The Department of Community Living announced a shift in its policy regarding off-campus students’ access to dormitories and clarified its policy of giving Community Advisors master keys in an email sent to the student body on Friday afternoon.

Dr. Tim Touchette, the director of DCL, explained that off-campus students will now be granted card swipe access to dorms between 7 a.m. and 1 a.m., the University’s operating hours. Commuter students had previously been denied access to dorms because “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 … [and] these spaces are supposed to be reserved exclusively for residential students as referenced by the [Rights and Responsibilities] policy,” Touchette wrote in an email to the Justice.

The email explained that the reprogramming of ID cards had already begun as of Friday afternoon and should have been fully completed by the end of the day.

Touchette also included an explanation of the policy that grants master keys to CAs, noting that even with backlash to the policy, “there has been no allegation of any misuse and that a variety of systems are in place to track the use of master keys.”

Touchette mentioned that there has been “widespread support” for the policy since it “offers faster response to students locked out of their rooms, and frees our campus police to focus on issues of campus security.”

However, Touchette noted, DCL is currently working with CA leadership to revise the policy so as not to have a system in place that causes unnecessary stress for the student body regarding which individuals have access to their rooms.

—Avi Gold