Same here. It was in that weed-smoke-filled place I posted about earlier. You’re bringing on a tear, @emilybee.
I liked that my date and I could be standing at adjacent sinks getting ready to go out on a Friday night. The shower area was not supposed to be co-ed, but those darn kids…
(That date and I are still standing at adjacent sinks 40 years later.)
I grew up with four brothers. Our house had one bathroom, so it’s true I had to use the “boys” bathroom. Co-ed bathrooms is not a dealbreaker for me since it is no more gross than the bathroom I had to grow up with.
@saillakeerie, I was going to say the same thing, lol.
My D was in an all-women’s dorm last semester, but moved to a coed interest house. Not sure if the bathrooms are coed or not (it’s in a dorm), so I guess it’s not an issue for her.
The thing I’ve never understood is gender-designated single stall public bathrooms. A toilet’s a toilet as far as I’m concerned. The argument that one gender gets the seat dirty more than the other doesn’t hold water with me…I’ve seen plenty of disgusting women’s bathrooms.
Our son grew up having a bathroom to himself and had a single room at boarding school during his years there. He’s in the military now. Zero privacy. I think he is experiencing “shock and awe.”
One of my kids (in a single sex suite) shared the bathroom with two “belle” types who did their hair twice a day- blow dry in the am before classes, and then styled with a flat iron or something else late in the day (or maybe I have it mixed up since I am not a hair person). Chunks of makeup in the sink, globs of moisturizer on the mirror, used Q tips on the communal storage shelf.
you have NEVER seen anything as disgusting as that bathroom. Two young women with every grooming and beauty product known to man, completely unable to clean out a sink or swiffer their hair off the floor so their suitemates didn’t have to wade through it.
My son shared a suite with two ROTC candidates and you could have eaten off the floor of that bathroom (and my kid is a slob).
Don’t think this is a gender issue.
Going back a few pages, but I want to address this:
Why doesn’t EVERY university do that? Why single out Bama?
Personally, a university’s four-year graduation rate was never of much concern to me, so unless my kid was looking at an impacted major (where it’s nearly impossible to get in and out in four years), I never paid the numbers all that much attention. I had four years maximum (for financial reasons) to get in and out of college back in the day, and that’s pretty much the parameters I gave my son: He gets eight semesters to get it done.
Re Bama, the university maps out how to graduate in four years for most majors (“Finish in Four”), so if a student doesn’t get it done (assuming he doesn’t require a lot of remedial coursework), it’s pretty much on him IMHO. My son didn’t have any AP credits when he started, and he’ll have no problems completing his engineering degree in eight semesters over five years (the fifth year because he’s doing a co-op). The Presidential Scholarship also doesn’t limit how many credits a student can take, so if you need to carry some extra credits to graduate on time, it might be challenging, but it’s not going to require any additional outlay of cash.
https://www.ua.edu/academics/majors/
If your student elects to go the co-op route, you do have to factor in housing costs, because most off-campus leases are 12-month and subletting isn’t that easy to do, but it seems like a minor trade-off when your student will be working full time for three semesters earning on average $18/hr. There’s also a nominal fee (<$300) charged during co-op semesters to maintain your status as an enrolled student, but it’s a very minor fee to pay to preserve your scholarship for the semesters you’ll be enrolled full time.
As to deal-breakers for my family, as long as my kid could get there in 24 hours, the school had a range of majors he could choose from, and we could afford it, we were pretty open-minded. Big, small, private, public, elite, mid-tier, rural, urban, suburban–it was all on the table, as long as it seemed like a good fit for him.
Wow everyone hear thinks no problem sharing coed bathrooms and showers. What’s next coed rommates?
Very much different. Co-ed bathrooms and showers are not shared at the same time (other than maybe sinks). Co-ed rooms would be. And from what I have read, some schools do allow co-ed rooms. Not for everyone no doubt.
And in the end, different people will have different preferences. If co-ed bathrooms are a concern, go to a college that doesn’t have them or live in housing that doesn’t have them. Seems like a much bigger issue is being made than really exists.
And that’s true of all of the show stoppers referenced here. Colleges exist with these show stoppers and apparently they are getting enough students to fill classrooms and dorms. If you don’t like, go somewhere else. The way it should work, right?
It’s not only not the sameness coed rooms, but it is clearly not the case that “everyone here” thinks coed bathrooms are no problem. If they weren’t a dealbreaker for some people, the issue never would have come up in this thread.
Google “gender neutral dorms”
Here’s one list of colleges with gender neutral housing
The most comprehensive list I have of gender-neutral school is: Bennington College, Brown University, California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Clark University, Colorado College, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Grinnell College, Hampshire College, Harvard University, Haverford College, Humboldt State University, Lawrence University, Lewis & Clark College, Oberlin College, San Diego State University, Sarah Lawrence College, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, University of California-Riverside, University of Chicago, University of Connecticut, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern Maine, and Wesleyan University.
@LucieTheLakie - most kids at Bama are not graduating in 4 years.
That’s a problem.
dealbreaker for my kid
I have a co-ed roommate. It works pretty well for us. 
They also provide helpful prerequisite charts so that students can figure out what the most important courses to take are. For example:
http://cs.ua.edu/files/2011/08/CS-Flowchart-2015.pdf
http://me.eng.ua.edu/files/2014/05/BSME-Curriculum-Flowchart-Fall-2014.pdf
Perhaps a problem for those students. Not necessarily a problem for students who do not need remedial courses and can take (and pass) full course loads following their majors’ course plans.
When I went to college, the college had a four year graduation rate under 40% and a six year graduation rate around 75% (not that much different from today’s University of Alabama). I had no difficulty graduating in eight semesters over four years (taking more than the minimum 120 credit units despite entering with AP credit).
@ClarinetDad16 I couldn’t find the statistic for how many complete the program, but UA offers students the ability to graduate with their masters simultaneously with their bachelors. Our son could have graduated in 4 semesters if he hadn’t double majored. 5 with his double. But instead he is going to attend for 8 and utilize the University Scholar’s opportunity. http://courseleaf.ua.edu/specialacademicprograms/#universityscholarsprogramtext
If graduating in 4 yrs with a bachelors was a real obstacle for all students, then it is doubtful the program would exist. It exists b/c they want their top students to have every opportunity to excel.
Knowing your student is really the key. Graduation rates is something we have not worried about b/c our kids are academically oriented.
Having kids take more than 4 years to graduate is a little like Valvoline telling you to change your oil every 100 yards from the colleges perspective. 
Some colleges are now using 4 year grad guarantee as a selling point. Other schools do not yet need to do that.
Coed bathrooms don’t mean that men and women are showering at the same time in the same showers.
At one of my kids colleges, it just meant that you walked into the bathroom and then locked the door. You were now alone to do what you wish. But when you exited, you could not predict whether the NEXT user of the room would be male or female. But everyone walked to the closest bathroom, waited for it to be vacant (just like at home) or went to another floor/hall if they couldn’t wait (just like at home if you have more than one bathroom).
I had no problem with this set up. Nor would I have had a problem if the bathrooms were single sex- it’s just that it is very hard to dictate how to use the space when some colleges have retrofitted 19th century buildings to 21st century uses. (one kids dorm had “servants quarters” from the days when young men would show up with their own valet for college).
Again, the coed bathroom thing is very different if it’s a set-up akin to a hall bathroom in a private home shared by multiple siblings in which it’s rare that more than one person is there at any given time, versus the kind that is like a health club or gym locker room with multiple people and multiple facilities all in use at the same time.
The first isn’t a culture shock since we all “get” the idea of siblings taking their turn in a bathroom. The second is, since none of us belong to health clubs or gyms with coed locker rooms (nor are any of the fitness facilities being built at these colleges - why do you suppose?).
I really wish people would stop assuming all dorm setups are like the first. Not every dorm is a) a holdover from the 1800s or b) a new suite style. There are dorms where the setup is truly like that of a gym or health club with rows of toilets, sinks and showers.
My daughter visited a friend, a year older that she, and her friend lived on a co-ed floor with a co-ed bathroom. The was a bank or toilet stalls and a bank of sinks across the room. She didn’t see the showers. My daughter said, “not for me”. The idea of being in a stall with a boy in the stall next to her felt too intimate. She was not raised with bothers. It was t a cleanliness issue for her but rather a feeling of intimacy.
If your kid is okay with it, great. If your kid is not, that’s okay too.
If my son can choose between schools that graduate 80%+ in 4 years or 44%., which school is on the list and which is not?
Sharing bathrooms with siblings different than peers of different gender I would think. Obviously for some no big deal.
With all the sexual assault concerns on college campus why even go there. Would making for any interesting dating relationship I would think. Then again probably shouldn’t date somebody in the next stall. Comparing that to a current marriage situation apples to oranges.