Editorial Expand the lockdown... to your own room

Author: [no author name found]

Expand the lockdown... to your own room



Is anyone else tired of receiving Public Safety alerts announcing yet another intrusion? There is a solution - a way for the trespassing to end. It is not a very complicated solution either: it does not involve increased patrols, restricted access to buildings, curfews or even video cameras in every hallway. It does, however, require a sort of community effort, but - do not worry - not one that requires people to organize protests, put up signs or even attend a large meeting.

All that has to be done is for people to LOCK THEIR ROOMS AT NIGHT.

People may laugh off the intrusion alerts as just an inflation of a typical drunken mistake. The distressing thing about these intrusions, however, is that they keep happening. And according to the Department of Public Safety, what the victims are reporting is not "typical drunken behavior." One would hope that if Public Safety is going to the effort to put out these alerts, there is a reason for them. At the bottom of every e-mail that has come into students' in-boxes there have been steps, precautions that students can take to protect themselves, including LOCKING ROOM DOORS.

Yet the intrusions continue. People are still being waken up in the dead of the night by a stranger.

Public Safety has drastic measures, reminiscent of the lockdown of the fall of 2001, the lockdown that prompted the access card system. If those responsible for the intrusions are students with a proximate access card, then yes, the oft-voiced objection that the "lockdown won't stop the intrusions" would be valid. What the lock-down does do is remind everyone who has to take out their card after 9 p.m. that something is not right on the safe College campus. The locked doors in and of itself are a warning, a physical one that cannot be immediately deleted and ignored. The locked external door functions best as a reminder to students to lock their dorm room doors.

Warnings are ignored because for the majority of the Middlebury College community, this is something that is happening to "someone else." Rumors abound, with each new story or piece of "accurate" information more sensational than the last. But if people actually believed some of these rumors, there would be security alarms on every room door. When taking each successive alert less seriously, the College community simultaneously ignores the alarming reality - more intrusions have been reported this year than in previous years.

How many of these notices would have been rendered meaningless if the door - the barrier between the sleeper and the hallway - had been secured? Just imagine the possible scenarios. Nights could either be spent jumping at sounds coming from the hallway - revelers returning home after weekend activities - or sleeping restfully knowing that neither intruder nor misdirected inebriated neighbors could disturb you. All it takes is a willingness to lock the door as you turn in for the night.

Lock your door. You will do it once you leave Middlebury, and apparently now the College is no safer than the outside world.