By Celeste Alsina
Special to The Denisonian
The beginning of each semester at Denison usually brings with it a lot of transformations to get used to. This semester has come with quite a lot, a new president, a new cardio room, and some administrative changes you still may not be completely up to date with. This week the Denison community received an email from Laurel Kennedy announcing once again the time to swipe into a residence hall had changed, extended an hour from 11pm to midnight.
The initial change occurred this past spring, when the time was moved from 1am to 11pm. The initial change was motivated by a rise in vandalism in residence halls. These acts included fire alarms being pulled and glass doors being broken. Garrett Moore, Director of Security, Safety & Risk Management at Denison, stated that “people were being held responsible for damage in the area that they lived in and many claimed that they weren’t responsible.” As a result the two hour deduction from swipe access time was made to control non-resident access to the halls.
Tuesday Questions, conducted by the Department of Student Development at Denison, gathered data on students’ perception of the changes in residence hall access. Students communicated feeling safer and noticed less disruptions and noise in the residence halls. Others noticed a negative effect from the change, finding it inconvenient when trying to meet friends or peers. There were also complaints about students congregating near entrances to let nonresidents into a building. Because of the aforementioned and there being a reduction in vandalism the decision was made by Moore, Kennedy, and Bill Fox, Dean of Students, to restrict access by one hour instead of two.
Another recent administrative change is the renaming of “Medical Amnesty” to “Medical Assistance.” The administration was finding that students were waiting for people to get better on their own instead of seeking help; with the name change the hope is that it will be clearer to students that they should call for help as soon as someone is in a bad state.
Change is also on the minds of many with a new president on campus. President Adam Weinberg is known as someone who is open to student input, spending the summer meeting with all who were willing, and although the above administrative changes were made with the best intentions for students, this year may bring changes that involve the decision making of students.