Inflexible rules are good in some cases. Refusing to tolerate violence in the dorms, for example, helps undergraduates feel secure in housing. In other cases, however, a zero-tolerance approach is clearly inappropriate—and in Housing, disproportionate punishments detract from the community spirit necessary to make dorms welcoming. So when third-year Clayton Ayers allowed five friends to enter his ground-floor dorm room through the window earlier this month, Housing should have let him off with no more than a wrist-slap for incurring a minor safety or security risk. The actual response—deciding to kick him out of the South Campus Residence Hall and dining hall—is far more severe than Ayers’s “crime.”
House check-in policies for both residents and visitors exist for a reason. Certainly, it would be worrisome to have people going into dorms through windows on a regular basis. But the five people who entered Ayers’s room in Janotta House were all fellow students who came in with his permission. Housing should recognize that people entering a room through a window is a security issue in principle, but was not the actual facts of Ayers’s case.
Housing’s harsh response to Ayers’s actions forces him to uproot in the middle of the quarter and bars him from visiting or dining with his friends at his former home. The administration’s reasons for doling out such a stern punishment are unknown; Housing officials Katie Callow-Wright and Jim Wessel refused to comment on the situation to the Maroon. Hopefully, the fact that Housing has not yet scheduled the review of the decision Ayers requested means administrators are having second thoughts about the severity of his punishment.
Whether or not this is the case, Housing should be forgiving of such minor offenses. Ayers did not endanger anyone; if Housing feels it necessary to make an example of him, the now well-publicized probations of Ayers and the five students who entered through his window are certainly enough to get the point across. The Maroon hopes that when the decision is reviewed, Housing will reverse the decision to ban Ayers from his dorm and dining hall.
—The Maroon Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief, Viewpoints Editors, and an additional Editorial Board member. Editorial Board member Matt Barnum, a Housing employee, recused himself.
Okay, Maroon Editorial Board, seriously? Did you really write the following:
“Certainly, it would be worrisome to have people going into dorms through windows on a regular basis.”
Do you realize how ridiculous you sound?
Nevermind the fact that your “publication” is full of BS normally, I cannot believe that you are defending someone who did something absolutely stupid, and you go on crying boo-hoo after he gets in trouble for doing the stupidest thing ever. Certainly it is worrisome that the moment someone on this campus actually has to deal with the repercussions for his/her actions, that the Maroon throws a textual hissy-fit.
Give me a break and please start publishing non-ridiculous opinions, and please stop defending people for doing dumb things.
The stupidest thing ever? On what kind of value system are you operating that not only claims letting someone in through a first-storey SCRH window warrants that kind of label, but agrees with the kind of extreme punishment that was meted out?
sure, the whole window thing bypassed existing security measures. they made a mistake. if i were to sneak some max p kids into scrh without signing them in, then, would you prescribe the same punishment? he got kicked out his room and banned from his dorm & dining hall for a slip of judgment that yielded no pernicious effects for anyone involved. it’s an infraction, to be sure, but the kind many students wouldn’t think twice before making because its severity wasn’t made explicit in either housing rules or the poor bastard’s housing meeting. if you’re going to subsume under Unbreakable Rules things that don’t strike anyone as particularly severe like Don’t Climb Through Windows or Don’t Go On Dorm Roofs, it’s the responsibility of authorities to make them as explicit as possible. The latter is, in fact, in writing somewhere. the former isn’t. have a heart, would you.
I’m sorry, but as a student at South Campus, many students are now not trusting any form of authority after hearing about Clayton’s case. More kids are inclined to leave housing because they fear getting punished for really small issues. Finally, the image that this is where fun goes to die is strengthened. Is this really what we want? I guess you do…
I whole-heartedly agree with DK. Letting people climb in through ground floor windows clearly is the stupidest thing ever. Nothing compares to its sheer malevolence. I’m glad that residents in housing who’ve sexually harassed roommates receive less in comparison – for instance, a mere move to another house and the retention of their official Housing positions – given how much worse anything window-related is for student well-being. In giving Ayers the same punishment as house residents caught abusing illegal drugs, the correct message is put out clearly: not putting a stop to your friends’ entry into your room via a window is on the same level of unacceptability as drug abuse.
HEY YALL
CLAYTON IS FREED.