“We need to protect the students who are inside the House,” Pertile said. “By necessity, the Houses become less closed to unwanted visitors [with 24-hour UKA].”

Pertile and Lewis also questioned why the author of the anonymous e-mail did not use a blue-light Centrex phone to call the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) or later report the incident to HUPD.

“I do hope the person reporting the attack will come forward with information,” Lewis wrote in an e-mail. “The e-mail implies that the community is endangered and the police have not been given the information they need to make it safe.”

Gusmorino agreed that it would have been best for the student to go to the police, but concluded that the story supported students’ longtime claims that all-night UKA would increase student safety.

“A drunken and angry ex-boyfriend might storm up from Winthrop to Pforzheimer in a fit of rage,” Gusmorino said, citing what he says is the Masters’ main hypothetical case that argues against extending UKA hours.

But in Gusmorino’s opinion, the current policy would not keep the angry ex-boyfriend out of the House, but only force him to wait a few minutes for someone to swipe him in.

Gusmorino said he thinks that students, who largely support 24-hour UKA, are the best judges of the program’s safety, noting that the council began arguing for the policy in 1992—before swipe cards were even being used in the Houses.

“Students have been calling for UKA for a decade, because students actually experience being locked out of the Houses,” he said.

—Staff writer David C. Newman can be reached at dnewman@fas.harvard.edu.