Room inspections can be a painless way of ensuring our safety, provided that both sides approach the process from a reasonable point of view. Barnard students should become familiar with the rules that they agreed to follow upon committing to live here, while RAs should be respectful and courteous when inspecting their students’ rooms.
To some extent, the act of having someone else enter your room will always be inherently intrusive. After years of living in accountability to parents and siblings, there is something personal and empowering about having a room of your own, especially if that room is a single. After you have lived in a room for a while and learned its secrets, it is all too easy for the emotional landscape of your domain to transform before your eyes, with those piles of rumpled laundry and the overloaded bookshelves becoming the hills and towers of your own personal kingdom.
Such a feeling of power, once experienced, is a very hard thing to give back. But several times each semester, we must hand back a piece of our sovereignty when the RA comes in to see if we have been naughty or nice. These enforcements of policy can sometimes feel chaotic. Two RAs once tried to make off with my harmless LED lamp, believing that it contained a more sinister halogen bulb, and over winter break I worried that my broken window shade would be considered heresy. Some rules are more confusing than unnecessary: A surge protector is OK, but a power strip is a dangerous fire hazard. You cannot use an extension cord, but a surge protector with a long cord is fine. Even more bemusing is the policy of prohibiting candles—while it is understandable that a student should not be lighting a flame in the tight quarters of their dorm room, the fact that Barnard students are prevented from retaining the candles they were given at convocation as a keepsake makes for a contradictory statement about our school’s culture.
But some of the rules and reasons for the room inspections make more sense. While permitting microwaves in our rooms would give us more options for tasty food, the electrical systems in a 10-year-old dorm building might not be able to handle it (and the building’s structure might not be able to support the generous increase in average student body mass index that would happen as a result). The fact that our RAs are obligated to report any obviously illicit materials they encounter is hardly an unreasonable procedure—they tend to provide repeated warnings before the inspection season commences and do not engage in any searching of drawers or closets that could be considered a real violation of privacy. The room inspections are by design intended more to preserve mutual safety than to restrict freedom.
These room inspection practices tie back into one of the core tenets of student life: College is a communal place by nature, and privacy is always a fleeting illusion. We are already living in close proximity to one another, especially in suites and shared-room situations, not to mention when we share our restroom and kitchen facilities. These inspections are designed, as the “community safety inspection” name might suggest, to extend our existing residential philosophy so that it ensures our collective well-being. Ensuring that students do not endanger other members of their community by violating fire regulations seems to be a reasonable concession.
Provided that these concepts are adhered to, room inspections can be one aspect of the college experience that is the least of a student’s worries. Students should be well aware that surface-to-air missiles, drug production labs, and adorable hamsters are all classified as “prohibited items” in our school’s housing policies, and consequently there is no reason for them not to be understanding and respectful of the RAs conducting the inspections. The RAs, meanwhile, should not knock down our doors and storm into our rooms like a gang of marines, but provide ample information and ideally conduct their inspection during a non-intrusive time, such as when they have encountered a student in the hall. Room inspections can be quick and easy when we all behave like mature and responsible adults.
The author is a Barnard College sophomore.
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