George Fox Memo

Purpose Statement: This Writing 310 blog post is a written memo to Rev. Liz Simmons, the Director of Resident Life at George Fox, in order to address the problem of visitation hours.

TO: Rev. Liz Simmons

FROM: Dorathy Dotson

DATE: 3/3/21

SUBJECT: Visitation Hours on Campus

Due to COVID-19, George Fox University currently has a “No Visitation Hours” policy for all of student housing on campus. However, I think that this only reinforces the isolation and loneliness that most students feel, and this should be changed.

Students are hardly ever able to interact with their friends and fellow classmates anymore. They have to sit far apart in class, social distance outside, and the areas where they can meet are extremely restricted. It is almost impossible to spend time with anyone you don’t share a room with. I think this can reasonably be connected with more cases of depression and loneliness on campus than usual, which are things I know that I have personally experienced due to the pandemic.

The Office of Student Life sent out an email at the beginning of the Spring 2021 semester, on January 22nd, saying that “Nearly every case [of COVID-19] that affected students in the fall could be traced back to off-campus social gatherings or family events.” Also, every student on campus was required to be tested for the Coronavirus at the beginning of the semester. With these and other precautions, there is no reason why visitation hours should not be allowed, though extra restrictions would be acceptable.

A good way to implement this would be to have a person limit on the rooms. Smaller rooms in dorms like HMS, for example, might have a four-person limit. Larger rooms like that of Le Shana might have an eight-person limit. Alternatively, you could require that masks be worn during visitations, or that a visitor couldn’t stay longer than X number of hours. Either way, allowing visitation hours would be very unlikely to cause any outbreak of the virus, and would be very likely to raise morale and happiness on campus.

With evidence from University emails and my own personal experience, one of the best things you could do for students on campus this semester, or even next semester, would be to implement at least some kind of visitation hours on campus.