When I lived in a dorm, I moved into one that had just integrated, seperated by floors. So, there were boys' bathrooms on 2 floors, and girls' bathrooms on the other 2 floors. The staircases and hall doors were locked, so that only residents, ideally, could get to them, and only boys could get to boys' floors, and girls to girls' floors. There was one alledged instant of a boy peeking over the side of a shower to watch girls. They then promptly locked down the bathroom. It was quite an annoyance, imagine having to take your keys to go to the bathroom, and proceeded, on my hall at least, between a battle of us breaking the lock, them fixing the lock, and on and on.
Today's society is by large way too envelopped in the idea of the sanctity of the nude body for unisex bathrooms to work. At least in the south.
I suppose one possibility would be to go to European-style walls from floor to ceiling. But then, there wouldn't be any way to supervise people in public restrooms and ensure there was no homosexual activity, so that wouldn't work either.
The problem seems to be that reality just doesn't fit the way "we" want it to.
sorry...i really should have read over that first paragraph before posting
The dorm I lived in for three years took a vote at the beginning of the year: first two floors were male (first) female (second) bathrooms only (as were the floors themselves), but at our option the second two would be communal or otherwise. The first two years it was communal (though the men would occasionally be berated not to use the urinals while the women were brushing their teeth), the third otherwise, but no one seemed to care when I used the fourth-floor bathroom anyway.
There's currently some agitation here (here=the U of C, for them as don't know) to make some of the bathrooms gender-neutral. Hence the Maroon article--I don't know if it's mentioned there because I don't read the Maroon, though I assume ogged would mention it if it were. Beats me how the efforts are going, though it certainly doesn't seem like a big deal to make the change to me.
So, no, this isn't a parody.
Thanks for the background Ben. They did mention a proposal for going "gender neutral," but I either read the article to say (or just assumed) that they were talking about "private" (one person at a time) bathrooms. It sounds from your description like I was wrong. So good for them, if that's what they do. And yet, to those people who are mortified by this choice, one has to say, perspective people, perspective.
Either its a parody or they need to bring back the Hutchins College.
Robert: is there anything that could take place at the U of C that wouldn't be a sign that they need to bring back the Hutchins college?
When I went to UC Berkeley, the high-rise dorms had 8 floors - one each was unisex, but the bathrooms (except on the women's floor? I don't remember) were open to all. The urinals were across from the sinks, but I never heard about anyone complaining. The shower stalls had high solid walls - nobody was going to peep over them. It all worked out ok.
7 "Robert: is there anything that could take place at the U of C that wouldn't be a sign that they need to bring back the Hutchins college?"
not much