Increasing rates of COVID-19 on campus led Carleton to change OneCard access to residence halls last week. Previously, student OneCards had provided access to all residence halls, but new changes to COVID-19 policies mean that OneCards only allow students access to their own dorms. When the email reached students’ inboxes on an otherwise dull Sunday night, students across campus could be heard cheering.
“It was the same response you might expect to hear if finals were canceled and students all received A’s,” said one St. Olaf student who could hear the celebrations from their dorm.
Residents of Severance Hall were particularly delighted, telling the Carletonian that they believe these changes will go a long way towards dispelling long held notions of favoritism.
Current residents of Burton and Davis declined to comment. “If the administration likes us more, I don’t see why that’s our fault,” said one former Burton resident.
While the administration denies that they put all of their favorite students in Sevy, a Dean of Students who did not wish to be named confirmed to the Carletonian that this is a common practice.
Other students had more mundane reasons for looking forward to these changes to OneCard policies. “It builds community,” one student explained. “I love that you have to wait outside the doors to other dorms until someone lets you in — it really shows that we’re all in this together.”
Another student saw benefits to staying out in the cold, acknowledging that while it can be “kind of unpleasant just standing there in 12-degree weather, it also gives students a great chance for new experiences like [their] hair and eyelashes freezing and the effects of repeatedly slipping on ice… that type of field research is great practice for biology majors.”
Further cited benefits to this new COVID-19 policy include the opportunity to find out who their true friends are based on how long it takes for the friend to come let them in. One student even created a ranking system, explaining how less than a minute between the first text being sent and the student arriving signifies a good friend and a wait of more than 5 minutes means there’s no point in continuing the friendship. When asked about how they would react to a friend already being there to let them in, the student hesitated before telling The Carletonian that they would marry that person on the spot.
The Office of Residential Life offered a different point of view, expressing how when the idea was first suggested, they “fully supported” it. However, upon hearing the cheers of that fateful Sunday night, they realized they had made a terrible error. “I can’t believe we could’ve done that. I mean, students are happy about these changes. This joy goes against everything we stand for,” said one employee of the ResLife office.
A confidential document leaked by a ResLife employee revealed their next steps to remedy this situation, including a plan to change OneCard access to allow each student access to one random dorm rather than their own residence hall. This, they said, would be done under the guise of promoting curiosity through exploration, as students would have to broaden their horizons and enter other dorms rather than spending all of their time huddled under their blankets as they typically do. It would also encourage socialization, another thing ResLife believes students often struggle with. “It’s like they never leave their dorms,” an employee said, “we try our best to make the dorms unwelcoming, but they just keep going back to their rooms to sleep after every class.”
It is unknown as of yet what the student response to those future changes will be, but for now, Carleton students seem perfectly content to enjoy the changes to OneCard access and the benefits they bring as ResLife quietly seethes and plots revenge.
