ACU’s visitation rules have been in place for a long time. These rules are in place for a reason; many students may complain but the university doesn’t impose rules just to control students.

Freshmen and sophomores may only visit members of the opposite sex in their dorm rooms on Thursday nights from 6-11 p.m.

Why Thursday? Why not Monday or Saturday? Some students have work, meetings, groups, and other plans on Thursday nights.

Once a student reaches junior class at ACU, he or she will either live in University Park or off-campus, where visitation rules no longer apply.

There is no difference in visitation rules between freshmen and sophomores, but the difference between sophomores and juniors is huge.

Sophomores don’t have curfew, freshmen do. ACU is gradually giving students more independence with their use of time. The same should be done with visitation.

One Resident Assistant at a time is required to be on the hall during visiting hours.

It’s understandable why RA’s may not want additional visitation days as it would mean they would be required to be on the hall for more time.

However, the school visitation policy for sophomores is far too strict when compared to rules for juniors and seniors. The independence that juniors enjoy shouldn’t be quite such a sudden change. This freedom should be gradually allowed in students’ second year at ACU.

One proposal would be to extend the Thursday timeframe to begin earlier in the day. Or adding an additional night, potentially on the weekend, to the one day a week that is already in place.

The potential problem is getting an RA or other student worker to monitor the halls. It would be unfair to require sophomore RA’s to do more work than originally expected, and hiring more workers would cost salary money, for which the Residence Life office may not have the budget.

It’s a hard question to answer. This issue has been brought up in ResLife already this year. It’s something that the university has realized should be changed, but the pursuit of an elusive solution is proving to be challenging.

If you have an idea for a solution to this issue, email us at the address below.