<p>I read a statistic somewhere that 70% of Haverford’s dorm rooms (the actual rooms themselves, not the floors or every other room) are coed. Does anyone know how valid this figure is? I like the school, but don’t like this statistic because I really don’t want to get involed in promiscuity. Thanks.</p>
<p>Most of Haverford’s rooms are singles, so this statistic is bunk. Even about 1/3 of first years get singles. And no first year students will have co-ed rooms - those are only for students in later years.</p>
<p>??? wait, are you saying the dorm rooms are co-ed? Can you ask for a single sex room? I know they said the bathrooms are all co-ed (ugh!) but they didn’t say the rooms were.</p>
<p>I cant help thinking that Haverford should rethink some of these policies - if they held a student body vote, I wonder how this policy would fare. I know my husband and I were appalled when we heard about the coed bathrooms.</p>
<p>Ailey, I’m not a Haverford student, so others may know better - but when I visited Haverford my tour guide said that co-ed housing was opt-in only: students would not be placed with roommates of a different sex unless they specifically agreed to it. She also said that each customs group makes their own decision about whether bathrooms in their hall should be single-sex, co-ed, or a mix, to make sure that all students are comfortable. Both of these policies were implemented by students and they seem to have a lot of say in maintaining them.</p>
<p>Housing policy, as well as most policy involving students, is made by/with student input. That being said, it’s easy to spend 4 years @ HC and not be placed in housing with co-ed bathrooms… 1st, 2nd year live in HCA, 3rd and 4th year live in either HCA or Leeds/Lloyd if you get 4-5 other friends to join you in your suite. The majority of rooms are singles and the “co-ed roommate” assignment is used by a small minority of students who live in HCA as other rooms on campus are 99% single. The “co-ed” roommate policy isn’t used too often and upper-level students have to request it. It was created by students with the belief that, to assume 2 individuals of the same sex can live together without sexual tension assumes that they are heterosexual and some students may feel more comfortable living with friends of the opposite sex as in “Will and Grace”.</p>
<p>Co-ed bathrooms: Article for parents
<a href=“http://www.haverford.edu/Parents/foundersgreen_fall05.pdf[/url]”>http://www.haverford.edu/Parents/foundersgreen_fall05.pdf</a></p>
<p>One of the immutable laws of biology is that what goes into a living body
must exit one way or another after its useful ingredients have been digested.
Traditionally, the facilities in college dormitories where these processes find their ultimate terminus have been segregated by gender. It says a lot about our culture that not until the late 1990s, 30 years after the Sexual Revolution, did co-ed lavatories impinge on our awareness. But today they are a fact of life in many colleges and certainly in most dorms at Haverford. What are parents to make of them?</p>
<p>Fortunately, Haverford parents are far more mature than those whose
children attend less enlightened institutions, and when such matters are discussed they don’t giggle, groan, grimace, smirk, titter, blush, clear their throats, change the subject, zone out, or lapse into terminal denial. This article is directed only at those who get queasy over the prospect that their sons and daughters will be performing bodily functions in the presence of members of the opposite sex, or showering in the same room.</p>
<p>Queries about co-ed bathrooms are among the top-10 Frequently Asked
Questions posed by touring parents, according to one former Haverford tour guide. However, parents’ inquiries are often framed in such exquisitely delicate language that no one else in the group quite understands what is being asked, except for their sons or daughters, whose body language clearly says, “I do not know these people.”</p>
<p>Tour guides are encouraged to confront these discomfiting questions head on,
and here is a Q-and-A culled from the debriefing of the former tour guide.</p>
<p>Q. Are co-ed bathrooms compulsory?
A. No. On the housing survey portions of their “Haverforms,” incoming freshmen are offered a choice. Most freshmen elect co-ed bathrooms. Also, during orientation (“Customs Week,” in Haverfordese) among the options offered to freshmen are separate-sex bathrooms. Even if the consensus is for co-ed facilities, the school will accommodate anyone who remains uneasy or has religious objections. In all likelihood he or she will be placed in the Haverford College Apartments, which have one bathroom per four-student suite for one-at-a-time use. After freshman year, coed is the norm because, as my interviewee told me, “Nobody cares.”</p>
<p>Q. What’s the physical layout of co-ed bathrooms?
A. With some variations, the basic configuration is one urinal, several sinks, two showers, and two or three toilet stalls. The panels that separate the latter do not reach to the floor and feet are visible. In some dorms, such as Barclay and Gummere, there are two adjoining changing areas for showering. The North Dorms — Jones, Lunt, and Comfort — don’t have changing areas, but hooks outside the shower stalls enable students to enter through the curtain, disrobe, hang their robe or towel on the hook, and reverse the procedure when they finish without ever having to expose their bodies.</p>
<p>Q. How do students avoid embarrassment?
A. Some dorms or dorm floors create protocols to regulate the timing of visits by persons of different genders. For others, there is an informal kind of choreography for what sociologist Peter Adler calls “negotiation of personal space.” In most cases mingling is unavoidable and, yes, there is occasional awkwardness, especially at the outset (“For the first week of freshman year, we’re all a little constipated,” admitted one student in the Doublethink piece). However, it isn’t long before attitudes become matter-of-fact and mutual consideration prevails.</p>
<p>Q. What about lust?
A. By all accounts, experiencing others in towels and bathrobes visiting the toilets or performing daily ablutions reduces desire and romance to something close to zero and is probably a key factor in making communal living civil and tolerable. Van Nostrand cites a sociologist’s theory that children who have grown up with siblings are desensitized to bathroom sights, sounds, and smells. “Co-ed bathrooms do not encourage erotic behavior,” he states. In fact, leering, harassment, and ribald comments are discouraged, especially in the context of Haverford’s honor policies. Admittedly, I was one of those touring parents whose imagination conjured the co-ed bathroom experience as something between Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and the debauched Venusburg ballet of Wagner’s Tannh</p>
<p>well, I appreciate the ‘post for parents’, but it’s clearly written with exquisite sneering condescension by someone who thinks anyone who has a problem with it is unenlightened. </p>
<p>Candidly, debauchery is the last thing on my mind when I think of coed bathrooms - my daughter as well her father and I think it is simply a gross invasion of privacy.</p>
<p>It’s clear, though, if this article is any indication, that there is enormous peer pressure on students to go along with it…</p>
<p>The article was written by a parent for a newsletter directed at current parents of HC students. As such, I liken it to a PAC letter sent to people who are already engaged with their respective political party… more to inform about current happenings rather than to persuade. I linked it cause the Q/A seemed to cover most inquiries on the matter.</p>
<p>I can see how you can be offended by it. When I read it, however, because the father referenced high sociologic theory and classical literature in a discussion of something as vulgar as bathrooms seemed to me to make the tone lighthearted… and everything else written I took in that context. He also made clear that he, as well as many parents and some new students, have reservations about co-ed bathrooms but, in the end, while most parents still have doubts (“I realized that students are far more adult about such matters than I”) it is students who eventually don’t care. </p>
<p>Speaking from experience, there is no “peer pressure”. As I wrote, kids can easily live in housing that’s not co-ed bathroom or, as written in the Q/A, can coordinate among their hallmates how to use bathrooms on their floor… this can range from having 1 bathroom male and 1 female to having co-ed use but establish procedures like knocking/announcing before entering. It’s really up to the people who live on the floor and I’ve experienced all types of arrangements.</p>
<p>In your posts here, I get a sense that there is a certain level of student disempowerment at HC by administration and classmates that you feel may be present but which I am not familiar (“…I cant help thinking that Haverford should rethink some of these policies - if they held a student body vote, I wonder how this policy would fare…” and “…that there is enormous peer pressure on students to go along with it…”). HC has lots of +s and some –s but one of its strongest and most unique features is the amount of freedom and respect students are given to govern themselves which is derived from HC’s Quaker origins. For example, the current president, Steve Emerson HC’79 (MD/PhD from Yale and ex-chair of oncology at Penn), reserves Friday afternoons for students to informally come to his office without appointment to talk about anything and he also introduces himself by his 1st name to students as well. It’s this respect that’s accorded to students at a young age and what that helps promote and having students work it out themselves (banal bathroom policy to the honor code) that, to me, makes a HC education a little more special than perhaps elsewhere.</p>
<p>HC Alum,
D1’s first custom group voted for coed bathrooms. I cautiously inquired about her first encounter with a male. Admittedly, she said it was “strange”…but, the “ice was broken” and it was never a problem. And, she attended an all girls’ secondary school. 
I can’t believe that she is now a senior…</p>
<p>HC Alum, thanks for the clarification. It’s good to know there isn’t peer pressure on this. Yes, I did find the article offensive, but as you say it was preaching to the choir.</p>
<p>Your information was reassuring. My daughter liked Haverford when we visited, with reservations about this policy, so your added detail was very helpful.</p>
<p>Archermom… You’re not getting misty already are you?! 
I believe you have 7 more college months with D1 before graduation and 2 more chances at this process with your other kids. If she hasn’t already done so, in addition to heavy academics, extracurriculars and grad school interviewing, I’d recommend she get a camera and start taking candid shots of her remaining time on campus… especially during the fall time. Trust me, it’s time well invested. </p>
<p>Ailey- I had reservations with the bathroom thing as well but I asked for co-ed housing freshman year cause I wanted to challenge my comfort zone as that’s what I wanted my college experience to be. We had a “knock before entering policy” on our floor. Despite this, for the 1st few months, I woke up at 7AM (very early for college kids) mainly to avoid bathroom traffic and awkwardness… and I guess to get to organic chem by 8:30 too.</p>
<p>HC Alum,
As a parent, it is easy to get “misty” when D1 has had such a great education and experience at HC. Last spring I made reference to her senior yr and D1 quickly responded with, “I don’t want to talk about it (last yr).” It is clear that she has strong, loyal ties to her school communities…both college and secondary. That speaks highly of the communities that she has been a member of. We are hopeful that she finds a similar connection in graduate school.</p>
<p>And, yes, we are currently going through the college admissions process with D2. Although HC is on her list, she is looking for her own experience and is determined to attend a different college from her sister. She is heavily involved in robotics, so an engineering option is high on her list. We’ll see what happens…</p>