As a freshman, I could not wait to move into the dorms. I became less excited when, much to my surprise, I found out about the visitation policies. Throughout the year, the visitation policies continued to cause problems when I would have to check people out mid-studying, or I would fall asleep and consequently get written up. Many times, I walked alone at night from McCormick to Cobeen after waiting for far too long for LIMOs that never seemed to arrive.
The current visitation policy states that guests must be checked out at 1 a.m. during the week and 2 a.m. on the weekends, and only guests of the same sex can stay overnight. I find these rules to be not only inconvenient, but outdated, heteronormative and unsafe.
Marquette provides a LIMO service that can be utilized at night after the checkout time. However, they often take a very long time to arrive, which leads to students walking home alone late at night. This is very unsafe considering Marquette’s urban environment. If students could easily crash in their friends’ dorms, that could help to prevent a lot of unsafe situations.
Many schools, including other private schools such at La Salle and Gonzaga, have done away with visitation policies. We are adults and we should not be policed. I agree it is important to know who is in the building, but restrictions should not be placed on who can or can’t stay overnight, especially if they go to Marquette.
I know many students who would have group study sessions in their dorms before a big exam and often had to cut their studying short because they had guests checked in who had to leave at 1 a.m.
My biggest problem with the visitation policy is that it is heteronormative. Marquette allows you to check in people of the same sex overnight, but not those of the opposite sex. This leads me to believe that they only allow that because they assume that people of the same sex are not in a relationship. Marquette should be validating and recognizing all students’ relationships. The visitation policies are therefore offensive to homosexual relationships.
Last year, I had a friend who lived in the Evans Scholars house. She said that although they technically had the same visitation policies, their RA would look at each situation on a case by case basis. Often times, people would be there later studying, and if someone had a guest that lived farther away and didn’t want to walk home, the RAs would let them stay. It would be better if all RAs did this. Students should not be written up for accidentally falling asleep. We could get rid of a lot of unnecessary write-ups if we just looked at the whole situation, instead of immediately assuming the students were doing something wrong.
Visitation rules should be universal across Marquette’s campus and should have the students’ best interest in mind. I know that it may seem like the current system is what is best, but that is not true. I think it is time to change some things and update the system so it is best for all.
