Ask First, Then Enter

November 19, 2009 • By Katie Thisdell, The Breeze
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HARRISONBURG, Va. —

The Office of Residence Life continues to advocate safety in residence halls, and staff are encouraging students to do the same.

After creating a video for a GCOM class showing how easy it can be to enter residence halls, freshman Tyler Colwell was asked to meet with a staff member from ORL. He met with Brian Keilson, Bluestone area director for the Office of Residential Life, on Monday to discuss his concerns about safety.

“He said our intentions were pure, and that we had, you know, a good idea, and if anything, we should continue to advocate for dorm security and safety,” Colwell said.

Keilson said ORL always wants input from students.

“The ways they do it may vary, and we may not necessarily agree with it,” Keilson said, “but the feedback is important to us in terms of what they want to see to improve their residence hall security because that’s their home for nine months.”

Keilson said he would not have made such a video and thinks giving ORL feedback would have been more direct.

Colwell and four classmates created the video for their persuasive speech project. He said everyone he’s talked to about the project has been supportive, including his communications professor, Alison Fisher.

Fisher said overall, the group’s 30-minute presentation was very persuasive and fulfilled the project requirements.

She said videos or anything with a visual aspect can add to a persuasive tone, but this project, with supporting evidence on dorm safety issues at other campuses and ways to improve, was better taken as a whole.

“On its own, I was not that thrilled about” the video, she said.

She wishes the students had focused more on the “piggy backing” to make their point.

“Tyler was so nice and charming but so is everyone,” Fisher said. “No one that asks to be let in is scary.”

Letting people into dorms without asking who they are is a natural response, Colwell explained, because students are so trusting, but they still need to learn better habits.

“No matter what, there’s always going to be some type of security issue,” Colwell said. “Until the stuff happens to you, that’s when you’re wary about it.”

Contact Katie Thisdell at thisdeke@jmu.edu

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