PEA Reacts to New Vistations Policy Proposal

Student Council members discussed on Tuesday the recently unveiled proposal for a revised visitations’ policy to be considered for the 2017-2018 school year. The proposed policy, drafted by Dean of Residential Life Arthur Cosgrove, would extend visitation hours through check in and reduce privileges for preps during their first months at the school; it would also require students to get visitations when visiting another student’s room in any dorm besides their own, regardless of the student’s gender or sexuality, in a step towards eliminating the heteronormativity inherent in the current policy. The latter proposed change has spurred backlash from many students, and the draft as a whole has been met with mixed, though largely negative, responses from the community.

“It will take the whole school’s collaboration to come together and discover both what we truly desire in a visitations’ policy and how we can achieve our vision.”

The dormitory visitations section of the latest draft allows students to visit one another in common spaces from 7 a.m. until check-in. Perhaps the most notable departure from the current policy is that all students, regardless of gender, must get visitations from the faculty member on duty in order to spend time in a student’s room in a different dorm. Under the new policy, preps would not be able to get visitations during the first month of school, after which they could do so only with other preps; starting in Winter term, they would have access to the same privileges as the rest of students.Some students denounced the draft on the basis that it would further normalize illegal visitations. Upper Molly Canfield said that, because she thinks students would feel compelled to get illegal visitations with their friends in order to find a private space during the day, it “would make getting illegal visitations seem more natural and more prevalent everywhere.”Lower Gillian Quinto noted this policy might make illegal visitations more frequent and commonplace than they are under the current policy. Cosgrove acknowledged these concerns. “It [the policy] might make illegal v’s more frequent and that’s certainly not something we want. We don’t want to create a policy that encourages more rule-breaking,” Cosgrove said.Moving forward with the policy, Cosgrove plans to meet with the Deans’ Council to discuss the draft, as well as with Student Council to answer questions next Tuesday. Separately, Student Council representatives met with Gould House, McConnell and Wheelwright earlier this week. Over the next three weeks, representatives from Student Council’s Policy Committee, headed by upper Tim Han and Alexis Gorfine, will meet with most dorms to gather feedback on the proposed policy. According to Cosgrove, student and faculty feedback will be imperative to the constructive progress of the policy.Dean of Academic Affairs Karen Lassey echoed Cosgrove’s sentiment. “[It’s]  an early draft in an iterative process.” However, Lassey noted that it “needs reworking to be truly inclusive, and not based on assumptions that are heteronormative and gendered. It is a challenge. I believe the administration is committed to continuing work to this end,” she said.Upper Tim Han sympathized with the administration’s attempts to improve upon the current visitations’ policy. “It is certainly a very challenging position to be in to try to find a middle ground that is amenable to everyone on campus, and I sympathize with the administration.” That said, Han  also wants to ensure that concerns from both students and faculty are addressed and resolved.  “What is most important is that everyone’s voice is represented in the conversation on how to improve the visitations’ Policy.“Member of Deans’ Council and lower Grace Gray agreed with Han, saying that a fair policy will require students and faculty to work together. “It will take the whole school’s collaboration to come together and discover both what we truly desire in a visitations’ policy and how we can achieve our vision.”Upper Nick Song worried that not all voices are being heard with the current heteronormative visitations’ policy. Song defended the proposed policy as a way to make some students on campus comfortable. “It’s easy to cast aside the students whom the V’s policy does not cover or to call for another set of rules exclusive to transgender students. It’s easier still to forget about the sexual assaults on campus,” Song said.Song echoed Gray’s sentiment that students and faculty must find common ground in order to achieve a successful V’s policy. “Arriving at a stalemate when arguing about the validity of the specific cases does not take away from their [the students’] existence within the Exeter community,” he said. “Rather, it guarantees the repetition of similar problems which will arise from an unchanged and ignored V’s policy.”Some faculty feel that their expectations for the visitations’ policy are not being met. Webster Dorm Head Giorgio Secondi said he does not support any overlap between visitations and study hours, a change introduced by the current draft. He said, “Letting some students, with their guests, socialize in one room, with the door open, while next door someone else is trying to do homework is bound to make study hours less productive.” He added that the policy would place a larger strain on faculty members on duty because they would have to supervise visitations while maintaining orderly study hours.Cosgrove acknowledged the complexities of creating a policy that serves the needs of the entire community. “The question becomes: do you create a policy that fits the majority of people who sit within a certain statistic of the school or do you break out of that and do something that ultimately is more controversial and has less appeal?” He asked. “We would like to have something for next year, but we also know that what we have now doesn’t work well. It may be a problem without a perfect solution.”