Visitation: Privilege or Right?

This year, Bluefield University has decided to continue with the no visitation rules from last year for on-campus residence halls. This is due to COVID-19 and the fact that the campus is still under the 70 percent mark in vaccinated students.

The college is allowing students to visit each other in dorm lobbies, but the unfair part of this is that the Bluestone Commons apartments do not have a lobby or common area to socialize with others.

I know that we as students have the Student Activities Center (SAC) to spend time with others, but other than that, students really have no where to go to socialize unless it is off campus. However, the school is highly suggestive in the idea that we should avoid going off campus in order to stay away from COVID threats.

Although the SAC is available to all students, many do not like to spend time in there and would rather be able to socialize in the comforts of their own dorm.

I know the regulations are for COVID reasons, but the idea that having others in your room is against the rules feels like prison. As adults at a higher education institution, we should be able to make our own decisions regarding whether we let someone come into our dorms, or the school needs to come up with better alternatives for students to allow them to have the same privacy they would in their dorm rooms.

College is a time for people to learn and thrive in academic settings while also allowing them to figure out themselves on a social level. If students are not allowed to visit with their fellow classmates in their dorms, they could be missing an experience that all former college students got to have.

Students at Bluefield University are adults, so they should be treated as such when it comes to visitation and letting people have privacy with others.