Andover Passes Closed Door Visitations

The topic of visitations is highly discussed by both students and faculty on campus. While many Exonians have proposed new ideas and options, no changes have been made to the policy in the past couple of years. However, unlike Exeter, Andover has been more open to implementing changes. The faculty just voted in a new visitations policy last Monday.During the spring of 2014, the faculty first voted to change Andover’s policy. According to Paul Murphy, the Dean of Students and Residential Life at Andover, the most notable change regarded the old rule allowing seniors to close doors during visitations—a privilege which was removed in the new proposal.However, the faculty continued to discuss issues of consent and healthy relationships throughout this fall. Their discussions indicated that Andover’s House Counselor Committee should suggest another alternative for faculty to consider, leading to the newest policy.

“I am glad we don’t have a policy like that and hope we never do because it seems really complicated, and I think it could be hard to enforce and confusing.”

The new policy will take effect in September 2015 and is divided into separate rules for each grade. For freshmen, the policy prohibits visitations in the fall, but allows limited visitations with open doors and lights on.For both sophomores and juniors, visitations with open doors and lights on will be allowed all year, beginning Oct. 15. Seniors are also required to leave their doors open and lights on for the first part of the year, but from January to June, they will be able to keep their doors fully shut. The policy assumes that house counselors and advisors will engage students in conversations about respectful behavior in relationships during the fall term.Despite these conversations, according to Murphy, some faculty still thought closed doors encouraged sexual activity. Other faculty, however, were in support of the idea. In fact, one group of faculty even pushed for closed door visitations for 11th graders. Some students also supported the new policy. Senior and co-president of Andover’s Student Council Rebecca Somer said that “people feel outraged that faculty seem to think that opening doors and turning lights on will prevent unsafe sexual encounters.”Somer believes a “proper” sex-ed program in Andover’s curriculum and more discussions between students and house counselors about healthy relationships would be “more effective solutions” than a stricter visitations policy.Upper Vienna Kuhn agreed with Somer. Kuhn worried that the new policy “still doesn’t address the issue of discomfort and safe locations of intimacy if people don’t feel comfortable with having the door open and the lights on.”Some Exonians believed the implementation of a closed door policy would have certain benefits. “It would allow people to feel like faculty trust them more, which I believe would be a good thing,” senior Emily Lemmerman said. “I also don’t think it would cause anything that harmful because you could have closed door Vs while there is a faculty presence in the dorm.”However, others did not feel the level of trust for seniors should be that high. Student Council Secretary upper Kevin Zhen was against the idea and felt closed doors visitations allows for the possibility of rape, while potentially “holding people other than the rapist responsible.”“Dorm faculty would be personally responsible for the crime, since the two students would have to ask permission from an adult in their dorm in order to get closed door Vs,” Zhen said. “Furthermore, Student Council would also be to blame since we supported such a policy as a representative student body.”History Department Chair Bill Jordan agreed with Zhen. While Jordan did not want to be critical of Andover without hearing the rationale behind their decision, he would feel “really uncomfortable” if a closed door policy were to be implemented at Exeter and believed other parents would share this opinion.Additionally, while Andover addresses a specific rule for each grade which varies on the time of year, Exeter has one constant rule for all grades. Jordan felt a policy addressing every grade differently seemed too complicated.“I am glad we don’t have a policy like that and hope we never do because it seems really complicated, and I think it could be hard to enforce and confusing,” he said.However, while some faculty felt satisfied with the current policy, others such as modern language instructor Mark Trafton thought it is still important for the visitation policy to be continuously discussed and evaluated. “We have, in the past, changed our policy about TVs, radios and computer monitors, showing our ability to adapt to new technology,” he said. He believes visitations policies are no different.