Students living off-campus will no longer be able to access campus dormitories and residence halls via their student IDs, under a new policy from the Department of Community Living. Off-campus students will now follow the same rules as “Visitors and Guests” under the Rights and Responsibilities handbook, meaning they must be accompanied by a host at all times while in residence halls.

In an email to the Justice, Director of DCL Tim Touchette wrote “The residents who pay to live on campus have started to raise concerns that students who do not live in the halls spend a lot of time in the buildings, using common spaces, lounges and study areas. These spaces are supposed to be reserved exclusively for residential students as referenced by the [Rights and Responsibilities] policy.”

Touchette elaborated, “Regulating non-residential students’ access to the halls is part of our commitment to providing a safe and secure living environment for our residential students...This is a fairly common practice at most institutions and is one that will increase the security of our residential facilities.”

Off-campus students were not formally informed of this policy change. Talia Holtzman ’16 only found about the change after she was denied a Shabbat key from DCL, due to living off-campus. “I’ve lived off-campus since Sophomore year and never had any trouble getting a Shabbat key from DCL,” she wrote in an email to the Justice. “I told the woman working at the desk that I was able to swipe into residence halls with my card, and she told me that off-campus students are not supposed to have card access to the residence halls either.”

Touchette did not respond by press time to requests for comment about when the changes went into effect and what the decision-making process was.

“I absolutely feel the policy is unjust,” Holtzman wrote. “Students who live on-campus are able to swipe into all the residence halls, not just the ones they live in. There are also common spaces in many of the residence halls that can be reserved and used by all Brandeis students, but with this new policy off-campus students cannot access these common spaces. ... It feels as though we’re being discriminated against or punished by the university because we’re not paying an extra $10,000 a year.”

According to Holtzman, off-campus students still had card access to dorms at the beginning of the year. She estimates that swipe access was taken away at the beginning of October. “Every other student that I’ve spoken to, both off-campus and on-campus, are frustrated by this policy,” Holtzman wrote. “On-campus students are also frustrated because they now have to let off-campus ‘guests’ into the residence halls while we were previously able to come and go as we pleased, just as every other student is able to do.”

“The beit midrash” — a Jewish house of study, located in the Shapiro Residence Hall — “especially is an important space for the Jewish community, and off-campus students are being denied access since it is located inside a residence hall,” she added.

Sam Krystal ’17, the senator to the off-campus community in the Student Union, could not be reached for comment by press time.

UPDATE: Talia Holtzman's '16 year was listed improperly. She is a member of the Class of 2016, not the Class of 2017.