Strict Guest Policies At Universities Do More Harm Than Good
Visiting hours tend to hurt students more than schools may know.
It's three o'clock in the morning. If you're a fellow student living on campus at my school, you know what that means: all dorm visitors have to go. At our university, those visiting the dorms after six in the evening must be signed in by their host and, eventually, signed out by three o'clock in the morning. If the host fails to sign out their guest by that time (or fails to sign them out in general), they'll receive warning notices. After receiving multiple warnings, they'll be fined.
It's not uncommon for colleges to use guest policies similar to the one my school follows. Universities, especially private, Catholic ones, enforce these policies because having students of different genders staying overnight in the dorms together is seen as unorthodox. When I toured Quinnipiac University, a parent asked our tour guide if boys were allowed to sleep in the girl's rooms. The mother's jaw dropped when the guide answered affirmatively.
Even though it's the twenty-first century, the idea of universities allowing students of the opposite gender to spend the night together is still frowned upon. Obviously, there aren't security guards standing in front of every single dorm room throughout the entire night to make sure students of the opposite gender aren't coming in; it's still possible for females and males to sleep together if they live in the same building.
The scary thing that universities may not understand about these guest policies is that they're potentially putting students in danger. Let's just say that a boy invites a girl over to his dorm on campus. The girl lives off campus. When they reach the fourth movie of their Netflix marathon, the boy realizes that it's a quarter to three in the morning and he has to sign her out. The girl leaves campus to go back to her apartment off campus and winds up getting robbed. Why did she get robbed? Well, she wouldn't have been walking back to her off-campus apartment in the darkness if she hadn't been kicked out by her school's visiting policies.
At my school, the majority of off-campus crimes involving students occur in the middle of the night. I'm going to assume that my school is not alone in this pattern. I can only imagine that at least some of the students who have been victims of such crimes were walking back to their off-campus apartment after leaving campus. Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that students would be safer if our school's visiting policy was different.
It's also important to note that not every student who wishes to stay the night is doing so for sexual reasons. One time I was visiting my best friend who, sadly, lived in a different building than mine. Even though I was only in her room for five minutes, when she went to sign me out, the guard said, "I'll take care of that and sign you out. Enjoy your night!" Sooner or later, my friend received a fine for failing to sign out a guest. Even though this was arguably the guard's fault, the scenario proves that not all night guests are sexual; I literally went to my friend's room to pick out clothes I wanted to wear to a party. There's nothing spicy about that.
The bottom line is: regardless of the statement a university is trying to make while enforcing strict guest policies, these policies have the potential to put students in very dangerous situations. You can even argue that schools enforcing such strict policies are endorsing relationships which are strictly sexual; that is, as soon as two people finish having sex, they can't spend the night together and bond because one of them is essentially being kicked out of the dorm.
Religiously-affiliated institutions must also understand that not all of their student believe that it's wrong for two people of the opposite gender to spend the night together. Plus, I don't mean to sound crude here, but whatever is going to happen (in terms of sex, of course) is probably going to happen before three in the morning. Although it's important for universities to uphold a reputable image, they should definitely reexamine these policies and make attempts to protect the safety of students.
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