Friends from Asbury squeeze around a Cookout table on a Saturday night. As time creeps to around 12:30 a.m., women are scrambling to make sure they get back to campus before extension ends while the men do not even bat an eyelash at the word “extension.” This is a frequent complaint among some Asbury students regarding the perceived inequality of the community hour policy.
“There is a genuine difference between the way girls and guys do [the extension policy],” Trustees dorm resident Ethan Sirles said.
“I have never heard of any guy, including myself, getting an email that they were out too late past curfew,” said Johnson dorm resident Niklas Johnson.
When students enroll at Asbury, they are made well aware by admissions counselors, handbooks and coaches that there are standards by which Asburians are called to live. The community life handbook states, “These principles are important to all we do at the university whether you are a student, administrator, faculty or staff.”
There should be no partiality or lackadaisical enforcement of these policies and regulations if the entire community is to be living according to them. But there are some students who say they see only parts of the community following these standards.
“When I first came to Asbury, I signed [the sign-in book] the first two weeks,” said a Johnson resident. “Then an upperclassman told me that they don’t actually care, and that was the last time I ever signed the book. I’m a sophomore now staying out till 3 a.m. sometimes, and I don’t have to do anything about it.”
Are men really receiving more grace than women when it comes to extension? Or is grace a function of Assistant Resident Directors (ARDs) playing favorites with both men and women?
Glide-Crawford dorm resident Lauren Hemenover said, “There might be some unequal treatment, but that can’t be generalized for just guys and girls. It might just consequently be who’s in leadership.”
Sirles agreed, “It is more up to the discernment of the ARD and who they are.”
At least two anonymous Glide-Crawford residents recounted situations when a resident came in 15 minutes past extension and received a warning, while another resident came in an hour or more past extension and did not receive a warning because of her friendship with the ARD.
Kaylyn Moran, Glide Crawford’s RD, told the Collegian that community hours are meant to promote health, relationship, connection, and boundaries. “Every choice is formative,” said Moran. “The way that I spend my time, the way that I treat my body, the way that I treat other people [is] formative. Not every choice is huge, but every choice I make in some way is helping shape me into the person I want to be. I don’t want us over legislate people’s lives, … but also, I don’t think it’s wrong to provide a healthy, safe environment for people to grow and develop.”
Alex Coile, the ARD of Trustees, said he believes he does “an adequate job enforcing the policy correctly.” Contrary to the idea that males never deal with confrontation about the policy, Coile said at the beginning of October he had sent around five to seven emails and had 10-15 conversations with residents.
Moran said that there is no way to be able to give an estimate of the number of emails and conversations had regarding community hours since each situation is different. She believes that Glide-Crawford ARD Alex George “is a deeply consistent and fair” judge in enforcing community hours. Dormitory leadership believes that the male RDs and the female RDs “operate the same” regarding the curfew and extension policy.
“There could be lots of reasons why somebody didn’t get an email and somebody did get an email,” said Moran. “It is not an exact science. It is: ‘Here is the general spirit of the standard.’ I know our male RDs, and I know that they are enforcing this in the same manner that we are enforcing it over here.” Some of those reasons, according to Moran, might be that students are involved in some sort of hall event, in which case the RA would have communicated with the ARD. It could be a case of human error and the email might have been overlooked, or a student might have entered on someone else’s card, so there was no record of a late swipe-in.
But there is a broader issue at play here.
Multiple students interviewed said these policies are squelching the ability for students to grow through the experience of learning a healthy lifestyle and responsibility on their own.
It may be time to revisit the practice of community hours to see if it is truly benefiting students. If so, and assuming inequality remains, reform the system to reduce inequality in treatment. If not, a lighter grip on boundaries may promote healthier growth in students.
