This one is bound to rile a few people up.

Franciscan’s policies on men and women in each other’s halls.

[Cue the low-toned ooooooh’s]

I know that Franciscan, like a parent, can be a bit too strict because it doesn’t want to see us fail; it wants to help us along the best path, and help us not make mistakes. All of their policies are for own protection, and made out of love.

But that’s not really helping us prepare for the real world. (There's a reason people say Frannies live in a perfect little Catholic bubble.)

In the real world, you’re on your own. You make mistakes, you fail, you struggle, you suffer, and you deal with the consequences of your less-than-wise decisions. But you learn. And with God’s grace, you go on with an even stronger resolve to do better because you, with all of your heart, long to serve God to the best of your ability.

To describe Franciscan's policies on their hall-visits, I’ll be speaking from a woman’s point of view, but all of the same rules apply to the men. You’re only allowed in a man’s room Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, for a specific number of hours in the early evening, and the door must be kept open; other than that, you are only allowed to be in the common rooms, or the lobby, both of which also are within a set of specific hours. You cannot walk down the hall of your own accord; you have to be escorted by a man who loudly announces the presence of a female every few feet.

The reason the strictness of this policy bothered me so much was half of the time, when I just wanted to chill with a co-ed group of friends, there wasn’t anywhere to go because the few common rooms that existed in each dorm were almost always full. And unless you want to crash a classroom at 2am in one of the academic buildings (which a lot of students do, because there’s no other place for them to hang out), there’s no place for you to just chill with someone of the opposite gender on campus. Well, I guess if one of you has a car, there’s that.

I have to say, I like the announcement aspect of the current policy (I am one of those girls who likes to walk around in towel), but I think it would be more realistic if a guy could just escort himself down the hall, as long as he continued to announce his presence. That way we don’t have those poor men waiting in the lobby for twenty minutes before the girl comes to escort them ten feet down the hall.

While I don’t think there should be open house hours 24/7, I think it would be cool if there were open house hours every day. You never know when there’s going to be a test you need to have a co-ed study group for, and you never know what time of day you may want to just meet up with one of your friends and hang out, watch a movie, or whatever. Maybe 12pm-3am (lower your eyebrows, it's not that scandalous). Starting at 12 because some people are day-chillers, and ending at 3 because a lot of students are night-owls. The doors could still even stay open; I have no problem with that, and I would say most of the students wouldn’t either. The only ones who would, are probably the ones who want to do scandalous things behind closed doors, and well, they don’t a dorm room anymore. There's a fully furnished hotel right across the street now.