Administration Drafts Visitation Policy Reforms
At last Tuesday’s Student Council meeting, Dean of Residential Life Arthur Cosgrove introduced the draft of a new visitations’ policy for the coming school year. He hopes to take a revised version to a faculty vote around May. Along with Dean of Academic Affairs Karen Lassey and Dean of Students Melissa Mischke, Cosgrove broached the new policy draft at Tuesday’s Student Council meeting after taking feedback from dorm heads and the Deans’ Council earlier in the week. “Currently, several groups have been discussing visitations, including Student Council, the Dean’s Office, the Center for Boys and Girls Studies, and PIRC [Prevention Innovations Research Center]. Ultimately, the faculty will discuss a visitations proposal and then vote on it,” he said.
“It’s going to put the question to the community: are you willing to effectively make some sacrifices to shift the culture?”
Cosgrove initially wrote the draft in the hopes of gathering feedback from student and faculty for a policy that will be more inclusive and comprehensive. “The proposal was meant to be provocative, and I think it’s achieved that pretty quickly,” he said. “I’m taking feedback I hear, and I’m going to continue to update the policy.”
Currently, the policy would require boarding students to check in with a faculty member whenever an outside student enters their room, regardless of gender. The policy also dictated that preps would not be able to get visitations with other preps until Oct. 1, and with students of other grades until they finish their first trimester.
Cosgrove plans on taking a revised version of the draft back to the dorm heads after meeting with health educators and counselors. He will also take feedback at Student Council’s next meeting on Tuesday.
Student feedback has already sparked some ideas for the initial drafting of the newly proposed policy. “As a community, there’s been a lot of discussion and complaint from students about how the current policy is heteronormative and how the current assumptions of V’s are only between boys and girls for romantic and intimate purposes,” Cosgrove said.
Lower Kiana Silver echoed Cosgrove’s sentiment, acknowledging the heteronormative nature of the current V’s policy. “I feel that the current draft of the V’s policy is a great step forward from the policy that is in place, but it still has a few flaws,” she said. “The new policy is much less heteronormative.”
The newly proposed policy also raises questions for day students. In its current state, the draft does not allow day students to be in a boarding student’s room unless they are there during visitation hours and have notified faculty.
According to upper and day student Jordan Hillyard, the new policy will make it difficult for day students to find and bond with boarding student friends. “The last clause stating that I can’t go into any girl’s rooms during non-V’s hours is really harmful,” she said. “We [day students] don’t have that dorm family that all boarders do. We don’t have that instant connection with upperclassman, or anyone for that matter. Making friends is hard and a big part of it is being able to go to someone’s room.”
Day student lower Ingrid Bergill echoed Hillyard’s sentiment. “The new policy is worse than the current one, especially as a day student. A lot of day students work really hard to make friends in dorms so they have a place they can go to and hang out, do work, leave stuff, even nap. The new policy would change how day students get to spend time with their friends in dorms.”
According to lower Adrian Venzon, however, the new policy is necessary to move the school forward as an institution. “A new policy is definitely needed because of the new [all-gender] dorms being put in place and also because the current policy is outdated,” he said. “Although it might be inconvenient, I think for the long run, it’s a better policy.”
English instructor Alex Myers, who previously proposed his own visitations’ policy, agreed with Venzon. “The policy needed to be revised and updated—currently it is very heteronormative and based on an assumption of a gender binary. The [current] V’s policy also seemed to presume that students were getting V’s for heterosexual romantic interaction.”
Lower Taylor Robertson—who feels the proposed policy is too intrusive—thinks the school should place more trust in its students. “We should be progressive, not regressive. If this school could trust boys in boys rooms at all hours even when faculty are not on duty for over two hundred years then it should be able to trust them still, and trust girls in boys rooms,” he said. “It should be able to trust all students regardless of gender or sexual orientation or dorm affiliation in all other students rooms.”
Cosgrove, however, explained that a proposal like Robertson’s might prove to be unsafe for students. “Right now, we [the faculty] don’t feel like the culture of the school is such that unsupervised visitations for high school students is something that we can support. There’s limited faculty presence in the dorms throughout the day,” he said.
Myers continued, saying that a new policy will require compromise from all parties. “At the heart of this, we all need to sit down and listen to a variety of constituencies: students, dorm faculty, administration, and really hear what each group wants… and then make everyone recognize how much everyone will be compromising to get a policy in place,” he said.
Cosgrove agreed with Myers, emphasizing the need for a new policy. “At some point, we’ll either decide to go forward with it and bring it to the faculty for discussion and vote, or we’ll table it,” he said. “It’s going to put the question to the community: are you willing to effectively make some sacrifices to shift the culture?”