Locked Out? It Could Be Worse Than You Think

OK, so I made a mistake. Sleepy and stressed, I rushed out of my Claverly Hall dorm room for an exam early Saturday morning and left my keys and wallet locked safely inside.

Even before the heavy wooden door shut behind me, I felt that sinking feeling in my stomach that told me something was terribly wrong. But it was too late. And my roommate--who would normally be there to let me back in--was in New York, hundreds of miles away.

With only five minutes left until the start of my test, there was little time to ponder the helplessness of my situation, or the possibility that this was God's way of punishing me for taking an exam on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

Just over an hour and a half later, my exam completed, I returned to the scene of the lockout. Standing on the steps in front of Claverly, I pondered where next to turn.

As an official resident of Lowell House, the obvious place to turn would be to Jay Coveney, Lowell House superintendent. But Jay isn't in on Saturdays, and what's more, he couldn't help even if he were.

Claverly Hall, which houses overflow residents from Lowell and Adams House, is managed by Ronnie Levesque, superintendent of Quincy House.

Why should the superintendent of the largest house at the College manage a building that contains residents of two other houses but not his own? Good question. Wrong editorial.

For me, it didn't matter that Ronnie Levesque oversees Claverly Hall. It mattered that Levesque wasn't available on Saturday.

The sign in front of his locked and darkened office instructed students to call the Control Center in case of an emergency.

The Control Center has a very official title. It sounds like the kind of place from which space shuttles are launched.

"We've done that too, but we keep a low profile on that," said Mark E. Remaly, the very friendly systems operator who took my call.

"We basically get all the calls [from all over campus] and send out either a mechanic or put in a work order to have work done. Plus we monitor all kinds of alarms, fire alarms, computers, we dispatch all kinds of people, we page people," Remaly said. "It's a center for communications and it's a central location for all kinds of emergencies."

Emergencies? Perfect! Could they let a desperate student back into his room?

Sorry, no luck.

"The police handle that, unless it's a mechanical problem," Remaly said. "If somebody lost their key, the police would handle that. We're not supposed to handle it."

Call the police, Remaly suggested.

I called the police.

"We don't handle that for the river houses," said Dispatcher Bonnie Louison, of the Harvard Police Department. "They have a policy of handling that themselves."

Excuse me?

"The security guard can let you in at five o'clock, when he comes on duty," Louison said. "If you want to get in earlier, you have to call your Senior Tutor."

So much for protect and serve. The HUPD, whose salaries I subsidize, arrest homeless people for taking cans out of dumpsters. They participate in elaborate, risky drug stings with other local police departments. They break up perfectly good, totally harmless parties on a whim. They are even alleged to racially harass students and each other, and then refuse to investigate that properly.

But they can't unlock my dorm room.

So I called my senior tutor. I had been meaning to introduce myself to her for some time, but had hoped for a better, less embarrassing occasion than a Saturday morning when I was locked out of my room.

Unfortunately, though she was very friendly and supportive, my senior tutor couldn't help me. She didn't have the keys to Claverly. So she said I should call the police again, and tell them that it was their responsibility to let me into my room.

What about the river house policy, I asked.

That doesn't exist, she told me.

I called the police again.

"The watch commander told me there are no exceptions to the rule," Dispatcher Louison told me this time. "The river houses have their own policy."

But my senior tutor said...

"You have to take that up with the chief," said Dispatcher Louison, adding that the chief doesn't work on Saturdays.

What about the watch commander?

"He's out on the road," she said. "If there's an emergency, we contact him on the radio."

This was not an emergency, Dispatcher Louison told me coldly, without even a trace of compassion or an ounce of feigned regret.

Dispatcher Louison would not entertain the pleas of my senior tutor either. And the house masters weren't home. Neither was Ronnie Levesque, or the Quincy House senior tutor.

This problem has been going on for more than a decade, I later learned. Some College officials are upset by it, but those with the authority to change the policy haven't done anything.

I, however, was at a dead end. Locked out of my room for hours on end, I had no money and no identification. I couldn't enter the Lowell House dining hall unless somebody was there to open the locked courtyard for me.

I had no books. Without I.D., I couldn't enter a Harvard library. I had nothing, except for a nice senior tutor, and some friends, who offered their compassion and the use of their rooms.

At my request, Dispatcher Louison had said that I was welcome to sit in the police station's lobby until five. I wouldn't even be able to enjoy a hot cup of coffee, though, because the police don't offer free coffee and I didn't have any money for a vending machine.

Essentially, this is what it's like to be homeless, I thought, except that at least I had friends to whom I could turn.

A lot of whining for a relatively minor incident? Perhaps, though ultimately it cost me a day of my life. And the indifference of the Harvard police and the idiocy of Harvard's bureaucratic policies demand a response.

To be fair, Dispatcher Louison was actually correct in her citation of regulations, as I later found out.

In the Lowell House Handbook, under the heading "Lock Outs," is the warning: "During the day on weekends, there is no guard on duty and nobody around to let you in. The police will not let you in. If your roommate is away, you are stuck until five p.m. Don't lock yourself out."

Sage advice for a stupid policy. Perhaps the next sentence should read: "Avoid stepping in front of oncoming trains."

The irony of it all is that Dispatcher Louison was perfectly willing to talk with me on the telephone for nearly half an hour. But she wasn't willing to help.

Watch Commander Lt. George Hill was perfectly willing to drive around Cambridge looking for emergencies that didn't exist (I know they didn't because I stopped by the police department late Saturday afternoon, in my capacity as a Crimson reporter, and asked the afternoon dispatcher. The dispatcher, who refused to identify himself, told me that "nothing noteworthy" had happened all day.) Like Dispatcher Louison, Hill was not willing to offer me any assistance either.

The response of the Harvard police in this situation was inexcusable. They refused to help a student in need, and they refused a direct request from a senior officer of the University.

What's the answer? If you ask me, the entire Harvard Police Department should be fired. Start with Dispatcher Louison and Watch Commander Hill.

But, I'll admit, that might be an overreaction. More practically, the police and the University should abandon ridiculous policies that punish innocent students and make a concerted effort to offer assistance when it is needed.

Walt Whitman once wrote, "From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the well-closed doors, let me be wafted."

Tell me about it.