Dorm-Locking: A Dubious Decision

by Alexander Wilson

This past week the College announced the formation of a committee to discuss the implementation of the decision, announced last term, to lock the entrances to all the dorms on campus. Its responsibilities will not include any review of the basic premises underlying that door locking policy. Unfortunately, that premise is fatally flawed.

The entire door locking concept must be framed, as it has not been, by the fact that Dartmouth is an almost uniquely safe environment, particularly as it relates to this particular question. Violent crimes committed by non-students on students are practically unheard of. In more than 40 years there have been two murders affecting the Dartmouth community. One, that of the Zantops, occurred in an entirely different town. The other occurred at an off-campus apartment, and was perpetrated by a graduate student who was well known to the victim. No assault or rape by a non-student has occurred in a dorm in the past decade, and the number in the past half-century can be counted on a person’s fingers.

Theft at Dartmouth is certainly not unheard of. However, it is nearly always carried out by students who would have access to the dorms no matter what the door locking policy. The only significant criminal issue that has been a problem at Dartmouth is that of trespassing and certain attendant behavior, such as the incidents of strange men entering the women’s bathrooms in Topliff and Smith over the past year. Either objectively or in comparison with other residential environments across the country, the level of crime here is negligible.

The common response to this undeniable truth is to claim that any preventable crime is too much. The key word here is preventable. Door locks, administration claims to the contrary, will not increase student safety or prevent crime. The premise their use relies on is that non-students will be unable to gain access to a dorm if its doors are locked. This will not sound plausible to anyone who has ever been at Dartmouth during Homecoming, when the doors are locked, or who has lived in a city, where all doors are locked as a matter of course.

Every Homecoming, the doors to dorms are locked, as the campus swarms with alumni, friends and possibly other less savory- individuals. Every Homecoming, the doors are propped open with bricks and students hold the door open for anyone walking in behind them. This is a result of the overwhelming common, and accurate, perception on this campus that there is a miniscule level of danger in doing so.

Locking the doors will not change this attitude among students. Only the most psychotic countenance would prevent a person from posing as a student, an alumni, a parent, or a delivery person, any of whom would eventually be granted entry to a dorm if they wait near its doors. Only a massive campus police presence will prevent it. That type of presence would render door locks unnecessary in the first place.

Moreover, any criminal actually planning to rape, assault, or murder someone will be undeterred by a door locking system. Keys and ID cards can be stolen and used by people other than their owners. People can be attacked outside of the safety of their dorms. In every city in this country people are attacked despite the locks on their apartment buildings, including inside those supposedly safe locations. When there is a large group of people potentially willing to commit those crimes, locks provide a measure of security. When there is one every ten years, they will be able to find a target and a method that avoids the door locking barrier.

Put simply, lack of safety is not a significant problem at Dartmouth, and, to the extent that it is, locking the dorms will not address it. On the other side of the equation, however, door locks will have a tremendous negative impact on the Dartmouth community.

One issue, though not the most important, is sheer inconvenience. People lose keys all the time, and the very premise of the system is that people won’t open the doors for others. So come next winter you may find students shivering outside their dorms praying someone they know will come home to let them in. Non-student friends up for the weekend will become a major hassle for students. Even food deliveries will become a production.

The Office of Residential Life’s proposed key card system will not eliminate these problems. In fact, it may make them worse. Most Dartmouth students have had at least one experience with supposedly error-proof systems at Dartmouth, whether the computer network or the Berry fire alarms which have a tendency to malfunction. What happens when a dorm’s key card system crashes?

These however, are very minor points when compared with the larger effect door locks will have on the openness of the Dartmouth community. When freshmen arrive here, the fact that all the dorms are open makes the firm and lasting impression that this is a place where everyone is welcome, where people are not fundamentally separated on the basis of where they live. It says that this is a safe place, a friendly place, a place where people are encouraged to drop by and see a friend or acquaintance without having to call in advance.

In large part as a result of this, Dartmouth has a communal and residential openness that is not to be found in the real world, and is tremendously rare even at other colleges and universities. This is an important aspect of the unique appeal of Dartmouth. Many students, including myself, chose to come here rather than a more urban or closed-off institution in no small part because of this sense of community.

Locking the dorms will do much to destroy that appeal. One has only to look at some of our peer schools, and the extent to which their social structures are dorm-based to see the problem. Dartmouth will be less friendly, seem less safe, and become a far less attractive place to spend four years. Attending college in Hanover has many disadvantages. The ability to leave doors open is one of its consolations, and doing away with that requires a compelling student interest.

Safety, as I have demonstrated, does not qualify in that respect. Some have made the claim that the reassurance door locks will provide to those who feel unsafe will justify door locks regardless of their actual safety value. This, however, holds up little better under examination. First, the value of this reassurance will last only until such time as an intruder is found in a locked dorm. Clearly, this is a very real possibility, given the lack of preventive value door locks actually possess. So having locked the doors, with all its attendant negative consequences, may become a valueless action in very short order.

The more important point however, is that reassuring students who feel unsafe is simply not compelling in principle. Student safety is paramount. Protecting students from violence is immeasurable, more important than the convenience of students or even preserving the openness of the College. This, however, is not the issue under debate. Rather, the question is whether students’ right to feel safe without any actual increase in safety is more important than the right of the vast majority who already, rightly, feel safe, to have an open and welcoming community.

The simple answer is that it is not. A minority of students must not be permitted to restrict the freedom and comfort of the majority in order to provide themselves with the illusion of safety. Many students attach a great deal of value to leaving the dorms open, and their wishes are no less valid than the insecurity of their peers.

As long as the College cannot present a policy which will actually increase campus safety, it is unconscionable for it to force ineffective, and highly damaging, pretenses at doing so on the student body. Sadly, it seems clear that this decision has already been made by the administration, regardless of student opposition. However, should the College actually wish to address the issues properly, there are two appropriate steps that could be taken.

Instead of locking the dorms, the College should immediately lock the women’s bathrooms on campus, and the men’s if there is significant concern regarding safety in them as well. These have been the site of the incidents over the past few years that have raised safety concerns, locking bathrooms would directly address this problem. The bathrooms are the only dorm space where an assault is likely to occur without immediately being noticed and prevented by other dorm residents.

Secondly, the College should set aside one dorm, or more if necessary, to be locked at all times. Much like the substance-free housing in Butterfield, students who wished to pursue residential options that would, campus-wide, infringe on the legitimate freedoms of other students, could opt into an environment designed to deal with their unique concerns. This would allow for those students who have safety concerns to feel protected, without an illegitimate and damaging infliction of the door locking policy on students who neither want nor need it.

I am sorry to say that the experience of almost four years at Dartmouth leaves me little hope that these kinds of sensible compromises will be accepted by the administration now that it has announced its dictate. But the new policy is so clearly in error that I allow myself, probably foolishly, to hope for the best.