After a year of work to change housing visitation policies, the Residence Hall Association Senate passed a resolution Monday to change the visitation policy to a uniform plan allowing 24-hour, gender-neutral visitation.
The proposed change in policy will now be sent to university administration for further action.
“This has been our priority since the start of the year, because we wanted this to happen as soon as possible,” said president of RHA and fourth-year geography and global studies student Reaghan Murphy.
Senators Matt Alburn of Green Quad and Matt Durant of South Tower brought forward the resolution for a vote.
“This visitation policy proposes universal 24-hour gender-neutral visitation. This policy will get rid of the existing A-C visitation policies, allowing for all residents to have a guest of any gender to visit at any hour,” said public relations representative Sarah Eissmann in a press release.
Currently, residence halls have different rules regarding overnight guests of the opposite sex. The RHA proposed policy hopes to eliminate what they say could be any discrimination inherent in the original plan. Some elements of the original policy will remain, such as visitors being contingent on roommate contracts. The policy also says no person can stay more than two consecutive nights or three consecutive days.
“The most important part of this visitation policy is that it’s gender neutral,” said Alburn in the RHA press release. “For all residents, this universal plan is nondiscriminatory to account for all sexual orientations and gender identities.”
Murphy said RHA has been working on this change since the start of the semester.
“We brought it up then pretty much immediately and said, ‘Look y’all, this is one of our big goals for the year,’” Murphy said. “And luckily for us, a lot of the newly-elected candidates kind of shared that goal. A lot of them had campaigned on a promise of helping to change the visitation policy just on their own.”
Work on changing the visitation policy began in 2017, when members of the 39th RHA Senate began researching the visitation policy of other universities and gathered student opinions on USC’s campus. However, the work to change the policy officially began with the 40th senate as presidents of each residence hall worked together to research and draft a resolution.
“We compiled data from Clemson University and their visitation policy, as well as all of the schools in the SEC,” Murphy said. “So we kind of built on it that way and looked at past precedent within the SEC and with comparable universities.”
According to the press release, RHA presidents sent polls to their residence halls to find out how other students felt about the current visitation policy.
“I think we got almost 800 responses with a 96 or 97 percent rate of students saying yes, they wanted to change the visitation policy for a more universal, more open policy,” Murphy said. “So we kind of just took that and ran with it.”
The RHA resolution does not change anything immediately. It must first go through several offices before it can be instituted in the residence halls.
“RHA must bring this through housing for its consideration, and then if the department concurs, it would propose it as a policy change through the institutional approval process (with vetting through the division of student affairs),” director of public relations Jeff Stensland said in an email. “RHA doesn’t have the power to change institutional policy, although it can make recommendations for change.”
Murphy and the rest of the RHA executive board and senate said they are looking forward to working with the Office of Housing and the Office of Student Affairs in preparation for a Board of Trustees meeting.
“What we’re hoping for is it’ll be presented, it’ll be on the Board of Trustees' agenda within the next month or so, and they can consider it,” Murphy said. “And if they hopefully pass it then it’ll be implemented in the spring by the earliest date.”