4/16/2021 Students call for end of no-guest policy

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The Patriot Talon Feb 3 10 min read

Students call for end of no-guest policy

Chandler Gibson • Editor-in-Chief

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4/16/2021 Students call for end of no-guest policy

A student-led petition calling for the end of Housing’s No-Guest Policy has collected over 500
signatures, representing nearly a third of total possible students living on campus.

Mickey Meyer, an Information Technology senior at The University of Texas at Tyler, started
the Change.org petition, titled “No Guest Policy = No Love” to call attention to what he
describes in his petition as UT Tyler’s “draconian” COVID-19 restrictions.

“I have been going here for 4 years and know a lot of people on campus and have heard a lot
of people's mental health deteriorating because of the isolation this policy causes,” Meyer
said in an email.

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4/16/2021 Students call for end of no-guest policy

Meyer, who lives at Liberty Landing but is from El Dorado Hills, CA (a suburb of
Sacramento), has family that suffers from mental health struggles, informing his decision to
start the petition.

“I had loved on campus housing because I felt safe, felt like I was in a community, and is so
close to campus,” Meyer said. “When COVID-19 happened, two of those things fell away. Not
being able to have my support system in my home has been detrimental to my mental
health, and the fear of my home being taken away if I violate this policy has added onto the
stress.”

“There are also people I see calling other people out for having their boyfriends, girlfriends
and sometimes even their husbands and wives over,” Meyer said. “What kind of community
can there be if you are scared that your neighbors will rat you out if you have a friend over?”

The first time Meyer heard about the No-Guest Policy was when he returned to campus in
Fall 2020.

“I felt like the administration was doing its best to cover themselves by not being liable for
COVID-19 related issues, but it was the hardest on all of the students' mental health,” Meyer
said. “I understand that the University wants to not put people in danger of a life threatening
disease, but treating the student body like they are stupid will only get a stupid outcome. If
you look at the petitions’ reasons for signing, there is story after story of the student [body’s]
worsening mental health, and treating them like they don’t have any responsibility when it
comes to being COVID-conscious doesn’t help. At the end of the day, I want everyone to
know how bad this policy is towards mental health because I see people suffering in silence
and it shouldn’t take a crisis situation to wake up the people who implemented this rule.”

In the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 Return Procedures documents, there are sections on
Student Housing that prohibit visitation (including parents) and guests. While not expressly
explained in the Return Procedures documents from either semester, a mass email to
students from Director of Residence Life, Scott Hendershot defines a guest as: “any person
not assigned to that specific room/apartment.”

Therefore, for students in a four-bedroom, only those four are allowed inside. For students in
one-bedrooms and efficiencies, only they are allowed in theirs.

According to Hendershot and Vice President for Student Success, Ona Tolliver, UT Tyler’s
No-Guest Policy was decided by the Reboot Task Force and UT Tyler’s former president, Dr.
Michael Tidwell.

“Most [CDC] guidance recommended dramatically reducing facility occupancy,” Tolliver said
in an email. “While many other institutions of higher education followed that
recommendation, UT Tyler chose to provide an environment that would allow new and
current students an opportunity to have as close to a traditional experience as possible while
promoting safety. The ‘no-guest policy’ is one of the many tools UT Tyler enlisted to support
our students in their desire to have in-person classes and reside on campus. UT Tyler is still
one of the few campuses who have continued to have a 100% occupancy. This policy and
other steps have been key to providing the best experience possible while observing safety
measures.”

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4/16/2021 Students call for end of no-guest policy

Meyer is not the only student struggling with the isolation of the pandemic. Nicole Popp is a
sophomore Psychology major at UT Tyler, and currently lives at Victory Village.

“I mean, most of their reasoning against it was that other schools are doing it, so we want to
do it,” Popp said. “But the problem there is that most of their on-campus housing is dorms.
When you have two beds in the same room, you definitely don’t want people coming in there.
When you all have your own room, I don’t see why it's so much of a problem. You can have
one person over in your own room. Obviously five people, that’s a problem. Apartment
complexes aren’t saying you can’t have guests. That’s their choice, because it’s their home.”

Victory Village is a student apartment complex located more than half a mile away from UT
Tyler, and only accessible via car (or bike, technically) from University Blvd. Since none of
the on-campus housing options allow visitation, Popp is essentially cut off from the rest of the
campus.

“I spent my first year here at O-Hall; really close with a lot of people,” Popp said. “I became
best friends with my roommate there, and then at the beginning of sophomore year I moved
here to Victory Village. I was originally going to be moving here with three of my friends, but
then two of them decided to live off campus, so I got two random roommates. One of them I
just happen to know from a club, The Rolling Patriots Guild.”

The Rolling Patriots Guild is a student organization of tabletop game enthusiasts (Dungeons
& Dragons, etc.)

With two randomly-assigned roommates, Popp’s support system during a global pandemic
and forced social isolation was fragmented.

“I have anxiety and depression, and I know a lot of people in our generation do,” Popp said.
“There are times when I need somebody there who understands me to just be there for me,
and we can’t have that, because they’re not allowed to come over. Especially with
relationships, because, like, if I could have my boyfriend here, I would feel a lot better if I was
having a panic attack. Obviously I’m not going to drive over to his place if I’m having a panic
attack. But he can’t come over here, either.”

Popp’s boyfriend goes to Tyler Junior College. She can go over to his residence, she
explained, but he is not allowed to come to her apartment. The isolation resulting from the
need to social distance has been a common theme during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Research shows the level of risk presented by social isolation is very similar in magnitude to
that of obesity, smoking, lack of access to care and physical inactivity,” wrote the National
Alliance on Mental Illness. NAMI published their Effects of COVID-19 related Social Isolation
on the Mental Health of Racialized Communities information in 2020. “Additionally, loneliness
and social isolation are twice as harmful to physical and mental health as obesity.”

Popp had been involved in a previous petition to overturn the policy, unrelated to Meyer’s,
during last semester: Fall 2020. She was not sure who had started it, but she advocated
heavily on its behalf.

“I was mostly getting together with people, talking to people at Student Government, getting
their say, and stuff like that, trying to get my friends to spread the word,” Popp said. “I was
going to start [another] petition, but when [the University] told me no, I didn’t know what to
do.”

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Popp had hit a wall. She felt shut down. UT Tyler, she ventured, had stopped caring.

“They basically said ‘we don’t want to listen to you,’” Popp said. “I had sent an email out to
Scott Hendershot and President Tidwell, and Hendershot basically told me ‘I can’t do
anything about this,’ and I said ‘who can?’ and he said ‘oh, the COVID response team can.’
He sent me their email, I emailed them, and they said ‘oh, yeah, we’ll talk to you, we’ll
discuss it with you,’ and then they just sent me a guy to tell me no. And he gave me some
options: to cancel my housing contract, to get on a board of people over, like, Victory Village
or something, but that’s … not going to change the guest policy. That’s my main goal.”

The person sent to talk to Popp about the issue was Shane-Justin Nu’uhiwa, a Student
Conduct and Intervention Officer. His role has changed, due to a restructure in the Judicial
Affairs department (now called Student Conduct and Intervention), therefore he was unable
to discuss the matter with Popp and students like her.

“Basically all I got was that they can cancel my housing contract, and I can go to counseling,”
Popp said. “I’m already in counseling, and I told them that in my initial email - I go to a
counselor every week - but that’s not going to fix everything. That’s not how it works. They
pretty much just told me to get more counseling [anyway].”

While Popp’s petition has fizzled out, Meyer’s appears to be gaining momentum.

“I have talked to various people in housing and in the administration about this policy and
most have encouraged me, but some don’t see the mental health crisis as much of an
imminent threat as the COVID-crisis,” Meyer said. “They think that treating the symptoms is
enough with more ‘mental health awareness’ and ‘increasing visibility of resources’ when we
should be treating the root of the problem which is this policy. I’m not asking them to even
change it by much, but just to change it to a one-guest policy would dramatically increase the
mental health of the student body. Detractors to this argument say ‘this policy is only
temporary’ but what is temporary when we are almost a year into this? How can you tell that
to a student with severe depression who just wants to have a friend over?”

Meyer goes on to explain that he has been communicating with Housing intermittently, and
that most people he has spoken to have encouraged him. He noted that since cases were
few (around 30 during this interaction, and 19 during the writing of this story), Housing would
likely be more open to amending the rule in response to student outcry.

Hendershot, on the other hand, has a different answer to amending and overturning the
policy.

“No, because we have determined that this is the best way to manage the spread of the
[COVID-19] on our campus,” Hendershot said in an email. “However, I gladly welcome
conversations with students regarding their concerns.”

In response to Meyer’s petition, students have posted testimonies about why they have
signed, and what they hope to accomplish with an amendment or an overturn of the rule.

“I’m signing because I believe that there is a way to implement a safe protocol to allow
guests in our campus apartments and dorms” UT Tyler student Deonne Cartwright said. “By
not allowing guests, you’re forcing students to seek companionship outside of their homes
and in public settings, in turn, increasing their exposure. By forcing students to convene on

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4/16/2021 Students call for end of no-guest policy

campus, you’re also exposing people that are required to be in that building (sodexo workers,
janitorial workers, staff, faculty, and other students). Students are still going out and working
around other people and coming to an in person lecture the next morning. Some exposure is
inevitable, but there is a way to allow necessary socializing and companionship while
keeping our students and campus safe!”

The concerns of coming into possibly-infectious contact with on-campus contact with
university faculty, staff, workers and strangers is common among the students’ testimony,
and addressed by Hendershot in an interview.

“They are not strangers, they are employees of UT Tyler or contractors that have been vetted
by the university,” Hendershot said. “This is just a process necessary to maintain the
University properties and they only enter when absolutely necessary. All staff are required to
be wearing proper CDC recommended personal protective equipment to promote safety and
health.”

The housing departments of other schools in The University of Texas System have had
different approaches to the social distancing needs of their schools.

The University of Texas at Dallas, for example, allows pre-approved guests and visitation, as
long as the guests are UTD students. UT Arlington and UT San Antonio (their policies are
essentially copied-and-pasted, except for UTA’s different policies for residence halls and
apartments) do not allow guests during this phase of their reopening plan, but plan to allow it
in another stage. UT Austin does not allow guests/visitation in their on-campus residence
halls, but do in their recently-purchased campus apartments, 2400 Nueces. In fact, not only
does 2400 Nueces allow guests, it allows overnight visitation for up to 3 days at a time. UT
Permian Basin and UT El Paso are the most similar to UT Tyler, forming students into
Housing “Pods” that only interact with one another in indoor settings.

UT Rio Grande Valley, however, has an interesting approach to visitation. While their
visitation is limited, they allow students to have guests and visitors from the same housing
facility. For example, if this was implemented at UT Tyler, it would allow O-Hall residents to
interact relatively freely with other residents of O-Hall; Liberty Landing residents to do so with
other Liberty Landing residents, and so on.

“The policy should change to at least just a one guest per resident so that people can feel
safe in their home without being scared that their home will be taken away from them by a
draconian policy,” reads Meyer’s petition.

It is closest to the UTD plan, which allows visitors that equal one more than the assigned
occupancy of the room. In studios and one-bedrooms, there can be two people; in two-
bedrooms, there can be three; so on.

“The petition is successful in getting people talking and having people share their stories
about how the policy has hurt them,” Meyer said. “It’s my job, the job of the newspaper, and
anyone who calls themselves a mental health advocate to elevate their stories so that the
University understands how serious the mental health problem is on campus.”

According to Tolliver, student mental health and wellbeing is and has always been a priority.

“We believe that providing hybrid courses and allowing 100% occupancy in our residence
halls offered students a degree of normalcy in what had been a very abrupt and challenging

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4/16/2021 Students call for end of no-guest policy

year,” Tolliver said. “The Division of Student Success expanded numerous existing services
and resources to support students including student counseling, case management and the
CARE Team. In addition, new initiatives were also launched such as a resiliency and
outreach team that reached out to students to determine how we might address questions or
concerns, welfare and wellness outreach, which is a collaboration with the School of Nursing,
student counseling and the Office of the Dean of Students to support students’ physical and
mental health, and regular follow up by our case management team and student accessibility
staff. Fortunately several tools were in place to support telehealth, thereby allowing students
to have consistent access to counselors. We understand that these are difficult times and
continue to communicate and educate our campus community on the available resources
while working to support our students overall wellbeing.”

While UT Tyler Housing has not made any public moves to overturn or amend the No-Guest
Policy, Meyer’s petition continues to gain traction. He recently asked for student testimonies
about how the policy has affected them, some of which have been included in a gallery
attached to this story.

A link to Meyer’s petition can be found here. For immediate assistance with mental health
and counseling issues, call the 24/7 Crisis Hotline: 903-566-7254.

Campus

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4/16/2021 Students call for end of no-guest policy

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