Policy Proposal Released

Student Union officials released the 78-page Boston University Guest Visitation Policy report late Tuesday night, a joint Union-BU Free effort including an assessment of student and parent opinion and a call for specific changes to the current policy.

Union President Zachary Coseglia will present the report to BU President Jon Westling today.

The professionally bound report includes 22 pages preceding the actual proposal explaining the Union’s methodology in producing the report, a Guest Policy comparison to similar universities and a synthesis of student, parent and security guard opinion about the current policy. The rest of the report includes 42 pages of spreadsheets, surveys and graphs with the committee’s statistical findings and seven pages of the history of the current policy’s inception.

“The committee essentially was interested in finding out what is important to students first and foremost,” Coseglia said. “Once we found that out, that’s when the meat of the project began.”

The report does not include an introductory summary because Coseglia said he wants Westling to read the whole report.

The proposal included in the report would allow BU students access to all BU dormitories 24 hours a day and 10 more overnight guest passes per semester. The proposal also asks for overnight guest privileges for non-BU students of the opposite sex and a limited number of emergency 24-hour guest passes for non-BU students at residence guard booths.

Residents would still be required to sign BU student guests into their building between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., and would still need roommate approval for overnight guest passes under the committee’s proposed plan. Students with BU meal plans would still be able to swipe into any dormitory with a dining hall between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.

The current policy restricts BU dormitory access for non-enrolled students to between midnight and 8 a.m. and allows students five three-night guest passes per semester. Students also must currently get approval for any overnight guests one business day in advance.

BU Free President Ethan Clay said the actual proposal included in the report is not rigid and is just a start.

“The specific proposal is not the most important part of the report,” he said. “The most important part is that it’s a research project that says students are not happy with the current policy.

“We’re asking administrators to create a task force to address the issue. Our specific proposal is a suggestion; it’s what we feel is a compromise. It may not be what every student may want specifically, but we feel the majority of students would be satisfied.”

The rest of the report summarizes student opinion into four parts, saying students should have access to BU buildings and “deserve to be treated like adults, not children.” In addition, it says the current Guest Policy is inconsistent and does not account for student desires to be spontaneous.

“Students can not, they say, always be expected to plan one business day in advance for overnight guests who are not BU students,” the report reads.

The report says students do not want to eliminate the Guest Policy entirely, a point Coseglia said will be important to administrators. Of the 1,192 students responding to the committee’s survey, 698 do not want to abolish all of the current policy.

“Our committee finds one thing particularly interesting about the student perspective: students do not have a problem with a Guest Policy, they have a problem with this policy,” the report reads. “Interestingly, a strong majority of students do not want to abolish the policy completely. The number speaks volumes about the responsibility and pragmatism of the BU student body.”

Results of 53 parent surveys compiled by the committee are also included in the report. According to the data, all 53 respondents agreed their son or daughter would “benefit from learning how to deal with roommate disputes while they still have outlets for mediation such as the RAs.”

“We did not outright ask, ‘Do you support the BU Guest Policy?’ because parents do not understand the policy,” the report reads.

Security guards stationed at 10 Buick St. told committee members they would support any changes to the Guest Policy, and even said possible changes could be safer for students, the report says. According to the report, guards told committee members inactivity between 12 a.m. and 8 a.m. sometimes results in tiredness. It also says guards related that they do not like to turn students away late at night.

“Turning students away, they worry, could force [students] to roam the streets,” the report says.

The report also includes a comparison of BU’s Guest Policy with those of Emerson College and Northeastern University because of their similar Boston environments. Both schools have significantly more relaxed guest policies and still have comparable or fewer instances of crime, according to the report.

“These statistics demonstrate that Boston University’s nationally recognized safety is not a direct result of any policy at all,” the report says. “BU is safe because of the size and strength of the [Boston University Police Department], because of the ubiquitous blue phones up and down Commonwealth Avenue, because of the campus-wide escort service, because of professional and responsible resident assistants.”

To conclude the report, the committee addresses safety, academics, experience, fire alarms, maturity and pride as seven specific areas in which a new guest policy would improve BU.

According to the report, a new policy would be safer for students because it would offer them a safe place to congregate at all times.

“Currently, students must choose between early curfews or unsafe environments,” the report says. “These choices are unacceptable.”

The conclusion contends the current guest policy “does not foster an academic community where personal sharing and collaboration can occur at any and all times.”

The committee also responds to an administrative concern about increased false fire alarms with more student access to every building. It says decreases in fire alarms are not the result of the current guest policy, but rather because of increased penalties for setting off false alarms that were put in place several years before the current policy was adopted.

One section of the conclusion addresses increased student maturity since the current policy’s inception.

“BU is no longer the backwater university of the past,” the report says, referring to a quote from John Silber’s book “Straight Shooting.” “The University’s faculty, staff and administration does a lot of bragging about how the students at BU today are academically and intellectually superior in comparison to their predecessors … We deserve to be treated like the intelligent adults the University knows we are.”

“The proposal itself is the voice of BU students speaking out against the Guest Policy,” Clay said. “We want the administration to know it’s an issue on campus.”

Students voiced approval of the Union and BU Free’s efforts to reform the Guest Policy.

“[The proposal] is perfectly reasonable,” said Devon Donohue, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. “If it were more radical, nothing would happen. If they were to propose to abolish the Guest Policy, it wouldn’t be taken seriously. They should go little steps at a time.”

College of Fine Arts junior Jordan Seavey said though he does not think administrators will ever listen to students on this subject, he thinks this proposal has the best chance of any.

“I moved off campus because of the current policy,” Seavey said. “This proposal has the best chance of anything that’s been tried up to now; it’s the most official and the most organized. But I don’t think it’ll go through because I think we have a very closed-minded administration and city.”

“They planned it out well enough so it’s not an unreasonable proposal,” said Ben Janulewicz, a junior in the School of Education. “Obviously, the school’s administration makes the final decision. I think they should listen, but I don’t know that they will.

“It is a lot better than the current policy. The current one treats us like 5-year-olds.”

However, CAS sophomore Kirsten Lindee said the proposal doesn’t go far enough.

“The proposal doesn’t solve the main problem,” Lindee said. “It makes minor changes, but it ignores the problem — that the Guest Policy is isolating. BU students should have full access to all BU buildings at all times. We pay so much to go here, so we should be allowed access to all buildings on campus.”

“There are still inconveniences [in the proposed policy] but there always has to be a limit,” said Edwin Jacome, a junior in the School of Management. “I think it’s good enough. If it helps the students, it’s good.”

Seavey expressed frustration with BU about students having to expend so much effort trying to change a policy to incorporate freedoms many schools take for granted.

“I think it’s ridiculous that we go to a school where the Union has to focus on something as simple as a guest policy because it is so restrictive,” Seavey said. “Every year, Spectrum asks to pass the sexual nondiscrimination clause, and, as remarkable as it is that it hasn’t been adopted, it hasn’t. As much as I find the Guest Policy stuff important and ridiculous, I think energy should focus on more important things.”