Questioning Parietals at PC

"Visitation is a privilege, not a right."

These words, from the 2007-2008 Providence College student handbook, introduce the Providence College policy of parietals. Parietals apply to all students who live on campus, and set visitation hours for students who are visiting other students of the opposite sex. According to the PC handbook, visitation hours are 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. from Sunday through Thursday, and 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Visitation hours end at midnight during reading period, exams, holidays, and breaks. In apartments and suites, the rules apply to individual rooms but not to the common rooms.

According to Dr. Steven Sears, dean of residence life, parietals have been around since the beginning of Providence College's existence. Yet, he does not believe that parietals are outdated, as the purpose of parietals is to maintain order on the Providence College campus while upholding Catholic ideals.

"Providence College is a unique community that embraces the teachings of the Dominican Order," Sears said. "Within this framework, we continue to create plenty of common space to support students to study and congregate outside the existing parietal hours."

Sears also said that, based on informal interviews in which he has participated, parietals actually draw prospective students to Providence College and satisfy current students.

"During these interviews, we, Residence Life, constantly ask for feedback regarding why students chose to attend PC and what they like and dislike about housing," Sears said. "We are often informed by both prospective and current students that they like parietals because it places the ownership on the College to have guests removed from their immediate living space."

In doing so, Sears continued, parietals does not place students and roommates in the position to ask an invasive male or female to leave.

"Students have indicated that it makes it easier to ask someone to leave without feeling burdened to do so because of the policy," he said.

According to Sears, other colleges like the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, and Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I., also have similar restrictions on visitation similar to PC. According to their respective Web sites, the University of Notre Dame is a private Catholic school, like Providence College, and Salve Regina University is a private school founded by the Sisters of Mercy, an order of Catholic women.

Sears said that the common conception that parietals are "easy to get around" is merely an opinion.

"It is the student's responsibility to follow the parietals policy, and he or she risks being held responsible if otherwise," Sears said.

There are front desk workers only in female dormitories, but parietals are enforced in every building, regardless of whether or not there is a front desk worker. The residence assistants in the buildings enforce the regulation.

In terms of the application of parietals for homosexual students, in which opposite-sex regulations are not as applicable, Sears said that all students are treated according to the mission statement, which states that "[Providence College] encourages the deepest respect for the essential dignity, freedom, and equality of every person."

In apartments and suites, the rules for parietals are a bit different but still enforced.

In these places of residence, Sears said, "guests cannot spend time past parietals in individual rooms, but the common area is open to all students and registered guests, with the permission of all the roommates."

According to Sears, violation of parietals is not a common offense, but it does occur on occasion. The student handbook outlines various fines and other consequences of violating parietals, but he said that these consequences depend on the wide range of possible situations.

"Although all the repercussions to policy violations are educational, they are dealt with on a case-by-case basis," Sears said.

Allison Filepp '10, a first-year student at PC, said that while the intent of parietals is useful at a Catholic school, the effectiveness of the policy is questionable.

"I think parietals can be a good policy for a Catholic school to uphold if the worry is that students will have pre-marital sex when they are together 'after hours'," Filepp said. "However, I really think that parietals would not stop students who want to have sex from doing so."

"Considering how many hours there are in a day," Filepp continued, "all it really does is give students a sort of bedtime or curfew."

Filepp said that when students are forced to leave a friend's room where they may have been hanging out, there is usually nothing else to do but go back to their own rooms.

"So ideally, if students had 'relations' late at night,' it would be a good policy for a Catholic school," Filepp said. "However, since sex on campus in general is prohibited, I don't see the practical reason for parietals."

Filepp recounted only one instance when parietals detracted from her experience at Providence College. She said she had been in a male friend's room when her friend's roommate got sick. It was time for her to leave due to parietals. Since her friend would get sick also if his roommate stayed there, Filepp said she was inconvenienced in that she had to find another male for her friend's roommate to stay with when it would have been much easier for him to just sleep in her room.

"It was really annoying," she said of the situation. "I have also heard many stories of people getting in trouble for being in dorms and accidentally staying five minutes late and getting written up."

Still, Filepp said that parietals do work do to a degree and are sufficiently enforced, "much to the dismay of many students."