Houghton College prides itself on being different from other schools. What makes Houghton unique is the school’s concentrated effort to help guide students into leading a holier way of life.
A result of that effort is reflected in the college’s rules regarding the dormitories. Residence halls are not co-ed, and there is a four-hour window in the evening for those of the opposite gender to visit. During those visiting hours, doors are required to stay open, so that everybody can see what is going on inside the room. Open hours are not held on Mondays or Thursdays.
Now, there is one other place in the world that I have been to that has a similar policy regarding visitors. Granted, this is going to be an extreme analogy, but hear me out.
A psych ward.
To clarify for those who are reading this (and are now pretty worried about where this is going), I have never been admitted to one. I have visited one however, and have experienced what it’s like for the people inside. Imagine a place where you are checked in on by nurses, the doors always have to be open so that you can be watched, and visiting hours are limited for friends and family who want to see you. Now replace nurses with RA’s. How much different are the rules of the dormitories here at Houghton as compared to those of a psyche ward in a hospital?
“I understand what open hours are meant to do,” said Josh Bailey, a junior who now lives in the townhouses. “However, I also feel that they limit our freedom as mature college students, and restrict the opportunities that we have to grow up.”
What are the positives of the current open hour policy? It gives the residents of a hall a break from the opposite sex. There’s a level of privacy that can be experienced when open hours are not in session. I suppose the obvious answer is that we’re less likely to have sex, although based on the culture that has been established here, I don’t think that’s too much of a concern anyway.
Then again, isn’t it a little frustrating to be babysat? Isn’t the open door requirement kind of a slap in the face of our beliefs and character? Isn’t the four-hour window a little too restricting?
Houghton College prides itself on being different from other colleges. A different kind of student is attracted by this place; those who wish to live according to the values of Christianity. Shouldn’t we be given the opportunity to show that we can be trusted to hang out in a dorm at noon on a Monday?
Ashton Oakley, a junior who used to live in Lambein, suggests that open hours should be extended so that the only restricted times would be somewhere along the lines of 12:00pm-9am. This would allow us to still have a safeguard for the evening hours, but also allows us a greater level of freedom that people outside of Houghton take for granted.
In reality, since our classes take up most of the morning and the afternoon anyway, we wouldn’t take full advantage of the expanded open hours. However, it would be nice to allow students to feel as though they have more freedom than a mental patient.