“It seems to me the main consideration is the safety issue and that seems to be a significant advantage of 24-hour access,” he says.

He adds, however, that he will have to consider arguments on both sides, and ultimately students’ sense of security will take priority.

“I’d want to know what the students in the houses think about this, it’s their sense of safety,” he says.

Princeton University Police chief Steven J. Healy, who has dealt with security issues on a variety of college campuses with universal access, says the Harvard community should not expect a drastic change in its safety as a direct result of implenting full-time UKA.

“It’s very difficult to find a direct connection between the current access system and the level of community safety,” he says. Instead, safety depends on factors such as setting, crime trends, and environmental factors.

Glazer, who chairs the Undergraduate Council’s Student Affairs Committee, says that an average of 14 non-Quincy students enter the house in the hours between 2:30 and 7:30 a.m. every three weeks, with no sign of any increase in crime or vandalism.

And Quincy House Master Robert P. Kirshner ’70 says that he hasn’t noticed any disadvantages to 24-hour UKA.

“You could imagine some, but there is no evidence to support higher theft,” he writes in an e-mail. “Most cases of theft in all the Houses involve students letting unauthorized people into the House or failing to take the elementary precaution of keeping the suite door locked.”

SAFETY IN THE YARD

According to Dean of Freshmen Elizabeth Studley Nathans, the same problem of unlocked doors is responsible for many crimes in the Yard, and is exacerbated by the setup and the “unobstructed access” of first-year dorms.

“Someone entering any Wigg entry, for example, could quickly descend to the basement and by moving through the basement gain immediate access to a whole series of entries occupied by nearly 200 students,” she writes in an e-mail.

In light of this, Nathans says the Freshman Dean’s Office (FDO) is unwilling to adopt 24-hour UKA, which she described as a proposal that “seems more likely to compromise the safety of more than 1600 students, than to enhance it.”

Glazer points to two sexual assaults in the Yard as an indication of the necessity of opening first-year dorms to all undergraduates. “[The council] agrees that the FDO should move on this,” he says. “It’s not acceptable and it’s irresponsible to talk about safety and not consider safety for all students.”

Nathans says that as frightening as the attacks in the Yard were, nothing in the police report of one of the gropings suggested that the incident “would have been prevented or its impact lessened by UKA.”

In addition to issues of safety, Nathans and Assistant Dean of Freshmen James N. Mancall expressed concern that providing access to Yard dorms could lead to upperclass undergraduates taking over first-year space.