Last week, the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate proposed several important changes to the guest registration policy. These revisions, if approved by the Office of Residential Life and Learning (ResLife), will make the policy more practical and realistic. Even with the proposed changes, however, guest registration is likely to remain low. ResLife should therefore consider alternative means of achieving the goals for which the policy was created.
The current guest registration policy requires that students register any overnight guests they host in their rooms, whether or not the guest is a Tufts student. The Senate is proposing that the policy be changed so that students do not need to register overnight guests who are Tufts students. This is a logical and necessary change, as it acknowledges the reality of the situation: Most students are extremely unlikely to register fellow Tufts students who spend the night in their rooms.
It is unreasonable to expect that students would be able to predict three days in advance that a fellow Tufts student will be spending the night, as ResLife's policy currently requires. On any given night, a friend or significant other may spontaneously decide to spend the night instead of walking back to his or her dorm. Very few, if any, of these overnight guests are registered beforehand with ResLife. The current policy is unenforceable, so Senate is right to ask ResLife to not require that Tufts students be registered as overnight guests.
Under the proposed revisions, students hosting non−Tufts guests overnight will still be required to register them with ResLife. For security and administrative reasons, ResLife wants to know who is staying in Tufts' dorms. However, it is safe to say that many Tufts students do not think to register their guests from out of town. If it is important to ResLife to have accurate data about non−Tufts guests staying overnight, the office should take steps to make the registration requirements easier and more widely followed.
One step ResLife could take would be to let students fill out and submit the guest registration form online, rather than having to print it out and turn it in to a Resident Assistant (RA). ResLife could therefore have more immediate information that would also be more accurate, as most students would be far more inclined to use a quick, simple online form. Additionally, ResLife could ask RAs to talk to their residents and remind them that non−Tufts overnight guests have to be registered, and explain how to do this. Direct conversation like this between RAs and their residents about guests will also help better inform RAs of who is on their floors. Unless ResLife takes these or other steps, students will continue to neglect to register their overnight guests, and the ResLife policy will remain meaningless and unenforced.
One of the other proposed changes is that students with single rooms would not be required to register three days in advance. However, since ResLife has already stated that the three−day policy is a guideline, not a rule, getting rid of the "guideline" for students with singles effectively changes nothing. A practical solution would be to have students with single rooms not be required to register any guests, as their guests do not have the potential to disturb roommates.
ResLife should accept the changes to the guest registration policy that the Senate has proposed. Yet even with the changes in place, it is likely that compliance with the guest registration policy will still remain low. When revising guest registration, ResLife and the Senate should consider the original goals of having such policies and seriously examine whether they would be met by the changes. If many of them would not, ResLife may need to reassess all of its guest registration guidelines.
