The Hofstra University Office of Residence Life hopes to implement a pre-registration guest policy using StarRez for the fall 2023 semester. // Photo courtesy of StarRez.
If a residential student wants to bring a guest to their dorm, a resident safety representative (RSR) is required to sign the guest in, scan their ID and keep their card until the guest signs out. The policy was changed temporarily for the winter 2023 intersession due to RSRs not working during the break. However, RSRs are back and so is the old way of signing a guest in, but residential students may be seeing a similar policy in the future.
An email sent out on Dec. 17, 2022, from Beth McGuire, the executive director of campus living, informed residents that from Dec. 19 to Jan. 29, RSRs would not be on duty in the residential buildings and in turn residents would need to fill out a guest application days in advance.
“Residential students must fill out the guest application form [five] business days before the guest’s anticipated arrival. Residential hosts are required to upload a photo of their guest’s photo ID (non-residential student’s [Hofstra University] ID, driver’s license from a U.S. state, Federal or state ID card, Military ID card [or] Passport),” the email read.
Once a student submitted a guest application form during the intersession, a senior staff member in the RSR program reviewed it and made sure the guest had a proper ID. Once that was verified, they sent the information to card services, which created an access card for the host and their guest to pick up, according to McGuire.
At the current moment, a new policy is not set in stone, but the Office of Residence Life is looking to move to pre-registration for the fall 2023 semester, but there is a possibility it will look different than the intersession policy.
“Students could pre-register their guests and then when they arrive at the booth they would say ‘I already registered this person, and then we would make sure to collect the ID of the guest. We wouldn’t hold IDs anymore. We would actually take a photo of the ID and give it back to the guest,” McGuire said. “That is one way in which we could do it, but it’s not the only way in which we could do it. We just don’t know for fall 2023 what the ultimate process for guest management will be.”
During the intersession, Residence Life used a home-grown system for the guest application, but in the future, they plan to use StarRez, a self-proclaimed “platform for thriving residential communities,” according to the StarRez website.
Residence Life hoped to use StarRez during the intersession; however, the RSR booths were not equipped with the necessary hardware at the time.
“We need iPads that will have a camera so that we can take photos of IDs instead of collecting IDs,” McGuire said. “We’re putting all of those budget proposals together. They’re in play right now, but we need things like privacy screens and security blocks for the iPads and different things like that.”
Before implementing any changes, Residence Life will be conducting focus groups throughout the spring 2023 semester with RSRs, RAs, the Residence Hall Association and Student Government Association in order to factor in student voices, according to McGuire.
Some residential students believe that even though they are not a part of those groups, they should be involved in the focus groups as well.
“I can see the benefit of talking about it with the RAs and the RSRs because they’re the people who have to deal with the fact that there are guests in the building, but the residents do live here,” said Sydney Albert, a first year law student. “It just feels like if we’re not going to be consulted about a decision that they’re making, it feels like they’re taking away freedom.”
Other residential students are concerned about not knowing a few days in advance whether a guest will need to be checked in.
“I don’t think it’s necessary,” said Amanda Lepurage, a senior sociology and criminology double major. “My family lives close, and my sister comes sometimes. Sometimes she’ll come that night and I wouldn’t know to register in advance.
McGuire couldn’t say for certain how far in advance a host would need to pre-register their guest and implied that it could be dependent on the situation because nothing has been decided as of yet. She also assured that students would still be able to bring guests into the dorm if they didn’t register days in advance.
Some RSRs, however, are proponents of such a policy because it would make their job easier and cause them less stress.
“It would be beneficial because you wouldn’t have to keep signing them in. If it’s pre-registered, then we’d have the heads up ahead of time so we’d just let them in,” said Chrislanka Gabriel, a sophomore health science major and RSR, who described trying to find ID cards in the card box as a stressful experience due to some RSRs placing them under the wrong letter.