My university may have been unusual... all the dorms were set up in way that showering was pretty private... in the dorms with hall bathrooms, there were no open showers, it's all stalls. No one has to see you nude ever, if you don't want. And in the newer dorms, with suites, it's one shower per bathroom serving from 1 to 4 rooms. Still private.
In grad school, the
dorm I lived in was a very old building with nice
common areas. In keeping with the communal atmosphere, the showers at the time I lived there were also communal. They were off to one side of the bathroom, with a large area with bench and towel hooks for leaving your stuff and drying off, and adjacent to that a large room with 5 shower heads -- two on the side you enter, and 3 directly across.
As this dorm was designed for students of all countries (though most of us were from the States), it seemed to make sense that it had this open format. You quickly learned that people from Afghanistan and Peru and Denmark didn't look that different when naked, though we all might have certain different customs about what we wore to the showers and what we carried with us.
Because of the setup, you pretty much had to strip naked in the ante room, hang up your towel and robe/shorts and walk naked into the shower room. There was a curtain closing off the ante room from the sink area of the bathroom, but most of us left it open -- it seemed a little paranoid to keep opening and closing it. So, if you happened to be shaving you may catch a glimpse of naked guys going to and from their shower, but it really was no big deal.
The year after I left, the dorm embarked on a weird modification of the shower areas. Apparently in response to numerous requests from Islamic students, who felt that social nudity was personally offensive, the dorm adminstration put up a bizarre system of connecting curtain rods and curtains inside the big shower rooms on each floor. It was awkward, because to get to the back 2 or 3 shower heads, you essentially had to tear open the curtain of where someone else was showering and stroll through (can you picture it?) In some ways, it actually was more private when it was one open room! You could just shower with your back to the others and be done with it, though few were that modest. I've stayed in the dorm again as an alum -- a great lodging deal in Chicago -- and found the setup ridiculous. And now a lot of the guys no longer hang up their robes and towels in the ante room, they walk completely dressed into the shower area and start hanging stuff from the curtain rods. Oy.
One thing I really miss about the big shower room without curtains was that on those occasions that you had the room to yourself, or with just one other person, it was a great feeling to be nude in that big open space. Now it feels really confined and uncomfortable and you keep bumping into curtains.
Back whan I was a student and today, no one to my recollection strolled down the hall naked to the bathroom; even though these were male floors, women could be visiting. Most of the US guys wore gym shorts and T-shirts, and most of the foreign guys wore either bathrobes or pajamas (dressing gowns or pyjamas, in that other English).
Personally, I think people who have hangups about just stripping off and walking into a shower have substantial hangups in other areas of their lives, too.
