They have suddenly decided to put locks on all the exterior doors to the dorms, and I feel like I'm going to be living in a fortress. I am so tired of this place trying to cater to paranoid parents who thought they were sending their precious kiddies to a green idyll hidden away from the huge and dangerous world only to find that, as ideal as it seems, Hanover, too, is a little slice of the real world -- a REAL place -- complete with sickos, the sadness and pain of death, and the dangers that come with living anywhere near other people.
It is truly irksome to me that the expense they plan to lavish on locking all the buildings using a digital system will no doubt simply lock me out of my room (now building) more often than usual, that people will likely "tailgate." Who would actually leave someone else out in the cold if that person looked remotely like a college student (which, presumably, someone with "ideas" would have thought of in advance of his/her arrival)? Why do we have to turn into Yale --with its vast expanses of wrought iron gates -- into a campus with invisible gates? Isn't Dartmouth all about open spaces?
Last night a friend pointed out to me that it would really be no more inconvenient than what I already do on a regular basis: lock my door. I have to say that it's the principle of the thing that really gets me. No more happy surprises of friends from other schools come to visit -- they find they can't get in without tailgating. Even more than now I will be inextricably bound to my ID -- which I often neglect to bring everywhere with me -- to having some way of getting into buildings. Undoubtedly, there will be more instances of Safety and Security having to come out to rescue stranded students from roommates who have locked them out or who simply forgot to bring along their trusty electronic pass-card.
I have never felt unsafe here at Dartmouth. Not in my own dorm, not returning late from studying or movie-watching, not walking alone, and not even in the wake of the murder of the Zantops. I have also never felt that I was deluding myself about my level of safety here.
I can't believe that the over-concern of some parents and students could possibly prompt the administration and Dean Redman to make a decision (without, apparently, the input of the Student Assembly, according to the article that appeared in The Dartmouth yesterday) that would so obviously deal a death-blow to the roots of what Dartmouth means.
The world can be a dangerous place. Hanover, however, is not a dangerous place. Students and faculty (and staff and visitors and community members) alike have the right to feel safe here. Precautions should be taken to ensure that what we value is kept safe. However, each of us should be allowed to decide the level of protection we need, and the method by which we choose to protect ourselves. Some of us will be comfortable enough to simply lock our doors, while others may really feel it's necessary to use the buddy system or get Safety and Security to drive them to and from their many far-flung destinations. It's unfair, however, to impose such restrictions on the freedom and openness of all of Dartmouth's members simply because parents (who, by the way, are not here and do not know Dartmouth as contemporary students do) have an irrational fear (proportional to their distance from Dartmouth) of droves of rapists, murderers and peeping Toms roving the campus and surrounding area.
The murder of the Zantops is a frightful thing, whoever perpetrated the crime. The fact of the matter is, however, that the Zantops were connected with Dartmouth, yes, but they were not murdered here. Such atrocities and violence cannot be construed as being a normal occurrence. Adding locks to our doors will do nothing to protect the members of the real community of Hanover (and in fact will only foster suspicions within this community), and those are the people, if any, who -- living in the real world -- should fear for their lives.
Locks are an unnecessary and unwelcome addition to Dartmouth. If I wanted to go to a school with an in-the-city mentality, I would have done so. Leave Dartmouth the way it is and use that huge amount of money and human effort to do things like help improve gender relations at Dartmouth, increase facilities for minorities, address diversity issues, work towards reaching sustainability, improve DDS diversity and prices, and subsidize the price of tutoring.
