College admissions adviser and expert educational consultant Mark Montgomery gives a tour of a co-ed bathroom at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California. While the idea may seem weird at first, it’s being adopted by colleges around the United States with no apparent ill effect.
TRANSCRIPT:
So right now I’m at Occidental College in the greater Los Angeles area, and I’m in a dormitory, and this is the gender-neutral — actually, no, this is a co-ed, that’s a different thing, gender-neutral and co-ed, different thing. This is a co-ed bathroom. So that is kind of a scary thing for a lot of parents when they think about sending their kids off to college, and I was talking to one of my former students who’s showing us around campus, and it is kind of something to get used to. But I just want to give you a tour or this bathroom so that you can get an idea that actually it’s an okay place. even though it’s co-ed, not gender-neutral.
Inside the Co-Ed Bathroom
So here you have sinks over here, and then the showers are here, and they’re actually pretty nice. So you’ve got a changing space, you’ve got a lock on the door, and then you’ve got the shower with a curtain here. And it’s very private so it’s not like you’re running around naked with all of your classmates. It’s very clean, very handy. There are, let’s see, one, two, three stalls, it looks like, for students to take showers in here. Sink’s very modern over here, and you’ve got places for the students to put all of their things, a couple more sinks over here. And then let’s see, one, two, three, four five toilet stalls. Again, not completely private but private enough.
And as my former student mentioned, the bathrooms really are fairly empty most of the time. So you’re not sharing it with a whole group of students at any one time. Generally speaking, people come and go, they’re getting up at different times and going to bed at different times, so you generally have the bathroom to yourself. But this is a new thing, it’s very common on college campuses now to have co-ed bathrooms, and also gender-neutral, but that’s for a different story, so welcome to the bathroom at Occidental College.
Mark Montgomery
Expert Educational Consultant
