- By Haley Ivey, Contributing Writer -
A recently-discussed topic amongst Meredith College students is the current rules regarding Open House Hours, aka “boy hours.” The current Open House Hours, for those of you who do not know, are Thursdays from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Fridays from 3 p.m. to 1 a.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Several questions have been asked about these hours; for example, “Should they be extended to include open hours Monday through Wednesday?” and “Should boys be allowed to spend the night on weekend nights?” Residence Life and the student body have been actively contemplating making some changes to the current hours. Actually, Residence Life just sent out a Google Form asking students what their stances were on extending the hours to have open slots Monday through Wednesday. I interviewed students to see what their perspectives on making changes are around campus. The four questions I asked the interviewees were: “Do you think extending boy hours would impact you either negatively or positively in any way? Why?” “Would you like to see more flexibility throughout the week or on the weekends or both?” “Do you think that there would be problems that could potentially arise from boy hours being extended?” “Did you think it is a good idea that Residence Life sent out a survey that is considering potentially extending the hours?” I asked students ranging from freshmen to seniors and recorded their responses. I will be referring to them as students 1-10 to keep their responses anonymous.
When asked the first question, the general answer was that the interviewees would either be impacted positively or not at all. For example, interviewee one said, “I don’t think it would impact me at all,” and interviewee two said the same, but added, “When [girls] do have them during the current open house hours, I never see them. As long as girls are still required to escort them I don’t see any problem arising.” There were no negative responses to this question; interviewee five even said, “Girls break the rules anyway so it does not matter.” The same results came from the second question about whether students would like to see more flexibility, but the responses were all geared towards weekday flexibility rather than overnight. Interviewee eight said, “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to open it up on the weekends, since it already goes until 1 a.m. I think having your roommate give consent for a guy to stay overnight and letting the RA know would prevent conflicts.” The interesting part of the interview was hearing the potential problems that students could see arise; it showed the students have thoroughly thought this situation through. Interviewee seven said, “I could only see conflict between roommates,” and interviewee six had the same idea but said, “it could be easily solved by adding this to roommate contracts.”
The overall finding when conducting these interviews was that Meredith students would like to see more flexibility in the open house hours within reason and with implementation of rules that would prevent conflict. Every interviewee responded positively when asked if they were happy about the Residence Life Google Form that was sent out. Interviewee seven stated, “Yes, [the form was a good idea], because there are a lot of people who disagree with it, and if they are going to make adjustments, it’s good that they are letting us know what they are and taking our opinions into consideration.” Shout-out to Residence Life for keeping students in mind and allowing us to voice our opinions. The verdict is in: "wolves" should be able to visit campus more frequently, but we don’t want them howling around freely all the time.