Dorms have begun to implement room visitations as an option for boarders to have other students in their rooms. Students must fill in a sign-in sheet, check in with an on-duty House Counselor, and make sure every detail within the room visit regulations is cleared before having a friend over in their room.
Scott Hoenig, a House Counselor in Fuess House, described the room visitation process in detail, explaining all the procedures that have to be taken into account when a student visits a room or hosts a room visit.
“If you want to host somebody that doesn’t live in your dorm, then you can do that in particular times of the week. Specifically from 8:00 to 9:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights and from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. on Sundays. Any room visits that happen there’s a sign-in, sign-out process, and there has to be a HC [(House Counselor)] who is present to do that sign-in, sign-out process. The [room] doors have to be open all the way and lights have to be on,” said Hoenig.
Georgie Harpole ’25 explained how the room visitation process had prevented her from making as many visits as she wanted to. Harpole suggested ways to make room visits more appealing to the student body.
“The process is very complicated and I usually just avoid it… Personally, the risk that might come with visiting other people’s rooms kinda just gets taken up [to] another [level]. I don’t think that allowing people to visit other people’s rooms really accommodates that risk much more than it already exists… The best compromise would be that we would still check in with our House Counselors and our House Counselors could still check in with us but we were allowed to close the door. That is the point of visiting someone’s room. Privacy,” said Harpole.
Harpole elaborated further, emphasizing the excessiveness of the policies. Harpole opposed the negative stigma surrounding room visitations, especially in their associations with sexual relationships.
“Visiting a friend’s room is a really safe space. I think the times that [room visits] come up, it’s usually in a talk about healthier relationships or some sort of clandestine but not really clandestine form of [sexual education]. So I wish it was separated from that because again, I just want to see my friend’s decorations, I want to borrow their books… I understand the intent of the policy but I think it’s a little overkill,” said Harpole.
Lundeen Cahilly ’24 spoke on how room visitation policies are tedious steps that get in the way of being with friends. Cahilly pointed out how friends often live in different dorms, making dorm visitations a necessary process to undergo in order to go to a friend’s room.
“If you want to hang out with your friends in your room, and they’re outside of your dorm, which is the case with most of my friends, you have to go through House Counselors and it’s a big process…it’s not an insane amount of work but [if] it’s just if you want to hang out with friends it seems excessive,” said Cahilly.
Hoenig shared similar sentiments, noting the current system’s inconvenience. He spoke about his desire for students to be able to bring their friends into their rooms through a more lenient process, specifically in underclassmen dorms.
“I would like to see it be easier for students to just have their friends come over and hang out in their rooms. Currently…the only times that are going to work for kids are 8:00 to 9:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. Because although we do have Sundays, House Counselors are usually not available and not able to have room visits because we’re eating dinner with our families or doing other things. So one thing I would like to do is to extend that time on Saturday nights. It shouldn’t end at 9:30. Why can’t it go on until 11:15? I feel like we can probably consider at least lengthening that amount of time. But right now, it seems like it’s a little restrictive,” said Hoenig.
