Closed Dorm Vote Contested

Over the past two weeks, Resident Assistants were supposed to distribute ballots to students to determine whether or not a dorm should remain open to the general Trinity population or closed to all but residents of that particular building. The polls resulted in restricted access for Anadama, Clemens, Frobb, Jarvis, North Campus, Stowe, Wiggins and Ogilby. Students reacted negatively to the new way in which votes were counted and the way in which voting was publicized. There have also been mixed feelings as to whether closing the dorms is a good thing.The Office of Residential Life holds voting once a year to allow students the choice of who can gain access their buildings. Dorms that are in different locations have different needs. North is more accessible to students drinking at the fraternities, while others, like Stowe, are isolated from campus and have more contact with people from the neighborhood.

For some, having an open dorm is a safety issue. For others, the issue is the damaged caused by incidents of drunken vandalism such as those that had been occurring in North.

Voting this year was different from previous years because each ballot that was not filled out counted as a vote for closing the dorm. Other years, only the ballots that were turned in were tallied. Now it is possible that if the majority of a dorm fails to vote, the building would be closed.

A student from ORL who wished to remain anonymous stated that the new voting system was established only in order to encourage students to vote. The notion was that if students felt their non-votes would directly count to close the dorm and they strongly wanted it opened, they would vote.

The problem with this, according to the source, is that many students said they were unaware of the way the voting system functioned this year.

"The really offensive part," said Greg Morin '05, an RA in Frobb, "is that there was no indication on the ballots that failure to cast a vote would be treated as a 'no' vote." He also mentioned his concern with the undemocratic way in which this voting seemed to go.

"I'm a double major in political science and public policy and I cannot think of a single system where this presumption applies ... In 1996, 49.1 percent of the voting age population turned out," he added, stressing the fact that if the United States used this system of non-votes counting as "no," then the results of polls in this country would be quite different.

Other students commented that they were not informed well enough about the votes or the possible consequences. A student in Goodwin said that he and his roommate never received a ballot, thus automatically and unwittingly voting to close their dorm. There is also much debate over the fairness of the closing of Jarvis, where the majority of residents didn't vote at all. "It is true that I didn't vote," said resident Nick Hall '07. "It is true that I threw out the ballot, but I still want open dorms. Call it voter apathy, but I didn't realize how much that vote would count ... I now realize the harsh realities of not voting, and it hurts."

Students forced to bang on windows to get admittance, call ahead to friends, and take a cold walk across campus without getting to retreat into a warm building, are frustrated. Others see the safety issues present in having dorms so easily accessible.

"Anything that anybody says about North being a party dorm is based solely on the fact that it is between frats and the over 21 dorm," stated Scott Baumgartner '07. Partygoers could easily stop into North at any time. "Yes, I think it'll be a bit annoying having to wait at the door for my friends, but I think that, in some ways, it's an equal tradeoff," he said.

Another common thread running through student replies was that, if ORL meant to close dorms for safety, it wouldn't make much difference.

"Students will get in whether they have access or not, it's just a matter of convenience now. I mean, people from Hartford got into the dorms last year and were wandering the halls. And the employees of Chinese restaurants somehow get in to hang menus on doors. That's scary ... people letting strangers in," said Tamara Benoit '04, an inhabitant of Anadama.