Mariam Keita ’24
Managing Editor of Web & News Editor
At Mount Holyoke College, students have returned to a full residential experience this semester. While many students have eagerly returned to in-person classes and exchanging stories over late-night, others are unhappy with the College’s decision to extend its no-guest policy through the end of the semester.
Mount Holyoke’s policies surrounding off-campus travel and on-campus guests have changed several times since the start of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. The College defines a guest as any person who is not enrolled in a Mount Holyoke course and does not participate in the College-sponsored asymptomatic testing program. This most recent update was sent to the community via email on Oct. 6. Following the announcement, the College sent out a survey on “students’ interest and comfort with having guests in the residence halls” on Oct. 19.
Last semester, in spring 2021, each residential student was asked to sign a student community compact as a prerequisite for arrival on campus. Under the spring 2021 community compact, no family members or other guests were allowed to enter “any residence halls at any time, including during move-in.” Additionally, students were limited in their interactions with other residential students and were not permitted to travel beyond 10 miles of the campus radius without permission. Overnight stays off-campus that were not approved by the Office of Residential Life were also a violation of the community compact. Furthermore, each residential student was assigned to a single room to prevent the spread of COVID-19. After a campus-wide 14-day quarantine period, students were then also permitted to have up to one “guest” who also lived in their residence hall in their room.
According to Fatou Barry ’24, who resided on campus during the 2020-2021 school year, many of the COVID-19 restrictions had a negative effect not only on her social life, but on her mental health.
“I was by myself for most of the semester, and there was nobody there. Things weren’t open so there weren’t open spaces to see people and … the dining hall wasn’t open, [so] you had to go in the dining hall, take your food and come back,” Barry said. “I felt really, really lonely because I literally didn’t talk to real humans, other than the dining hall [staff], telling them what to put on my plate.”
Only students who had been granted permission by the College, such as on-duty Residential Advisors, were permitted to enter residence halls that they did not live in during the 2020-2021 school year. Additionally, “only on-campus students and approved faculty and staff” were permitted to enter non-residential buildings on campus. Despite this allowance, almost all academic buildings were closed to residential students as nearly all courses were exclusively offered remotely.
In the 2021 spring semester, the College defined a guest as any person who did not live in a student’s residential hall. A select few campus buildings, such as the Community Center, were open to all residential students, while other designated spaces, like the Language Resource Center, Dwight Hall and the Reading Room were open to residential students by appointment. The Dining Commons did not offer indoor seating. All self-serve stations were closed and all meals were carry-out only.
In Barry’s words, even her interactions within the Blanchard Dining Commons were limited, as she often found it difficult to motivate herself to leave her room to get food. Looking back on that time, Barry now has strong feelings about the College’s COVID-19 related guest policies last school year.
“I feel like it wasn’t reasonable because then, since there was nobody on campus, you could hardly make friends. If you didn’t know anybody prior to being on campus, you would suffer, and you wouldn’t be able to bring people that you already knew to hang out with you,” Barry said.
Grace Lara ’24 arrived on campus as a student for the first time in the 2021 spring semester. Unlike Barry, Lara believes that last semester’s guest policy was reasonable considering the circumstances.
“We didn’t have access to a vaccine … and we still didn’t really know a lot of the things that maybe we know now about COVID[-19],” Lara said. “I think having stricter terms, and having those greater restrictions was definitely annoying, but I think it was a good thing.”
Like Barry, another Mount Holyoke sophomore also struggled to adjust to COVID-19 restricted life on campus during the spring 2021 semester. This student admitted to having violated some aspects of the community compact last school year, including rules surrounding travel and guests. Once, the sophomore even took a weekend trip to Boston, an act which was not permissible last school year, but is now allowed under the fall 2021 community compact.
“My mom knew how much I was struggling [on campus] so she decided to come [to Boston to] see me, and I would meet her and go with other family members. I was safe the whole time it was for a day. My mask was on, I was fine,” the student said.
Lara expressed mixed feelings about the evolving guest policies.
“I feel like having some kind of policy does maintain a certain level of safety. It’s better than just letting people do whatever they want. When there are health concerns for so many people, it is really scary to just know that there’s no restriction,” Lara said. “But I also think that having [the policy] be so strict, to be like no guests at all, is also tempting for some people to want to break that rule.”
Lara said that, had they known the person who brought a family member into the residence hall, they considered reporting the incident to the Office of Residential Life.
According to Lara, there seems to have been a cultural shift on campus in the number of community compact violations being reported. They credit this shift to the increased number of students residing on campus and the loosened restrictions since COVID-19 vaccines were introduced.
“I think this semester, it’s a lot more chaotic and vague, because there are so many more people on campus,” Lara said. “That makes everything feel a little bit less stable, or it’s harder to grasp on to.”
One current senior, who lived on campus throughout the 2020-2021 school year, also found herself breaking some of the rules last year. Much like Lara, the senior believes that there was a stronger culture of policing on campus during the spring 2021 semester than either the fall 2020 semester or the present academic term.
“I had a little boo fall semester, and I would literally sneak him in every single week. And luckily … people knew but didn’t care. Spring semester, I literally had to get a hotel,” the senior said.
Another senior student who has resided on campus since the initial COVID-19 shutdown in March of 2020 and who has also worked for ResLife during her time at Mount Holyoke, echoes some of the senior’s thoughts around the guest policy.
“We’re all in college, people are going to be dating. There’s bound to be stuff like that happening and I do think that they kind of just ignored the fact,” the former Residential Life worker said. “I think that’s an issue that [Residential Life] has always had with a guest policy. There could have been rules and regulations around that to keep students safe and to keep them just being human beings.”
The former Residential Life worker also had some suggestions for some alternative guest policies that the College could implement.
“There should be some check-in policy. Even emailing your [residential advisor] like ‘Hey, I’m gonna have a guest on the floor today.’ You could just mention that [in case] you end up testing positive for COVID[-19] and you have to get contact traced,” the former worker said.
While Lara said that they have not personally broken the no-guest rule, they are aware of friends and peers who have, including one classmate who brought an off campus partner from Smith College into their residence hall.
“That doesn’t make me feel unsafe personally, because I know that that’s somebody from right nearby who has similar restrictions imposed upon them by their own college,” Lara said. “But … it’s all very situational.”
Aside from the incident with the Smith student, Lara is also aware of other students who violated the guest policy, including one person in their residence hall who they believe brought a family member into the building during Family & Friends Weekend.
“I think when it comes to a health crisis, like the pandemic that we’re in right now, there is like a line of morality. Knowing that there are people who I live with on the same floor and in the same building, who are willing to just bring in people from completely different states … That is something that really bothers me. It really does make me feel unsafe,” Lara said. “I think people have gotten a lot bolder this semester in terms of breaking the rules. Last semester, the farthest that most of the people I knew ever went with rule-breaking was going into a [residential] hall that they didn’t live in.”
This semester, while only those students who work for the Office of Residential Life have unfettered OneCard access to all residential buildings, the new community compact does not ban travel between different residence halls, nor does it limit the number of approved guests students may have in their rooms.
While Barry hinted that some of her peers may not be happy with the extended no-guest policy this semester, she personally supports the guest-policy as it exists today and believes that it helps to eliminate questions about campus COVID-19 spread.
Barry said, “I agree with [the no-guest policy]. What I had to go through fall and spring semester last year was worse than what we have now, because [residential students now] have friends. They’re coming back to social life.”