Space invaders

During winter and spring breaks, students have their minds on many things, one of which is likely not whether their temporarily unoccupied dorm rooms are being inspected. They are most certainly not thinking about room inspections if they are not given ample and specific notification of when they occur. Over winter break, Barnard students’ uninhabited rooms are checked by Residential Life and Housing staff for fire hazards, with no warning other than a passage in the student handbook. If illicit items are found, they are confiscated. If nothing is taken, a student has no way of knowing that anyone was in her room. And over this past spring break, every Hartley and Wallach room was entered to assess the condition of desks and desk chairs. While this was systematic and not a room search, students were given little to no notice of the inspections—many students had left for vacation by the time the notification fliers were put up. Residential advisors and housing staff have an obligation to keep student rooms safe. However, they are also obligated to keep students informed in the process.

Students understand that their rooms belong to Columbia, and that they use them over the course of the academic year under a contractual agreement to abide by certain regulations. They also understand that they must work with the University to keep their rooms and suites free of fire hazards. They know that their rooms can be raided. They know that if they are under 21, they should not have alcohol or alcohol-related paraphernalia in their rooms, and that if they do, it is liable to be seized.

There is a vast difference, however, between regular Barnard room inspections—which are preceded by emails to students and followed by notes informing students if something was confiscated—and the aforementioned searches conducted over winter break, in which only students who cannot or do not pay to stay in their rooms have their belongings searched. Similarly, if items needed to be taken out of Hartley and Wallach desks and desk chairs, there is no reason why an email couldn’t have been sent out to residents of these dorms before students left for spring break so they knew that someone would be in their rooms during their absence.

Yes, it is Housing’s right to enter students’ rooms, and yes, it is their duty to protect our safety. The fact that there is a line in a handbook that says this is a possibility, however, does not mean that students have been properly notified. Searches should be conducted while students are in school and after they have been informed of the date and purpose of the inspection. If the point of these inspections is to be sneaky, then keeping to the status quo would be fine. However, if Housing’s aim is to ensure that students feel not only that they are safe, but that they are in control of their safety, unannounced (or essentially unannounced) inspections are as much of an infraction as is unwittingly keeping a fire hazard in one’s dorm room.