Prospective students’ swipe cards have been reprogrammed to access all Oberlin residence halls after an article in last week’s Review pointed out that prospies were denied access to certain co-ops. ResEd denies any intention of blocking access to these buildings; however, in a letter to the Review this week, a senior admissions official stressed a policy of not placing prospies in Harkness co-op.

Michele Gross, the associate director of ResEd who oversees the programming of swipe cards distributed to prospies, told the Review last week that “the programming is broken into subgroups, so that all dorms on North Campus and South Campus, and then co-ops, are put onto the card collectively.” This would also mean that, given the way the software functions, it would not be possible to exclude the recognition of individual buildings from swipe cards.

In a follow-up interview yesterday, however, Gross was able to go more in depth as to the exact status of the problems the College has been experiencing regarding swipe cards.

“For the past six weeks, there have been a variety of ID card software problems,” Gross explained. “We contacted Blackboard, the company that supports the program we use. Over Spring Break Blackboard was able to reinstall the software. We thought all of the problems had been corrected, but we didn’t know there was a problem with prospie cards.”

Since last week’s article was printed reporting that a particular prospective student’s swipe card was not compatible with the card readers of Tank, Fairchild and Harkness but were compatible with those of other dorms, Gross has reinvestigated the situation and all problems with swipe cards given to prospies have reportedly been repaired.

“It was truly just a technical glitch,” Gross insisted. “Somehow the group program got corrupted so the co-op function was not working properly. The problem has now been addressed.”

Given this information, it now appears to be coincidental that prospie swipe cards did not grant entry into Harkness, not connectted to the fact that admissions made a decision last semester not to allow prospies to spend overnight visits there unless they specifically requested to do so.

In a letter to the Review this week, however, Campus Visits Coordinator Crys Latham maintained her stance that Harkness does not foster an appropriate environment for prospective student visitors.

“The complaints [of prospective students spending the night in Harkness] focused on the lack of cleanliness and prospectives being drawn into conversations about drug and alcohol use/abuse or witnessing it firsthand,” explained Latham.

She defended her position that Harkness is a liability to the College in that “the majority of prospectives are 16 or 17 years old, hence minors. It is my responsibility to provide prospectives with the tools to have an enjoyable stay and to remedy anything preventing that.”

As far as the claim that students are less likely to come to Oberlin after a stay in Harkness, Latham said that she “[researched] enrollment for students the past two years who’ve stayed in Harkness. The matriculation of Harkness overnights in comparison to other residences is low enough to take notice.”

This argument was countered by Harkness resident and first-year Katie Ortner, who stated that “it takes a certain person to like living in Harkness, just as it takes a certain person to enjoy living anywhere, so it seems that if admissions did a better job of finding out about the prospie beforehand, less putting-the-wrong-people-in-the-wrong-places would happen.”

Finally, Latham responded to Harkness Loose Ends Coordinator Colin Gunn’s concern that removing Harkness as an overnight stay option for perspective students is an attempt to, in Gunn’s words, “weed out the students who are more likely to appreciate what Harkness has to offer.”

Latham said, “If prospectives seek a community such as Harkness, they do find it. We aren’t asking Harkness to change what it is. However, I will demand that Harkness provides clean, safe, drug-and-alcohol-free accommodations to prospectives. If this means that Harkness must change what it is, then so be it. However, it is their choice to not meet our expectations.”