In a world where students rent rooms at a privately owned, liberal college, the administration is forced to make a decision: Are they willing to risk student compliancy in exchange for the right to hold students in a police state?
At Colorado College, the decision is clear. The administration would much rather help foster the relationships between Residential Life and students than to come down with an iron fist.
A policy found in the school’s Pathfinder, a comprehensive overview of all school policies, suggests that the college reserves the right to enter students’ rooms because it is a private institution. However, such situations are extremely rare due to the huge influence that the CC culture of student-administration relationships has had on the execution of certain policies.
“The overarching theme in the policy is that, as a private institution, we kind of can do whatever we want if it’s backed up by our policies, so we can’t just make up things left and right,” said Zachary Kroger, Residential Life and Programs Coordinator. “While we hold that right, do we really want to treat the students like criminals by doing room checks and going through their things?”
As Kroger suggests, the CC way has always been to cater to the students and to learn how to do so by creating and fostering relationships with them.
“To my understanding, students are very compliant, and that’s a good thing,” said Corderrol Harris, Residential Life Coordinator – Old Town Language Houses. “We don’t want to create a culture where students become non-compliant or try to hide or do other things. That’s why I think that the way that the school exercises the policy is phenomenal.”
By having a two-way flow of compliancy and cooperation, the college has been able to refrain from entering a student’s room unless they have been given warning.
“Students always know if we’re going into their rooms because we give prior acknowledgement that we’re going to do that and, when we do, we never go in alone,” said Corderrol Harris, Residential Life Coordinator – Old Town Language Houses. “These kinds of things are also there to help protect us.”
Generally, the only times that staff plans to enter students’ rooms are for health and safety inspections, which more so look out for fire safety code violations. In addition, students are given multiple days as well as a checklist to prepare.
These inspections are typically done by Residential Advisors, and during the inspection, RAs are not allowed to look through belongings or move things around. Not only does this make passing the inspections a breeze, but it also shines light on the amount of respect that the school has for the students.
“That’s just what we do to make sure that we’re giving the kind of resources and protection because, you know, we actually care about you guys!” said Harris. “If we need to intervene in order to help you out, we need to have the right to do things like that. But most universities, public or private, don’t go into rooms unannounced—that’s just usually not anybody’s tactic.”
Outside of health and safety checks, Res Life staff is instructed to always knock at a student’s door and wait for a response. If one is not given, Campus Safety steps in with warning.
“If it was the case that someone is throwing a big party or smoking weed in the room and they don’t open up the door for some reason, which has never really happened, we could say ‘Hey we’re giving campus safety a call,’” said Kroger. “But if you do that, people usually open up.”
All in all, the school holds a balancing act between keeping students safe and respecting their boundaries. By keeping their students happy and compliant, they are able to make the lax the standard.
“We could change culture, but that’s not the CC way,” said Kroger. “We respect your space, we respect the individuals.”