Closed Dorm Vote Contested
Sarah Spiegel
Issue date: 11/17/03 Section: News
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Over the past two weeks, Resident Assistants were supposed to distribute ballots to students to determine whether or not a dorm should remain open to the general Trinity population or closed to all but residents of that particular building. The polls resulted in restricted access for Anadama, Clemens, Frobb, Jarvis, North Campus, Stowe, Wiggins and Ogilby. Students reacted negatively to the new way in which votes were counted and the way in which voting was publicized. There have also been mixed feelings as to whether closing the dorms is a good thing.
The Office of Residential Life holds voting once a year to allow students the choice of who can gain access their buildings. Dorms that are in different locations have different needs. North is more accessible to students drinking at the fraternities, while others, like Stowe, are isolated from campus and have more contact with people from the neighborhood.
For some, having an open dorm is a safety issue. For others, the issue is the damaged caused by incidents of drunken vandalism such as those that had been occurring in North.
Voting this year was different from previous years because each ballot that was not filled out counted as a vote for closing the dorm. Other years, only the ballots that were turned in were tallied. Now it is possible that if the majority of a dorm fails to vote, the building would be closed.
A student from ORL who wished to remain anonymous stated that the new voting system was established only in order to encourage students to vote. The notion was that if students felt their non-votes would directly count to close the dorm and they strongly wanted it opened, they would vote.
The problem with this, according to the source, is that many students said they were unaware of the way the voting system functioned this year.
"The really offensive part," said Greg Morin '05, an RA in Frobb, "is that there was no indication on the ballots that failure to cast a vote would be treated as a 'no' vote." He also mentioned his concern with the undemocratic way in which this voting seemed to go.
The Office of Residential Life holds voting once a year to allow students the choice of who can gain access their buildings. Dorms that are in different locations have different needs. North is more accessible to students drinking at the fraternities, while others, like Stowe, are isolated from campus and have more contact with people from the neighborhood.
For some, having an open dorm is a safety issue. For others, the issue is the damaged caused by incidents of drunken vandalism such as those that had been occurring in North.
Voting this year was different from previous years because each ballot that was not filled out counted as a vote for closing the dorm. Other years, only the ballots that were turned in were tallied. Now it is possible that if the majority of a dorm fails to vote, the building would be closed.
A student from ORL who wished to remain anonymous stated that the new voting system was established only in order to encourage students to vote. The notion was that if students felt their non-votes would directly count to close the dorm and they strongly wanted it opened, they would vote.
The problem with this, according to the source, is that many students said they were unaware of the way the voting system functioned this year.
"The really offensive part," said Greg Morin '05, an RA in Frobb, "is that there was no indication on the ballots that failure to cast a vote would be treated as a 'no' vote." He also mentioned his concern with the undemocratic way in which this voting seemed to go.
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