For the second time this academic year, the Dean of Students Office had the sobering task of notifying the Boston University community that security measures had failed to prevent an alleged assault on campus. Though the victims were physically unharmed in this latest incident, in which two men convinced two Claflin Hall residents to sign them in to the building, the event ultimately revealed how residences are only as safe as the students who live in them.
Many safeguards fell short Sunday in what still appears to be a crisis averted. Security guards should have questioned the hosting students to prove they actually knew their guests. Resident assistants should take greater pains to ensure all residents understand the contract they sign when they enter student housing. The incident will also likely challenge support for the relaxed guest policy university authorities adopted last spring.
Before authorities rush to any conclusions, however, they should remember that blame for the incident itself rests squarely with the individual students who signed strangers into their dormitory. They jeopardized the safety of everyone in their building and proved themselves unfit to decide who enters their home. They should be held liable for any criminal action that results from the lapse in security and face housing and judicial sanctions up to and including removal from the university residences.
Though on-campus safety remains the paramount concern, students should also remember another victim of these events — their rights as residents of on-campus dormitories. Each new unauthorized entry is a threat to students’ ability to have friends and classmates in their rooms and a blow against the argument that they are responsible enough to host visitors in their own homes.
The assumption that students can handle their own safety is hardly unassailable — students endured a much harsher guest policy less than two years ago, before the administration expanded the rules to treat undergraduates more like adults. For those unfamiliar with how BU students lived in the past, here is a quick refresher:
Until September 2007, thousands of students were effectively treated the same as outsiders within their own housing system. Students living on-campus were barred from large dormitories after midnight, effectively confining them to their own buildings after that time. Students signed in after 8 p.m. had to leave before 1 a.m. or 2:30 a.m., depending on the day of the week.
The system for admitting other residents was even more convoluted. Outside guests — including BU students without a meal plan — had to notify guards of their visits one business day in advance to enter a dormitory after hours. The rules for obtaining a roommate’s consent to host a friend became harsher if the guest was of the opposite sex.
This straightjacket policy was a legacy of former BU President John Silber’s conservative social views on security and student life, which carried the weight of law on campus. When then-Chancellor Silber tacitly endorsed a proposed reworking of the policy in 2002 (“Silber speaks on the guest policy,” March 18, 2002), he revealed his narrow understanding of students’ use of late-night visits by warning that the administration was not “in the business of providing weekend love nests for students.”
Though groups like the Student Union complained that students had plenty of other reasons to visit each other after 8 p.m., it still took another four years of Union committee meetings and negotiations with the administration for a revised guest policy to come into effect.
When President Robert Brown signed off on the new rules, both students and administrators — including Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore – hailed the policy as a progressive change that placed more rights and responsibilities in the hands of students.
Though the vast majority of students proved more than capable of shouldering this trust, Sunday’s incident proved how the irresponsibility of just two students can endanger hundreds of their neighbors. The fact that two strangers easily convinced residents to let them into their home reveals imperfections in a system that shares the responsibility of student safety between the university and residents themselves.
It should go without saying that students are as responsible for their collective safety as the security guards checking their IDs. The students who allowed last night’s alleged assailants into their dormitory breached more than their residence life agreement — they broke the trust students place in each other when they live together in the same building. In the future, students should proactively guard their safety as well as their guest privileges by speaking up when they see a student signing in a guest whom they do not know.