Junior residents finally got their wish last week when they were allowed access to all eight West campus apartments.

Under the old policy, students living in a particular apartment only had access to that apartment. Furthermore, residents had to meet guests at their building’s entrance.

Dr. Christine Lysionek, director of Residence Life, said the policy was changed in response to an excess of student complaints. She also indicated that many students were “less than friendly” to RAs attempting to enforce the visitation rules.

Lysionek explained that Residence Life had enacted the stiffer rules because of last year’s vandalism epidemic in the apartments. “We saw more common area damage [last year] than we had ever seen,” she said. The regulations were designed to build security and decrease damage in the apartments.

Although the West campus apartment visitation rules have been temporarily eased, Residence Life is still searching for a way to curb common area vandalism in the buildings. Residence Life will soon set up a task force to evaluate and attempt to resolve the conflict between security and resident access in the apartments.

According to Lysionek, the task force, which will be comprised of herself, Paul Pugh, Dean of Students, Dawn Rocci, Residence Hall Operations Manager and representatives from several student organizations and the Wildcard Office, will recommend a revised apartment access policy. Depending on the task force’s recommendations, potential changes could come sometime during the next year, but Lysionek indicated that the modifications would most likely be made at the end of either this semester or next.

Until new rules are chosen, Lysionek explained “along with open access [to the apartments] comes a greater responsibility to be conscious about resident guests.”

Junior Klekotka Hall resident Bob Stackhouse expressed hopes for a balanced access policy. “It was a major pain when we only had access to our own building,” she said. Maybe they could reach some kind of compromise allowing limited apartment access to all apartment residents.”