A pilot program conducted by university officials has students living in Brody and North neighborhoods entering their residence halls after midnight without night receptionists checking them in.
The program, created by the Department of Residence Education and Housing Services, or REHS, is a part of a continuing effort by the department to efficiently allocate resources for students, REHS safety and security service coordinator Natisha Foster said.
“Instead of having a night receptionist in each hall, we have centralized these functions into designated areas within (each) neighborhood,” Foster said. “It allowed us to pool our resources in a really strategic way to give students more of what they were asking for.”
Although department officials are unsure whether the program will achieve the same level of safety as current procedures implemented in other neighborhoods, REHS Director Kathy Collins emphasized that safety and security are the department’s main goals.
“We’ve also increased the number of rounds our resident assistants are doing and we’ve partnered with MSU Police Department to work on the employment of of two additional police officers,” Collins said of the residence halls in the pilot program. “They’re specifically assigned intentionally to the Brody Neighborhood and the North Neighborhood.”
Collins also said the new officers focus on community policing, walking through the residence halls in each neighborhood.
For late-night assistance, a staffed desk in Brody Hall will give students 24-hour access to the studying areas in the building.
North Neighborhood residence halls still have staffed desks throughout the night in Mayo, Yakeley and Snyder halls.
Night receptionists hail from an era before the implementation of the electronic access system that used in all of MSU’s residence halls. Since student employee graduations create high turnover for REHS, no employees have been left jobless, Collins said.
Throughout the 2013-14 academic year, REHS will evaluate police records and incident reports to determine the effectiveness of the program, and determine whether or not it should be continued or even expanded.
Environmental studies and agriscience sophomore Sean Martin has lived in Bailey Hall for both of his years on campus, but isn’t sure whether the residence is any less safe as a result of removing the night receptionist.
“It’s more convenient to be able to leave and enter any door whenever I want,” Martin said.
Click here for a map of locations implementing the new program.
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