A Lexington-based nonprofit is seeking to have Mississippi’s public universities enforce their opposite-gender visitation policies for dormitories.
The specific mission of Safe Dormitories Association is to ensure male students do not enter women’s rooms, said Nancy Barrett, one of the association’s founders. The group officially registered as a nonprofit with the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office in 2020.
“We started working in 2019 when we realized what a terrible situation there was in our dormitories in Mississippi,” Barrett said. “I heard many stories, just horrifying, of things that were going on, where the boys could stay in the girls’ rooms, doors locked until midnight.”
The organization has no issue with male students visiting common areas, such as hospitality rooms, she said. However, male students sleeping over at women’s dorm rooms or visiting after hours has caused distress for female students, Barrett said.
Barrett is a 1968 graduate of the University of Mississippi, which her husband, Don Barrett, a well-known Lexington trial attorney, and other relatives and friends also attended.
Barrett recalled that when she was a student, the dean of her alma mater would have students expelled if men were caught in women’s rooms after visitation hours.
Based on stories Barrett has heard from friends whose children have attended the state’s public universities, as well as stories from students and parents the nonprofit has received, these visitation policies are no longer enforced, meaning men have spent nights in women’s rooms.
“This is my analogy: I don’t have to know how many people are killed by land mines to know that land mines are extremely dangerous,” she said. “That is my thinking about this policy.”
On its website, saferdorms.com, and in full-page print ads in the Clarion Ledger newspaper, Safe Dormitories has published anonymous letters by female college students or concerned parents detailing incidents in which female students have felt uncomfortable with male students sleeping over in their rooms while visiting the female students’ roommates.
Before her organization was formed, Barrett and others reached out to various leaders, including elected representatives, University of Mississippi administrators and even a member of the board for the state’s Institutions of Higher Learning, to express their concerns.
Officials either did not take Safe Dormitories’ grievances seriously or, if they showed sympathy, took no action, Barrett said.
“We have been summarily dismissed at every step, and that’s why we organized this group,” she said.
The organization has published four full-page ads in the Clarion Ledger, Barrett said. Safe Dormitories’ next step is to submit letters to the editor for every local newspaper in the state, she added.
Barrett’s group is small, about 30 people, and she is still learning about running a nonprofit. Still, she said she and others are willing to to learn the necessary information step by step to advocate for their cause.
- Contact Gerard Edic at 662-581-7239 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com.
The original version of this article incorrectly reported that the Safe Dormitories Association wants to limit the hours in which males students can visit women's dormitory rooms. The association rather wants to ban such visitation at all times.
