Mountains moved this week when the masters of Quincy House agreed to open the House doors to any undergraduate with a Harvard keycard, making Quincy the first participant in what students hope will be the beginning of a House-by-House move toward universal keycard access.
The Undergraduate Council, and particularly the council's president, Beth A. Stewart '00, should be commended for the tremendous amount of effort dedicated to lobbying individual House masters to effect the change. It is also worth noting that the change was achieved not through a unilateral bid to the College's administration, but through appeals to House masters, smaller-scale requests for change that bore more fruit.
Fortunately, it seems that a change in attitude may be taking place among House administrators regarding the issue. The Quincy House newsletter was commendably reasonable, informing students that the change should not raise significant saftey concerns. We are glad that those unchecked and unruly Leverett students will be trusted within Quincy's gates.
The old, and in some circles still persistent, assumption that universal keycard access constitutes a compromise in students' safety is fundamentally false. The truth is that universal keycard access will enhance student safety in the Houses, for two reasons: first, students will no longer have to risk standing outside alone at night while waiting for friends or passers-by to let them in to Houses not their own and second, students will be less inclined to open doors for strangers if they know that all students should be able to enter without help via their own keycards. These safety enhancements far outweigh the added risks of increased traffic in and out of the Houses.
Hopefully it will not be long before other House masters--including those of Winthrop, Dunster and Cabot, whose plans to open their House doors have not been finalized--will recognize the importance of access to the Houses for all students. And hopefully it will also not be long before the Undergraduate Council achieves more concrete results like this one.
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