May 21, 2022 | Articles

Open dorms - The status quo in higher-ed housing represents an extraordinary shift in thinking

Each fall, eager 18-year-olds lug twin sheets and towels into Oak Hall, a four-story dormitory hemmed in by manicured sidewalks and a century of tradition at Mississippi State University (MSU) in Starkville, Miss. A few semesters ago, Natalie (name changed) was one of those entering freshmen. With expectations as high as the 10-foot ceilings in her new room, she learned the finer points of microwave cooking and where to sign up for intramurals. She also settled in with an assigned roommate with whom she shared space but little else.

Natalie remembers an initial good start, followed by tensions related to their very different belief systems. "She constantly had boys in our room, and I didn't know any of them. Sometimes they would spend the night with her."

Spending the night is against the rules at MSU, where visitation hours for guests of the opposite gender run 10 a.m. to 2 a.m., but most students are unwilling to report violations because they fear being ostracized. Within weeks of moving in, though, Natalie was considering her options. Talk to a resident advisor? Request a new roommate? She'd come to dread opening the door to her room, because she never knew what she would find. The tipping point came when she walked in on an illicit recording session involving her roommate, two guys, and an iPhone. "It was the final straw. I never went back in that room until she moved out."

Even now, as a senior, Natalie doesn't like to talk about that chapter of her college experience. She doesn’t want trouble with the school or her old roommate, and when she heard about a group in her state questioning visitation policies at its universities, she was interested but hesitated to make contact. Eventually, however, she wrote to them. Others did, too.

But with co-ed living the norm on most campuses across the country, it may take more than stories to stir public interest. It may take coupling them with consequences that are increasingly hard to ignore.

POISED AND POSTURED on the edge of a custom sofa in her Jackson, Miss., condominium, Nancy Barrett is making her case. Balancing a stack of handwritten notes on one knee, a cup of her mother's fine china on the other, she stops mid sentence. Did she contact the lieutenant governor before or after she spoke with the chancellor of Ole Miss?

"They were sympathetic but offered no path forward," Barrett says, adding that she also sent hand delivered letters to Mississippi's Institutions of Higher Learning trustees. Same response. But as head of Safe Dormitories Association, Barrett is used to hurdles in the drive to eliminate opposite gender visitation in residential housing at state universities. What she can't get used to are stories like Natalie's.

"One school official told me the reason for rejecting our proposal was that students were on their phones too much. He said open visitation can help them to socialize," she said, eyebrows raised at the argument. "Is that what they call it now? Everybody knows nothing good comes out of boys being in girls' bedrooms, and that's what a dorm room is. A dorm room is a bedroom."

At 75, Barrett is an unlikely activist. She's more comfortable playing a supportive role to her trial lawyer husband than emailing newspaper editors. But four years ago Barrett learned a friend's daughter was sleeping on the floor of her dorm’s laundry room because her roommate's date was there for the night. It was exam week, and the young woman couldn't dress, sleep, or study in her own quarters. The situation disturbed Barrett enough to get her involved, starting with her alma mater, the University of Mississippi, which has told her, in effect, the school has no intention of revoking opposite-gender visitation in its dorms.

Barrett says the issue isn’t just about personal convictions, though. It’s about protection. "This generation doesn't understand what the problem is, but it is a very serious problem. Many young people will make decisions in those dorms that will have consequences they’ll carry for the rest of their lives. It can negatively affect their education and possibly their marriages, and the schools' administrations will be complicit."

Five generations of Barrett's family have studied at Ole Miss, but that didn't keep her grassroots group from criticizing the visitation policies of that university and all the other state schools in full-page ads placed in the state's largest newspaper.

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Read the full World magazine article written by Kim Henderson titled "Open Dorms, The status quo in higher-ed housing represents an extraordinary shift in thinking" on the link provided below.