I decorate my room with secrets — items that reveal personal stories or interests of mine: my nunchucks above my desk, my cross-country uniform and spikes in a crate on my shoe rack, and my childhood stuffed panda at the end of my bed. Instead of hiding my secrets on a shelf in my closet, I decorate my room with them because I want people to know about them. I want people to know me. After excitedly unpacking these secrets at the start of my freshman year I was disappointed to hear no one from outside my dorm was allowed to see these secrets until winter. Three months later, when room visits were finally allowed, I was disappointed again to hear I could have only one guest in my room for an hour and a half, three nights a week; I might as well have hidden them in my closet. So, instead of sitting on my bean bag or the edge of my bed in the privacy of my room, my friends and I sat at loud tables in the library and stood outside buildings while the cold air bit us through our thick jackets. Not knowing how to change these rules preventing my friends and me from hanging out in a private space, I would just complain about how much looser they used to be before 2021. That year, the rules were changed in response to the prior heteronormative policy, but those changes just created a new set of problems. Room visitation rules need to be altered again to allow students a safe and private space to connect with friends on campus.
When I say “connect,” I don’t mean physically. Sure, room visitations could be used intimately and I understand the school’s desire to protect students from unhealthy relationships and nonconsensual activities — especially when a quarter of the students on campus are under the age of consent — but the current policy isn’t stopping students from engaging in them. Instead, it only makes intimacy uncomfortable, unhygienic, and unsafe. Rather than students being intimate in the safety and privacy of a dorm room, students who want to be sexually active are just finding other spaces such as public bathrooms, empty classrooms, or even the Cochran Bird Sanctuary. More importantly, the rules make it exceedingly difficult for students to find a space on campus where they feel safe enough to have personal and private conversations. In an attempt to control the relatively small proportion of intimate relations happening in dorms, the school has banned a much larger proportion of platonic connections from happening. These platonic connections are essential to the mental health and well-being of teenagers.
A month and a half ago, when I just got back to my dorm after a long night in the Rebecca M. Sykes Wellness Center, I lay on my floor in silence overwhelmed by my emotions. I was confused: Why can’t I move my foot? What’s a pinched nerve? I was scared. I don’t understand what’s wrong with me. How long will it take for me to recover? And I was sad. Does this mean I’m out for the whole cross-country season? I trained so hard this summer and now I can’t even run. I needed to explain my emotions to a friend so I wouldn’t feel as confused, scared, and sad, but I didn’t want to sob in public while everyone around eavesdropped. Room visits hadn’t started yet, so I lay alone on my floor in silence. This is only one personal example of the need for a safe, private, and personal space on campus for students to connect. All I wanted was to pour my heart out to my best friend in my room, but I wasn’t allowed to. Because of the school’s unreasonable room visitation policy, I wasn’t allowed to have a private and personal conversation.
Since the rule change in 2021, students have had no place for these conversations and connections; my experience is just one of 1,200 students’. As teenagers, we already struggle with mental health and a lack of personal connection in our digital world. Instead of talking to each other, our conversations exist in blue and grey bubbles on screens that illuminate our faces as we sit in the dark solitude of our rooms and our relationships are made of text messages, snap chats, and TikToks since we’re missing a space for personal connection. We only see each other at desks in our history classes or at a loud library table where it’s too public to confide in each other and where our private feelings and conversations are mere gossip to those in earshot. Without a personal space to deepen our friendships, we’re forced to bottle them up until we get to our dorms where we can cry alone in our rooms as we scroll through Instagram.
The current room visitation rules don’t only affect boarders. Before 2021, day students were allowed to spend nights in boarders’ rooms on weekends, allowing them a sliver of the boarding experience. Now, however, day students are denied this opportunity. I was shocked that a school whose core values include “building an inclusive community” (Core Blue, 7) would disallow students this chance to connect. So, instead of spending quality time on campus with friends, day students stand at the circle waiting for their parents to drive them home.
As an issue that concerns all students on campus, I believe the current room visitation policy needs to be reviewed and adjusted yet again. I understand that lowerclassmen — the majority of whom are under the age of 16 — need to have stricter rules because of legal requirements considering the age of consent, but the room visitation rules for upperclassmen need to be broadened to allow them a private space on campus. While I acknowledge the fact that upperclassmen already have wider room visitation rules — room visits allowed every day of the week, and more time on Saturdays — these rules could be further broadened by allowing room visits anytime between 6 a.m. and sign-in, at least on weekends, and doors closed. While finding a private space on campus would still be difficult for lowerclassmen, they would be more willing to comply with their stricter rules knowing that they will have much more freedom as upperclassmen. As well as providing students with the privacy we need, more lenient rules would additionally serve as an opportunity to build trust between students and faculty.
Although I agree with the intent behind the rule change of 2021 — to terminate a heteronormative policy — the current room visitation rules are too narrow to enable the building of close personal relationships and support systems for students. Not only is an hour and a half too short a time for students to engage with one another deeply, but the requirement for a student’s door to be open when having a guest is just another example of the lack of privacy for students on campus. My dorm room doesn’t feel like a private space anymore when my entire hall can hear my conversation. If my dormmates also have open-door visits within the short hours they are allowed, then my conversation is being shared with even more students, some of whom I may not even know. So, with the current rules, where on campus is it sufficiently private for students to feel safe enough to connect with others personally? The answer is: nowhere.
