<p>Michael Sam and his teammates are changing in the locker room and going home. Not living or sleeping there. </p>
<p>^So you would be against your S having a gay roommate?</p>
<p>No, I wouldn’t be against my S having a gay roommate in the least. (Or my D either). </p>
<p>“They’ve had it for around a bit more than 4 decades and the college still proudly has an archive of the magazine cover from the issue which wrote about its introduction back then.”</p>
<p>Every college has an archive of all of its magazines, you know. </p>
<p>My concerns are about modesty, not sex. I am on a business trip with a male coworker right now. I don’t wish to room with him because it would be inappropriate for me to get undressed in front of him, not because I’m worried we couldn’t keep our hands off one another. When I go to the gym, same thing. </p>
<p>
This would be difficult in the types of dorms where there are a hallway of doubles sharing one bathroom/shower setup, as the bathrooms are even more public than the dorm room.</p>
<p>Just like the perennial co-ed bathroom discussion, there are different types of setups. </p>
<p>I am referring to the classic dorm set up of a hall with a hallway of doubles sharing one communal bathroom with rows of toilets, sinks, stalls, which is what I and my kids have always experienced, and where it would be completely ludicrous and unacceptable to suggest that someone routinely change or get dressed there. </p>
<p>Other people are thinking of suites where there are singles, a shared common space that the rooms open into, and a bathroom that is more akin to a home bathroom in that it’s shared by, say. 4-6 people and there aren’t rows of toilets, sinks and shower stalls. And it’s right there, not a trek down the hall, and normally only one person occupies it for a time. </p>
<p>And these two groups talk past one another. In the co-ed bathroom discussions, people who had experienced the latter kept saying “but it’s no different from sharing a bathroom with your brother/sister at home” when to those of us who lived in the former, it most assuredly was. </p>
<p>“But I don’t see it as a big deal either way, I wouldn’t particularly care about changing in front of a guy any more than I would a female roommate, and besides, they could just turn around”</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s really a classy way to raise a young woman, to be totally cavalier about changing in front of guys. Or vice versa either. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Classy kids play band instruments.</p>
<p>When my daughter was in high school marching band, the students were expected to change out of their band uniforms immediately after a competition, on the band bus, in full view of one another. The purpose was to keep the uniforms as clean as possible. And there was no other location available.</p>
<p>Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Often, if a kid comes back to the dorm room to change (into or out of athletic clothing, for example) and finds that the roommate is there and has guests, the kid will go into the bathroom to change. What’s the alternative? And some kids change in the stalls in the communal bathrooms every time because they simply don’t like getting naked in front of other people. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Classy? </p>
<p>An interesting term considering the term connotates perceived behavioral norms of the middle and lower middle classes have of the upper classes being more refined and polite. Interesting when plenty of biographies and some academic studies have actually shown the middle classes sometimes wildly overcompensate in those respects. </p>
<p>Especially considering in many ways, the upper and working-classes are much closer in behavioral norms, vocabulary, devil may-care attitude about what others think of their sometimes boorish/uncouth behaviors/actions than the aspirational middle/lower middle class. </p>
<p>Classy is one term commonly used by middle/lower-middle class folks or those with such origins to try policing others to conforming to their notions of how the “higher orders” behave…even when those notions don’t always accord with the reality on the ground. </p>
<p>“Sometimes you have to do what you to do.”</p>
<p>Well of course. I don’t see why all of these “exceptions” or non-ideal situations are being brought up. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t want it for myself, but I don’t think I’d object to it for my child if s/he thought it was OK, and there was no romantic interest involved. I’d just roll my eyes and say, “These kids today…” Isn’t that our obligation as adults?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>A.K.A. “Get off of my lawn!!!”</p>
<p><<<
When my daughter was in high school marching band, the students were expected to change out of their band uniforms immediately after a competition, on the band bus, in full view of one another. The purpose was to keep the uniforms as clean as possible. And there was no other location available.
<<<</p>
<p>That is a completely inappropriate requirement. That is practically an abusive requirement. I would expect parents to protect their kids from such nutty ideas and demand that they come up with an alternative if the goal is to keep the uniforms clean. </p>
<p>At a minimum, they could have had some kind of “sheet set up” and had the boys in the back end and the girls in the front end…but that doesn’t protect them from outsiders looking in thru windows. </p>
<p>Some classy kids are involved in theater and dance – if they’ve been in stage performances, they have likely experienced the “quick change” – where performers needs to completely change from one costume to another within a matter of minutes. As a sometimes back-stage mom, I can assure you that the performers are ripping off their costumes in the wings and not at all concerned about the gender of whoever is available to help them get zipped or snapped into whatever costume the next scene calls for. </p>
<p>That is true to a degree Or it was. However, schools are getting sued for sexual violations real and imagined and teachers are having affairs with high schoolers and they are not as casual about this issue as they used to be. There are a lot more screens going up than there were in the olden days. No youth theater company, dance, or music program needs a lawsuit or a ruined reputation.</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl If I’m changing in a room, it’s unlikely that anyone would see anymore of me than they would see at the beach or a swimming pool. We make these arbitrary distinctions like saying that it’s okay to be mostly naked in front of hundreds of strangers at the beach, and yet the same thing is so taboo and “not classy” in other settings. I’d be wearing the same kinds of clothes in both situations, so why should it bother me? FWIW, in high school I was both a band kid and a theater kid and everybody changed in front of everybody else in both activities, regardless of gender. It was never a big deal or a big taboo because nobody MADE it a big deal</p>
<p>In college, my sons live in suites where they have their own rooms. They have very little to do with/rarely see their suitemates, so it probably wouldn’t matter if those were male or female. Perhaps the suite would smell better with female residents? 
But I don’t want my daughters living with any guy that isn’t married to them.
Someone said proximity is not a good way to pick a romantic partner. IMO, it is one of the most common ways. I lived with a couple male room/housemates when I was young. In the classic double dormroom/bathroom down the hall setup, my roommate’s boyfriend lived with us for most of a year. Yes, I would ask him to “turn around” when I got dressed, and he was very good about that (he never teased me or tried to look. . .) Another time I shared a house with a man who had a girlfriend. Eventually both of these guys, whom I considered “close friends,” wanted to be more than friends. Cringe–there were a few awkward moments. We remained friends, but. . .something changed. What makes you attracted to someone? Spending a lot of time in close quarters, conversation, getting to know each other, etc. Even if the person is romantically involved with someone else, it is hard not to imagine that room/housemate as a potential partner. And I think it is harder for males to NOT be attracted/develop feelings for a woman that they are living with.( IMO a lot of girls are naive/clueless about this.) Which is why I wouldn’t want my daughters living with guys. “Let’s just be friends. . .” It is unnatural. It just doesn’t work, in my experience. Too much potential for drama.</p>
<p>
With casual hook-ups and friends -with-benefits being quite common on campuses nowadays, the probability is all the higher that roomies who start out as friends may end up in relationships of one sort or another. jym mentioned other boyfriends/girlfriends, which I could certainly see being a problem. Jessica and Jeremy are living in the same room. They aren’t romantically involved, but Jeremy is vying for Jessica’s attention. Jessica starts seeing Andrew, who finds it off-putting to have his competition, Jeremy, in such an advantageous position. Drama ensues.</p>
<p><<<
f I’m changing in a room, it’s unlikely that anyone would see anymore of me than they would see at the beach or a swimming pool. We make these arbitrary distinctions like saying that it’s okay to be mostly naked in front of hundreds of strangers at the beach, and yet the same thing is so taboo and “not classy” in other settings. I’</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Well, I’m not @Pizzagirl but I will say that first of all, most panties and many bras are more see-thru than bikini bottoms and tops…and not all girls opt to wear bikinis on the beach. </p>
<p>And in the case upthread where HS band students are forced to take off their band uniforms on the bus in front of each other (boys and girls), that is outrageous. If the band-moms didn’t have the balls to put a stop to that nonsense, I can’t imagine why the dads didn’t. We don’t have D’s, but if we did, I know for certain that my H would not have tolerated that (not that I would have, either.)</p>