, the housing was co-ed by room and gender neutral bathroom. When younger d was a freshman in fall of 2006, her housing was co-ed by wing of the dorm and single sex bathroom. Both lived in many situations over college in which they shared suite style housing or apartments with members of the opposite sex as well as both gay and straight friends. It was never an issue for us or for them. I think that this is pretty much the norm these days.
@romanigypsyeyes I think you needed to live with women’s college women. Largely drama free, sisterhood forever! 
Seriously, from what I know of you I like you a lot and it disturbs me to hear you saying you don’t like living with “women.” That IS like saying you don’t like living with “Hispanics” or “Blacks.” Something that I think you would never say…or feel. Maybe this is something you need to examine.
I think that as long as people have whatever degree of privacy they require, mixed gender housing is just fine. I, and many other people I know, lived in mixed gender dorms and mixed gender apartments after college. No big deal. We shared a bathroom, just like a family. We didn’t use it at the same time. It was bizarre, for us, that at the same time Three’s Company was on the TV, suggesting that our utterly routine living situation was salacious in some way.
S’s freshman dorm had single sex rooms and suites mixed on a floor, with separate bathrooms. So no one had a mixed gender room, or had to use a unisex bathroom. That seems like a good mix for most people.
I do think that mixed gender rooms is going too far, unless the roommates choose it.
Huh, Consolation? That isn’t what I meant at all. I get along better with men than women, in general.
I have lived with both male and female roommates and this is just based on my own experience. I prefer living with men (IN GENERAL)- they take shorter showers and just generally spend a shorter amount of time in the bathroom.
I have no idea how you went from my living preference to racism. Lots of people have said here and other places that they wouldn’t want their child living with the opposite sex. How is my preference any different?
I’m really surprised, and a little hurt, that you would say something like that to be honest.
ETA: How on earth is it OK for someone to say that they much prefer to live with their own sex but not ok for someone to express the opposite preference?
I think people should be able to pick whatever works best FOR THEM- whatever that is. Even if that means not having roommates at all (also not my preference- living alone is lonely).
With boyfriends and girlfriends around my recollection is that almost all suites ended up de facto coed.
My son shared an off-campus apt with a mixed group, and my daughter just told me she is thinking of sharing a mixed suite in a dorm next year. I’m fine with it.
Here’s the thing. Let’s not talk about different sexes living together, let’s talk about different PEOPLE living together. To say that “guys” in general leave pizza boxes and beer cans on the kitchen table or that women leave their hair on the bathroom floor is awful stereotyping! Some guys are neat, some are messy. Same with women. This isn’t a sex issue it’s a PEOPLE issue!
I agree with you, abasket. But most people room blind their freshman year. For me personally, I (and I can’t speak for anyone else) would rather have a random guy than a random chick. There are LOTS of preferences that people can have- partier vs non-partier, religious vs not, night owl vs early riser, etc. If that had been what the thread was about, I would’ve voiced my preferences for those. (And for me, the most important quality in a roommate would’ve been someone who is a night owl- well above their sex- but I had no options going into my freshman year of dorming… not even a preference survey like they have now.)
I lived with the same woman for all 4 years of college- we just added guys that we knew and loved along the way.
After freshmen year, yes definitely pick the people! (Though, there’s been many a poster on here who has said that they would never let their child live with the opposite sex on their dime so…)
One of my daughters has had a very stable housing pick group with three young men. No drama, great guys, all friends since freshman year. One bathroom, just not an issue. Straight as far as I know, but again, not an issue.
D2 was an RA in a theme house her senior year. It was an environmental theme house and was coed . All bathrooms were gender neutral by majority vote of those living in the house. One occupant disagreed, as did her parents. The school stood behind the house vote and moved the one student, which she was willing to do, to another location. H and I had no trouble with the gender neutral bathrooms.
Reading above a few entries, I think my D’s have found that living with people ( whatever gender) that have the same requirements makes for good roommates. And the opposite. Both of my D’s are fairly clean and neat. Both have had, and are having, what are to them the most difficult issues. And that is their roommates do not live keep the apartment as clean as they would like.
D1 dealt with the issue when she had roommates by requiring a house cleaner, and they went along. She then moved into a single. She still has a house cleaner.
D2 has organized house meetings to make sure chores are done so that common places in the house are not disgusting. She still wants to move.
I think freshmen – particularly female freshmen – might be uncomfortable being assigned to co-ed suites with strangers of the opposite sex.
Upperclassmen usually want to live with their friends, regardless of gender. They have long done this off-campus (usually with double bedrooms, if there are any, shared either by same-sex roommates or significant others of whatever genders). All students want now is to be able to do the same thing on campus, too. This seems reasonable.
A tip from my sister, who spent more than a decade living in a shared house that accommodated six people, with many changes of housemates during that time: If you care about the trappings of civilization (e.g., no pizza boxes on the floor), the secret is to have the house/apartment/suite be majority female. If you get to a 50/50 ratio, things start to deteriorate.
When I rented my first post-college house the landlord told us that in his experience there were fewer issues when his tenants were mixed groups than if they were all male or all female.
This was a summer rental in a resort area so I would imagine that rowdy parties were one of the primary sources of landlord issues.
“I think freshmen – particularly female freshmen – might be uncomfortable being assigned to co-ed suites with strangers of the opposite sex.”
No one, on any college campus, is randomly assigned a roommate of the opposite sex. At my son’s schools, no freshman designated rooms are gender neutral.
I didn’t mean a room. I meant a suite – say, for five or six students who share a bathroom. Even if the rooms within the suite are either singles or doubles with same-sex roommates, the idea of being in an apartment-like setting with roommates of the opposite sex whom you do not know could be uncomfortable for some entering freshmen, especially girls.
The schools we saw with suites, did not offer them for freshmen.
Which schools do?
@romanigypsyeyes, my apologies. I misunderstood your reasons for preferring to live with guys. Usually when people say they don’t want to live with women, they go on to talk about being afraid of excessive drama and cat fights. I find that very sexist. I’ve seen this cited as a reason not to go to a women’s college. In actual fact, in my experience and in that of many others, women’s colleges are much more free of such stuff than coed environments where at least some people are competing for male attention. On the other hand, as others have pointed out, equally negative stereotypes abound about guys.
No it had nothing to do with drama or whatever.
I just happen to get along better with the average male than the average female because our interests tend to align better. Due more to conditioning than actual innate sex differences, I’d suspect.
My interests include: sports (which are statstically more watched by men), e-sports (overwhelmingly dominated by men), etc. I don’t like fashion and makeup which is overwhelmingly the zone of women. OBVIOUSLY there are exceptions as I am one of them. However if you even look at CC, which has more women than men, you find tons of threads on fashion, purses, etc. Do you think an average male dominated space would have so many threads like that?
If I opted for sex neutral housing could I get a male that loves ballet and fashion? Absolutely and we would probably have little in common. More likely though, just by statistics, I’d end up with a guy that I have overlapping interests with. Could I end up with a woman that shares my interests? Of course. However, in this hypothetical scenario, I was only chosing based on sex and not some other interests survey.
“didn’t mean a room. I meant a suite – say, for five or six students who share a bathroom.”
I don’t know about other schools but at my son’s school only upper classes can even get suites. I also highly doubt colleges would randomly assign freshman roommates of different genders even in a suite.
As far as I know, gender-neutral housing is reserved for upperclassmen and then, it is chosen rather than dictated. I would assume that if someone prefers same-sex housing for religious or cultural reasons then that is something that they would investigate before accepting an offer.
I do think housing issues are going to get more complicated as time goes by. My kids noticed that many applications asked for M/F/O status. But what does that mean - genetically, socially, identifying? If someone is transgender and identifies as female (but is genetically male), where do they get housed?
I lived in co-ed small hallways sharing a bathroom and showers for 3 years during the 1970’s. At Yale. Was a genuinely positive thing.