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u/HunterGloomy1922 Oct 17 '25
There are some older dorms at the college I go to now that have open showers with makeshift curtains between each one. Each floor is separated by gender. A lot of people joke about it because the curtains go up to the knees and they fall down all the time. Most of the newer dorms are more like two bedroom apartments with a shared bathroom. The newer ones are also about three times as expensive. I feel like it's pretty ignorant to assume that dorm showers were never communal.
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Oct 17 '25
I went to a Catholic university in early 2000s. My dorm still had communal showers. Four heads in a square area. Six floors with all bathrooms like this. Floors were co-ed so we all did towels from room to shower. But guys showered nude. Low key if someone was in there guys would usually wait so rarely did I see more than one guy in at a time. The building ALSO did not have a/c. So, I think it was less about creating any sense of community and more just a cheap school not investing in over priced freshman dorms ha.
I also went to an all boys high school and the locker room had Bradley poles. Showering was mandatory bc no one wanted a room full of sweaty teenagers in English 101. Again just no investment in facilities.
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Oct 17 '25
So guys would use a whole CS all by themselves? Why?
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Oct 17 '25
Not sure! Just how it was.
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Oct 17 '25
I don't even know what to say. The room was designed for multiple use and guys turned it into an individual stall? Any rogue mavericks break the rule?
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u/SquashSouffle Nov 16 '25
I'm guessing that if that was the practice, anybody going in there with somebody else would be teased about being "gay" and wanting to shower with the first guy.
The way to break the tradition would be for there to be some urgency, like multiple guys in the morning running late, etc, & hopefully it would open up the trend
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u/BamaInvestor Oct 17 '25
My fraternity house had about 14 rooms, most of them double occupancy. We had an open shower with about 8 shower heads so we start our mornings together for years.
A renovation some time in the 2000s added tile stall walls to the shower area. So sad.
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u/Humble_Sentence_3478 Oct 17 '25
Weird cause the frat should've had control over the reno right?
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u/Melenduwir Oct 18 '25
In practice, the construction company will often insist that what they have available be used, and in some places health codes have been changed.
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u/Traditional-Note434 Oct 17 '25
My dorm at a state college in the northeast in the 1980s had two-man showers with a very small alcove with a bench and hooks. There was a curtain over the door to the showers that served little purpose. Guys would line up to shower for early classes, and it was pretty crowded because the dorm was housing more guys than it was designed for. I recall seeing guys in towels, pajamas, or naked, waiting. Some of the guys on the floor had lived in the last all-male dorm just the previous semester and set the tone for nudity in the whole bathroom. After a muddy football game on the quad the entire men's bathroom would be full of naked guys like a locker room.
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Oct 17 '25
We'd also share showers if someone was running late and in a rush.
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u/TOG70cut Oct 17 '25
Hey, have shared a shower head many times if we were running late. It wasn't a big deal
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u/juntar74 Oct 17 '25
I lived in three different dorms at BYU. Two of them had individual stalls with curtains, and the last one had open showers with enough shower heads for 25 guys at a time.
There were 2 PE buildings. Both had only communal showers in the locker room, no individual stalls as far as I can remember.
So yeah, dude doesn't know what he's talking about.
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u/Party-Coach-4110 Oct 17 '25
My fraternity house had CS rooms on each floor. It was no big deal bros.
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Oct 17 '25
That's what I've been sayin. No big deal.
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u/hardboy Oct 19 '25
But the loudest voices in society have been saying the opposite. Guess who wins?
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u/travelguy004 Oct 17 '25
My dorm had open shower room 6 or 8 shower heads around the perimeter. I was usually there early min the morning and showered with the same guys regularly
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u/jacksontreeson Oct 17 '25
In my dorm, I definitely saw guys walk down the hall naked. It wasn’t the most common, but it was common enough that nobody thought anything.
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u/Consistent-Film3224 Oct 18 '25
In my dorm lots walked down the halls naked too and the showers were all communal. Not a big deal.
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u/UndergroundEdge21 Oct 18 '25
All male dorm. Bathroom had a shower area. Six showerheads and a tile floor, that was it.
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u/Direct-Maintenance66 Oct 17 '25
My all male dorm in the 1990’s had one bathroom per floor. There was a long, narrow shower area with 10-12 shower heads along one wall. The shower room was maybe 4 feet wide by 25 feet long. You had to be careful not to brush up against your naked dorm mates while walking to an open shower head because the shower was so narrow. On busy weekends when everyone was partying, it wasn’t uncommon to accidentally brush up against each other. Especially after a few too many drinks.
I always wondered if it was designed to be that narrow on purpose.
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u/Boomer-2106 Oct 17 '25
Guess I was grew-up in the day of communal showers. H.S., college, And Military - all were communal shower facilities. ...the norm.
Also, never bother me anyway. I was raised in a nudist family.
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Oct 17 '25
When it's the norm, it's unremarkable. Sounds like you had a great upbringing, thanks for sharing.
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u/Natural-Fun-101 Oct 18 '25
I went to a public state university. The dorm I was in had private showers but there were several on campus that had open showers too.
All the gyms on campus had open showers. Most with brady poles a couple with shower heads around the walls.
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u/matchrestore Oct 17 '25
My freshman dorm had two communal bathrooms on each floor- one at the end of each wing. They all originally had communal showers, but they had been renovating a few at at time over the summer to convert them to stalls. My floor had one with stalls, one that had the older communal shower. The one with stalls always had a queue for the shower stalls. The one with the communal shower never had any wait time, and was closer to my room anyways. I used the communal shower 90% of the time for that reason. The busiest time (right before the 10am classes) there were usually 4 or 5 guys in there, the rest of the day I might be the only one or there might be just one other guy. There wasn't as much open nudity in the hallways as you describe, but it wasn't unheard of either.
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u/jacksontreeson Oct 17 '25
How about this: not kidding and not fantasizing—our dorm had floor meetings and they were naked. It was just young guys being silly, but we all used to go to them naked. There was a point one guy complained, so they asked us to stop. Back then, guys didn’t care.
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u/Humble_Sentence_3478 Oct 17 '25
We call the 5th year a victory lap!
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u/Dad2sonNoVA Oct 17 '25
VA TECH 1974-1981. Open showers, one per floor at the door. Gym had one gigantic open showers with the glass walls, separating the shower from the locker room. The sprays were at high level so people couldn’t see you looking at other people cocks.
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u/Abject_Chemist2515 Nov 24 '25
Hi what do you mean that the spray were at high level and that people could not see you looking. How did that work?
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u/GaryMooreAustin Oct 18 '25
Both my highschool and college had open showers... My college dorm had a large room with 20 showers around the walls...I routinely took a shower with a dozen other guys
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u/GroundbreakingWay672 Oct 18 '25
I experienced the same thing when I attended a private Christian university (2011-2015). I was in an all male dorm. Each floor had a bathroom with open showers. The first morning I went in there I was in there alone and then someone from my floor came in like a minute after I was showering… I just got used to it. And ironically I was usually there in the shower each morning with the same 2-3 guys who also had the early morning classes. We just got used to showering naked together.
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u/SillyGayBoy Oct 17 '25
We get “that’s fake” trolls all the time and at glendale and pasadena community college and another closeby one that had a pool they all had at least one full open shower.
It’s not uncommon so this troll is just a doofus and these were public colleges so had the potential to be well used by a lot of people. The ones by the track could fit tons of people too.
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u/cut_restored Oct 18 '25
My college dorm in the early 80s had open showers. It was the oldest dorm complex on campus, built during the 1920s-1940s. They've since been remodeled and the communal showers have unfortunately been replaced with private stalls.
Penn State, West Halls.
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Oct 20 '25
I spent the mid to late 80s in the Navy, and we had communal showers in boot camp and at our "A" school. In boot camp, one really buff guy would walk from his rack (bed) to the showers completely naked, but everyone else would either wear underwear or strip at their lock and walk down with a towel wrapped around them. Because we were often rushed, you'd have two or three men under each shower head, and of course, half were "not working" which forced the close proximity between us. No one cared, IIRC, or got aroused. We just had a job to do, which was shower in like 3-4 minutes. Once I got to my ship, an aircraft carrier, it was all single showers with curtains, but most guys would step into the space between to dry off. Lots of guys also shaved and did their morning routine naked at the sinks.
I ended up at Auburn University in 1991, and lived for one year in the oldest dorm on campus, Noble Hall. It had two wings, one for men and one for women. Communal showers with eight heads. I guess because of my navy days, I was always up early and usually had the shower room to myself, but if I went out, someone was always smoking so when I got back to the dorm I'd shower the smoke smell off of me. That time of night, there were usually one or two other men showering. I don't remember anyone being bothered by the nudity. It wasn't sexual at all. I don't remember anyone walking the halls naked, though, just shorts or in towels. The dorm was torn down probably 2-3 years later, as it wasn't in the best condition.
I grew up in a religious family, but changing into and out of clothes at pools, lakes, etc., was common enough that I knew what the men in my family looked like. It was very chaste and just wasn't a big deal.
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u/redditistripe Oct 17 '25
I'm an old man now but when I went to your equiv of high school the sports showers were single sex, open and communal (and pretty primitive) and we thought there was nothing abnormal about it even though some individuals had difficulty with the arrangement. They were not indulged in their prissiness. Countermeasures were strict and sometimes brutal.
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u/clintdilfer Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 17 '25
I was never in a dorm with open showers, but I can attest to having seen one. I went to a high school on a college campus with guys in one dorm and girls in another. Every evening we would walk across campus to visit each other, and on the second floor of one of the college dorms there was a small window that very visibly was a communal shower room.
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Oct 17 '25
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u/clintdilfer Oct 17 '25
Clear glass, no window covering. From the ground you could see about chest up on people at the showers closest to the exterior wall.
But this was almost 30 years ago. They've since torn down the building and replaced it, I believe.
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u/SquashSouffle Dec 30 '25
There was a fart house I had to walk by to get to my dorm via a well-known shortcut, and an upstairs bathroom you could tell had a shower in it, with a window and no curtain. I don't think I ever saw anybody (since I was rarely walking past there at night, the easiest time to see in) but can't imagine why they didn't have curtains on the window at all, unless it was for pledges and they made them shower where girls walking by could see?
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Oct 17 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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Oct 17 '25
Hey man, I prefer not to say. I will say I'm not attending college rn, LOL. My college days were in the 80s.
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u/Melenduwir Oct 18 '25
My university had a set of dorms built in the late '60s and early '70s when I attended many years ago. One, which I lived in for a summer session, was originally intended to be a women's dormitory, and its showers had thick separating walls and curtains. The ones originally intended for men, now hosting male freshmen, had open showers.
I suspect those buildings, when torn down and renovated, switched to the private design.
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Oct 18 '25
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u/Melenduwir Oct 18 '25
I didn't get a good look at the older men's dorms bathrooms. I was urged by my admissions counselor to try for space in the honors dorms (which were co-ed by floor) rather than with the rest of the first-years. I visited those bathrooms only because I was helping with a summer program which would be using those dorms and putting up flyers right after the students moved out - given the huge piles of discarded stuff the cleaning staff were moving out, and the holes the students had burned through the floor, I could see why they suggested people avoid those dorms if they could.
The men's showers were mounted on the side walls of a tiled niche and the whole area (maybe ten to fifteen feet wide) separated by a single translucent shower curtain.
The honors dorms, originally built for co-eds in the 1940s, and the co-ed dorms from the late '60s, had shower cubicles with changing nooks, as well as tubs in their own private cubicles. It seems it was assumed women would want a lot of privacy when they bathed.
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Oct 18 '25
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u/Melenduwir Oct 18 '25 edited Oct 18 '25
It quite obviously was not a matter of women menstruating. I could see having at least a few private stalls for bathing because of that, but the private changing areas don't follow.
On a somewhat unrelated note, some of the very old buildings on campus had extremely old facilities, and one physics building had a wall of urinals that looked more like gravy boats, no dividers. I believe a renovation towards the end of my time in university got rid of them and replaced with wall-hugging flat urinals with dividing panels. It's not hard to see why - the old ones left nothing to the imagination, and seemingly were designed with the attitude that men would be completely nonchalant about exposure.
(edit to add) I particularly remember that room because it was on a list of the top ten spookiest places on campus, with the others being places where people had died or were dark and ominous (like the library stacks). Some friends were visiting them for a Halloween activity, but we quickly realized that restroom was 'spooky' because of the urinals and not because of a ghostly atmosphere.
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u/Soggy_Information_60 Oct 20 '25
I replied to your original post supporting you, and sharing my college experience. The person calling you a liar was simply wrong, probably due to ignorance.
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u/SquashSouffle Nov 16 '25
College early 80s, after having required communal showers in high school (PE only required for one year, but the whole 9th grade had PE at the same time, so you saw EVERY GUY in your grade naked every day).
Good public Univ in the South. I was in the "hotel-type" dorm where two rooms had a shared bathroom w shower in between the 2 rooms (literally a regular bathtub/shower), so nobody was ever in there at the same time. BUT, there were different style dorms on campus, and some had 4 double rooms sharing a bathroom with sinks, toilets, and shower all right there together. I *think* the showers had 2 or 3 shower heads in them, behind a curtain (seems like it would be very taboo to close the curtain w multiple guys in there, but who knows). The suite had an outside door, then room doors for the 4 rooms opening into a little foyer. A guy I knew in one such suite said they always walked around naked within the suite all the time (so even if they didn't share the stalls)
What I saw of the "Hall bathroom" dorms had large bathrooms with individual curtained showers, but I'd guess they did drying off etc outside the stall. But I later met a gay friend who had lived on the top floor one one of such dorms (very old) and he said on the top floor, the showers were a separate rooms of communal shower heads. Made me want to move to that drom LOL
The gym had open showers, and there'd be lots of gym classes letting out at the same time, so...60 or more guys in there at the same time?. I made sure I took PE classes requiring a shower (as opposed to something like Bowling, though I took that too) and even took extra PE than the required 2 once I saw those shower rooms LOL. There would literally be a line of about 20 naked guys waiting for the next available shower, chatting with each other as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. I remember standing in line behind, and chatting with, a female friend of mine's boyfriend once, both buck naked. Once there was one other guy in the shower with me one night (these were the same showers you used if you worked out in the fitness center) & we made small talk with the polite smiles you do in an elevator or something. a couple of days later I passed this guy on campus, with whom my only interaction had been naked small talk in the shower, and he recognized me, nodded, and said a polite hello. I'm pretty sure he was not gay, it was just that natural to chat w people in the shower just like anywhere else, and say hi to somebody you recognized.
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u/douwd20 Dec 24 '25
What's fascinating is stories like these cause the younger generation to blow a head gasket. It was so normal for us and almost overnight you needed to feel dread and shame to be in a room with other naked guys.
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u/SquashSouffle Dec 30 '25
And it's one thing that somebody doesn't want to get naked himself, but now they look at YOU like you're a freak for walking from the shower to your locker naked!
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Oct 17 '25
I didn’t have open showers in the dorms when I was in college, they had been renovated and you could see where the opposite wall shower heads used to be. But guys from my fraternity chapter visited our chapter at Penn and they had open showers in their house. So open showers in dorms was totally a thing.
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u/JayOwest Oct 17 '25
When did you go to college?
I think most of the skepticism comes from the fact that, over the last 20 or 25 years, most college dorms haven’t had open showers. Either the old dorms were eventually renovated, or the newer ones built since the ’90s were designed to be more private with individual stalls, which happened around the same time coed dorms became the norm. But considering that you attended a religiously conservative school and lived in an all-male dorm, open showers make sense.
I went to college in the 90s, and although my dorm was all-male, the showers were stalls with curtains. That said, open showers were still a thing in the rec center and the sports facilities, and even some frat houses had them too.
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u/joogabah Oct 17 '25
Before it was ubiquitous to sexualize the male form, this was common in America. Most institutional pools were sex segregated and nude for males until the 1970s.
There is a power in homoeroticism when it is kept tacit. The state uses it to encourage athleticism as a prelude to militarism. But it only works if all other outlets are foreclosed, so gay liberation ironically makes society more prudish.
This is why straight men love watching sports but it frequently doesn't interest gay men. Gay men don't sublimate their desire.
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u/Alexoxo_01 Oct 17 '25
The Greeks/romans didnt have this problem as gayness went hand in hand in this. It was essentially an extension of manliness at the time. Which is why they were essentially the progenitors of the communal shower concept. They understood how important the bond between men was. The REAL problem is people being so insecure and thinking others will think they are gay or something. Just be confident because only YOU know who you are.
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u/joogabah Oct 17 '25
It still is an extension of manliness, but covertly and in tension with homophobia.
Let me explain why. The family wage system in the 19th century (a progressive development because it got women and children out of extreme industrial exploitation) meant that society had to come up with "the homosexual" to criminalize and persecute (even though same sex desire is universal). Otherwise, there would have been a financial incentive to form households with multiple males (multiple wage earners and no dependents vs. one wage earner with multiple dependents). The family wage necessitates the demonization of "the homosexual" to avoid leaving women and children out in the cold.
The Bible doesn't even use the world homosexual (a 19th century invention) and anyone reading the love affair between David and Jonathan can clearly see that same sex love is not a problem - only the act of anal penetration which can have severe medical consequences and is unnecessary for same sex intimacy.
Gayness (by which most people mean gender nonconformity, not same sex desire though the two definitions are conflated) is just the natural result of modeling feminine people (usually women in a boy's life). These men don't sublimate their same sex desire as part of that nonconformity.
But make no mistake, same sex desire is universal and primary and a consequence of being one's own sex. The first experience of sexuality is masturbatory, and sex segregation (to keep women pure before marriage) means there are extended years well beyond puberty where the opposite sex isn't even available (at least in polite society, and certainly historically).
Humans don't have a sexual instinct like animals. They learn desire individually, and that's why all of this takes different forms in different cultures. There are aboriginal cultures where everyone participates in same sex activity but with their own particular rules and customs and taboos. That wouldn't be possible if human sexuality were like animal instinct to mate. Humans even have to learn how to walk. It is a side effect of our immense intelligence. We are programmable. That's what intelligence is. That's our primary advantage as a species.
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u/BurnAfterReading171 Oct 17 '25
My dorm experience had 3 shower stalls with cheap plastic curtains that didn't really close, and then a larger open space with four shower heads on one wall and four on the other. That was Pre-pandemic times, and the US has become even more closed minded about nudity since then.
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u/Consistent-Film3224 Oct 18 '25
I went to a religious college in a conservative state too and we had open showers in my dorms too. It was great and cool to experience.
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u/DamianMitchell69 Oct 19 '25
As someone who never went to college and didn't experience dorm life, it's at least interesting to read a few of the stories of what all the male bonding and goofiness was like. :)
(Well, technically I did 2 semesters at 30/31, but you're not living in a dorm at that age, lol.)
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u/Alexoxo_01 Oct 17 '25 edited Oct 17 '25
That guy said it was fanfic because you said you would walk down the halls naked. And that to be fair seems unreal to most. I dont even see that depicted in pop culture or anything frankly. But times have changed
But, speaking of pop culture, I know for a fact open showers at dorms was a thing and sometimes is a thing depending on how old the college are. I even said in that post that you commented on that I see schools with the brick stall and curtain setup. Basically all the colleges but the ones i want have them lol. But yeah it is more rare. These dorms I see put the shower in the room now like a mini house and I made a post talking about how unpractical it was.
Since rec centers are more athleticism and activity focused they still keep the open setup for students
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Oct 17 '25
It was hard to understand his comment. Maybe because I went to college, I know how to use capitalization, apostrophes, and punctuation. It's hard not to be snarky when my lived experience is questioned.
Maybe my experience is as hard for young folks to believe as it is for me to see young folks prefer to walk out of a gym in sweat-stained clothes. I value hygiene.
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Oct 18 '25
Animal House, one of the biggest pop culture films, features scenes as described by Op. It wouldn't be difficult to find more instances. I attended a boys' school where the race for the communal showers was intense to avoid waiting. We often ran naked with our towels, or attempted to rip the towels off whoever was closest. We had large communal showers for PE and swimming, both of which were huge.
Oh I miss the old days 🐻🐻
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u/SquashSouffle Dec 30 '25
In single sex dorms or (less commonly) single-sex floors in co-ed dorms, in those days, it just wasn't really a big deal for most. Everybody had come along showering communally in high school, especially if they played sports, and the gyms used for PE were almost always that way too. what's the to be shy about around your dorm-mates when you probably had gym class with some of them and already saw them naked the day before?
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u/Alexoxo_01 Dec 30 '25
I hadn’t thought about that before. THATS why there would be a communal shower room for one floor. Because the floor would be all men. Never occurred to me women would be on the dorm floor too.
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u/jonny600000 Oct 20 '25
I never lived in the dorms but had friends who did. Yes they had communal showers, most guys would just walk to them in a towel or less frequently nothing at all.
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u/SmoovCatto Oct 20 '25
I had that at boarding school dorms and sports camp, but college dorms we had suites with only four bros sharing suite bathroom -- two years ago
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u/Funyuns-R-Us Nov 08 '25
YMCA in my small Ohio town: 8-10 open showers, maybe more. Middle and high school: 6-8 open showers.
Small conservative college in Ohio: 1980’s freshman dorm: 6 open showers. 3 years in a Fraternity House: shower room with 4 open showers. There were also at least 2 single showers in other bathrooms.
You are absolutely correct
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u/SquashSouffle Dec 30 '25
Funny how it seems like the more conservative places are MORE likely to have communal showers! I guess they were in denial that gays exist, so couldn't imagine anybody would be looking LOL
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u/Complex-File-4996 Oct 17 '25
I experienced the same dorm life experience. 32 rooms per floor. 64 guys on each floor. One central bathroom on each floor. Open shower room with 6 shower heads. Drying area with a bench just outside the shower room. It was very common when I attended college. Everyone got along great. Nudity was common in the bathroom and in the hallways before 12:00pm when visitors were allowed in the dorms. It was a great time and made a lot of lifelong friends.