Photo by Julie McMahon
Entering my fourth year at Conn, I’ve realized that critical thinking happens in many other places besides the classroom, especially in places where I don’t want it. One afternoon in the Office of Admission, my boss, Daniel Pearson, asked me about the recent issues between Campus Safety and River Ridge residents. (I was just trying to get a cup of coffee.) The conversation came down to a core issue: the balance of power. Why did Campus Safety have to enter an apartment, or any residence, to solve a problem if there’s a staffmember—a Housefellow—already there? Why didn’t the Housefellow take care of the issue before Campus Safety was forced to respond? Where does the responsibility of a Housefellow end and a Campus Safety officer begin?
About two weeks ago, several Campus Safety officers traveled to the Ridge in response to noise complaints from the residents of New London. Once arriving at the Ridge, they approached the houses with the noise issues to rectify the situation. According to a number of students, the officers continued to search the area, including apartments without complaints made on their behalf. One student questioned the officers before allowing them to enter her apartment, declaring that she was doing nothing wrong and they had no grounds to enter, yet the officers checked her apartment regardless. The next day, Daniel Seehausen ’12, an ILC, or an Independent Living Coordinator, sent his residents an email summing up the various complaints he’d gathered and the subsequent action he was taking.
Stewart Smith, the Director of Campus Safety, sent me the official college policy on room entry. “The College retains the right to enter student rooms. This right reflects the responsibility of the institution to safeguard student health, the community and the property that the community uses. Circumstances warranting such entry range from routine maintenance, to health and safety inspections, to probable cause of a violation of law or College policy, to emergencies where there is reasonable evidence of a clear and present danger to an individual or the community.” Technically, the Campus Safety officers were allowed to enter the apartments—any of them—that night in response to the complaints, as a part of college policy, but this course of action leaves out an integral part of the equation: where were the Housefellows?
Last year, the Office of Residential Education and Living created the Independent Living Coordinator position, in lieu of a Housefellow, in the Ridge apartments and the Winchester houses. The ILC retains most of the responsibility of a Housefellow, but was adapted to fit an alternative living environment. According to the Residential Life section of the website, Housefellows are trained to “work closely with the Offices of Student Life, Campus Safety, Physical Plant and academic deans, counselors, Student Government Association, Judicial Board and other members of the Connecticut College community.”
Like Housefellows, ILCs are part of the on-call schedule, in which a student staff member is the point person for a section or dorm on campus every night in which school is in session. The night in question invariably had a Housefellow, Floor Governor, or ILC—a student trained to work with Campus Safety on behalf of other students—on-call, yet no one took advantage of this relationship. According to Director Smith, Campus Safety isn’t required to inform a Housefellow, RA or Floor Governor before they enter a dorm.
Dan Pearson likes to remind me to think outside of the “bubble.” We’re part of an association of other small, similarly minded New England liberal arts schools—we can learn from them. I emailed editors-in-chief of several other NESCAC schools, explained our situation, and asked for a rundown of their campus safety situations. Colby has Community Advisors, Bates has Residential Coordinators and Wesleyan has Residential Advisors—regardless of the name, they, like us, have student residence hall directors. The students I spoke to, however, insisted that their campus safety shared the burden of social responsibility with these staff members. The Bates student told me it would be unusual for a security intervention that wasn’t headed by both an RC and a security officer. A two-year Wesleyan RA told me that while he’d called Public Safety many times, he saw himself as the first resource for students in his hall, simply because he was a fellow student.
“I don’t think its necessary for Campus Safety to come unannounced to do their rounds, because all of the Housefellows have gone through training in order to be in charge of the dorm,” Brenner Green ’12, Housefellow of Earth/360, told me. “We are prepared for almost anything that could happen. We also have floor governors, so there’s enough student staff in a dorm to take care of it. If we need campus safety, we’re responsible enough to call.”
In our conversations about shared governance, associations like SGA and Honor Council take precedence, but nothing affects a student more than his or her living environment. Conn has ensured a student voice in planning centennial celebrations, allocating the College’s money and creating the academic calendar, but Housefellows are not to be underestimated. They are nothing but prepared: after a month-long application process, two weeks of training and weekly meetings after that, they know what they’re getting into. Why aren’t we using them to their potential?
Let’s debunk the myth that Campus Safety exists solely to break up our fun; let’s change the perception that Housefellows do nothing but handle lockouts. Require Campus Safety to alert the on-call staff member that they are entering a building, and make the student assess the issue with them. Have Housefellows interact with the Campus Safety officers during rounds, and let them compare notes about the dorm and section of campus. Invite all of the Housefellows and Campus Safety officers to Higdon’s office to tea and cookies. These two forces need to be trusted, not deplored. Combine the two—Campus Safety knows the protocol for every imaginable situation, Housefellows will maintain the student perspective. Then we can see what happens when fully competent staff members—students and professionals alike—take advantage of a mutually beneficial relationship.
Welcome back.
– Jazmine
