Trial In-Room Visitation Policy Incites Campus
By PIERCE WILSON ‘19 and ABBY FOSTER ‘19
Timeline:
Early September: Admin announces that in-room visitation, the policy that allows day students or students of other dorms to visit a boarder’s room, will be discontinued until October 1 while the administration restructures the policy to be safer and more inclusive.
Throughout September: Mr. Heard, Mr. Ruiz, and boarding faculty met with the boarding council on a weekly basis. House councils of each dorm and the SGA also met to discuss a possible new IRV policy.
Monday, October 1: Mr Heard announces that, although October 1 was the original date, he, the boarding council, and the faculty needed more time to mull over a new policy.
Wednesday, October 3: Mr. Heard sends an email to all boarding students which announces a trial run policy of a new IRV policy, which includes the following rules: all people have to check in guests with person on duty, regardless of gender; visitors are only allowed during specific times (6:30-7:15 on weeknights, although it is unclear how Wednesdays will work); if a guest is over, the door of the boarder’s room must be a trash can’s width open, and a faculty member will be checking in every few minutes; whether or not a student can have parietals is completely up to the discretion of the dorm faculty, and a boarding student cannot have a guess if the dorm faculty is not present. Common spaces visitation will remain the same. The administration plans to review the response to this pilot program during a meeting October 9, and will determine if the new rules are sustainable. At this time the administration will also decide how to move forward with a permanent policy.
Wednesday Night: Margot Becker ’20 and Pearce Crocker ’19, two boarders in Forbes House, create a document which circulates among students. The document includes a letter which outlines the student’s grievances with the new IRV system, as well as an abbreviated list which encapsulates the major points made in the letter, which is shown below:
We deeply respect the students who committed their time and energy to a new IRV policy.
Students voices were entirely drowned out during the pilot-program creation.
Students were advised to speak with community leaders whose voices were additionally ignored.
The new IRV policy will deepen existing boarder-day student, and inter-dorm divides.
The new IRV policy places unnecessary strain on faculty.
Other ISL and non-ISL schools both have significantly less stringent policies.
Becker and Crocker email this letter to Mr. Heard, Mr. Ruiz, and all upper school students. As of the time it was emailed out, this letter had 137 signatures from students who feel that the new IRV policy is unfair.
Wednesday Night: TMP sends out a survey to gauge student response to the new IRV policy. Out of the 116 students who responded, the majority were boarders (62.9%), and there was an even spread across all four classes. Out of these respondents, 86.2% reported that they were against the new IRV policy. When asked to explain their stance on the new policy, many responses mirrored the complaints listed in Margot and Pearce’s letter—the rules are too restrictive and limit the privacy boarders are allowed, and will likely widen the boarder-day student divide. Several also complained that the new system seemed like an unfair strain on boarding faculty, as well as that it appeared that the administration had given no thought to the desires of students. However, some students were in favor of the new policy, as they saw it as a step towards inclusion; many thought the old IRV was heteronormative, as many of the rules were targeted towards a scenario where a student invites over a guest of another gender, while same-gender pairings were not addressed. Select quotes from this Wednesday night survey are listed below:
“The new policy stigmatizes and sexualizes all relationships instead of fostering healthy bonds between peers. It destroys trust between faculty and students as it assumes that all behavior during visitation requires oversight and cannot be left to the judgement and morality of the student themselves. It's disappointing to see the community take a step backwards.”
“I appreciate the effort the school is making to uphold ideals of gender equality and that they're keeping people safe.”
“My dorm house council was being told a wide range of things that were not addressed in the new policy.”
“People can't come to your room after school... Teens at home have that privilege…”
“The whole process is incredibly difficult considering that people on duty aren’t always in the dorm.”
“I am in favor of [the new policy] because the administration took steps toward inclusion. However, I feel that there is still a long ways to go and that there is a better long term solution to IRV.”
“I used to always have friends over just to change really quickly before or after practice in the privacy of my room with the door closed, but I can’t do that anymore and it makes everything so much more inconvenient.”
“[the administration] spent a month doing jack s**t. They further restricted visitation times, and they added a sign in sheet. Like d**n, i can print out an excel sheet too. S**t.”
“One of the best aspects of having dorms from a day student's perspective is they're private and accessible, which creates stronger bonds both among friends and among day/board students. Ironically, it's the dorms themselves that help bridge the day student/boarder divide...I strengthened a lot of friendships freshman year because I had access to dorms [as a day student]. Also, if the goal was to reduce heteronormative standards, then why are you limiting everyone. You're solving a problem that wasn't there with this new rule and limiting privacy. What if siblings lived in different dorms? They can't visit anymore? Can't sleep over? Close the door? This applies with friends too. These changes weren't supposed to limit, they were supposed to expand.”
“As a person who supports equality on campus, I want an inclusive IRV policy, and I understand that because Milton has to contend with the law and parents, as well as manage families from a huge background of cultures, a realistic LGBT+ inclusive policy will be more restrictive on same-gender friendships, because all student relationships are equalized under the policy. I'm glad that Milton is taking a step to equality, even if it might make my life harder sometimes.”
“I believe there should be a system similar to the blue cards one for room visitation. This would mean that parents are allowed to control their child’s visitation rights based upon what they know about their child.”
“The school asked for input— this is not a democracy...students didn’t get what they wanted, but their “ideal” situations were not even options in the first place. they have to comprehend the days and days of work that was put in— the system isn’t perfect, it never will be, and we all as a student body have to acknowledge that this is the best that we can do, provided the circumstances. legally, milton couldn’t do a lot of things that students wanted. at the end of the day, this is generally an accountability issue and milton is doing what it can to just get IRV back on the table as a whole. this isn’t the end of the conversation.”
Wednesday Night: TMP staff conducts interviews with Quinn Fox ’19, Norris House Monitor; Ryan Choi ’19; and Parker Hitt ’19, member of the gender council. Fox said that, in the beginning of the process, Mr. Heard encouraged the house monitors and boarding monitors to come up with a few visitation systems that did not involve a face-to-face interaction with house faculty. They came up with the following: a paper sign-in and an IA system. However, Fox says, at a subsequent meeting, the boarding council learned from Mr. Heard that all of their systems “had been shot down” by the house heads.
Choi, one of the co-Boarding Monitors, explained that, in his opinion, “this process is not sustainable, but it could be a lot worse.” Choi continued that a large part of the motivation for these rules has to do with the school’s legal concerns. According to Choi, Milton’s lawyers have stipulated that, in order for IRV’s to take place, a faculty member must be present and on duty in the dorm, and the dorm must keep a log of all visitors. Choi said that students should “give [the new system] a chance before arguing,” because “[students] don’t know what will happen. And it’s only six days, after all.”
Hitt commented that the the gender council was consulted very little throughout the process of making the new IRV policy. Perhaps this is why so many students feel that the new policy has less to do with inclusivity and more to do with pleasing lawyers.