Lately, rumors concerning thefts and unknown intruders have been making their way around campus. It seems that the attitudes of Lawrence students toward their own safety are changing.
On Monday we all woke up to find the doors of our residence halls locked for good. The administration, it seems, has even stronger misgivings about our safety than we do.
Locking residence hall doors 24 hours a day is not only inconvenient, but affects the overall atmosphere on campus. Keys will now be almost permanent appendages to our hands as we walk from one building to another, and Lawrence security guards will inevitably get more calls than ever before from students locked out of their residences, thereby distracting them from actually focusing on maintaining security.
Already the Lawrence Bubble seems even more closed off to the rest of the world than before. Security is indeed important, and Lawrence has long been known as an exceptionally safe campus. In fact, Appleton itself has an exceptionally low crime rate. We understand that the administration wants to keep it that way.
But how much of an effect is this measure really going to have? It is very rare indeed that anyone who is not a friend or relative of a Lawrence student is seen inside a residence hall. Perhaps that is why, when anything like this happens, word gets around very quickly. Though, in these instances, we do not even know whether the transgressors were Lawrence students or not.
A missing credit card and an opened door are not reason to believe Lawrence is being infiltrated. Dean Truesdell’s e-mail to the student body also stated that two incidents of an unknown person “standing outside of shower stalls where women have been showering” were reported. The inference here is that the person was not just standing outside of an empty shower stall, but this is not evident from Truesdell’s wording.
Intrusions into shower rooms are indeed disturbing, but we hope that the administration does not intend to indefinitely keep residence halls locked 24 hours a day. Paranoia will not help us uncover the reasons behind breaches of security, and neither will a more stifled environment.
Staff Editorial
