Dorms and Day Students: A Growing Divide

By ELENA VICIERA ‘19

The recent changes that the administration has made to the “In Room Visitation Policy” have turned many heads. These restrictions have implications not only for the boarding community but also for the relationships between boarding and day students. Effective this school year, these changes include postponing the day when In Room Visitation can begin to October 1st and making all students who do not belong to a dorm check in with the faculty member on duty. Students must also leave the door open and the lights on during their whole stay.

Milton’s administrators have always made an serious effort to bridge the social gap between boarders and day students. However, these visitation policy revisions risk compromising the connection between day students and boarders. Students can no longer go into their friends rooms after a Friday night SAA activity to hang out before getting picked up; they can no longer go into their friends’ dorm rooms to change after school ends and before sports start. These actions may seem insignificant, but they are what makes the boarding and day community fluid. These everyday experiences in Milton dorms make day students feel as though they have access to the same advantages as boarders. Having the liberty to invite whomever into their rooms makes boarders feel like their rooms are their homes. The new rules ignore the existence of both intra-dorm relationships and boarding-day relationships. This dismissal, or what seems like a dismissal, of the fluidity between the two communities not only affects the habits that have been developed by returning students, but also impacts the relationships that are fostered by freshmen in their first few weeks of school. Freshmen often come into the first few days of school with an established friend group based on either dorm friends, town friends, or middle school friends, and a crucial way to expand their friendships is through the use of the dorm as a base for social activity. Taking away the ability to hang out in dorm rooms, a more private manner than hanging out in the student center, could bar students in the whole upper school from being able to create deeper friendships between day and boarding students in their first few weeks of school.

Still, valid reasons do exist behind the administration's decision to change these visitation rules. Deerfield Academy, in addition to other prep schools, has implemented similar rules, not allowing students to visit each other in rooms until October 1st and requiring everyone to receive approval through notifying the faculty member on duty of their presence. Ultimately, the intent behind altering these rules was to promote inclusion on campus and specifically in dorms. Understanding that the intent is inclusion, I believe that this rule is essentially the only effective option that Milton, and other schools, have. There is no clear solution that would solve both the need for inclusion and the importance of community, but with the evident prioritization of inclusion, the rule at hand is the best option. Not all problems can be solved by a single change, so with time and thought from student perspectives in additions to faculty perspectives, we hopefully will be able to mold the In Room Visitation guidelines to support all aspects of the Milton community.