Last year, women in Broussard Hall would sometimes find an uncomfortable sight when they returned to their rooms from the bathroom: men loitering outside their doors.
“One time, my roommate came into our dorm and she was really upset,” Art sophomore Chosen Watson said. “She walked out of the shower in her towel and into the hall, and there were two guys right outside the bathroom that immediately turned to look at her.”
In some dorms on campus, residents get access to their halls and rooms using their Tiger Card, which only grants them entry to certain areas like gender-specific halls and common rooms.
But at Broussard Hall, students only have to swipe to enter the building from the outside. Residents unlock all the doors inside using hard keys, which allow students to access more areas than they would in other dorms. Watson said that it was common to see men hanging out in her hall without a resident.
“There was really no reason for any guy to be on our floor,” Watson said. “Especially because our hall was the smallest.”
Philosophy junior Phoebe Volquardts is a resident assistant in Broussard. She said that she thinks that it’s mostly an issue of the building’s layout. Male residents would use the women’s halls to access theirs because they didn’t know there was a staircase directly to their own halls.
Volquardts said that many of her residents were especially uncomfortable that men were accessing their bathrooms.
“At the beginning of the academic year, we had a lot of issues with guys coming through the girls’ hall to get to their hall, but using our bathrooms on the way there,” she said. “The girls’ bathroom only has one curtain between the girl and the open room. A guy could unlock our bathroom at any time and barge in on one of my girls changing.”
Volquardts brought this issue to her supervisors at Broussard and she didn’t see men in her hall or bathrooms for a while. But toward the end of the fall semester, she watched a man enter her hall as she was telling a resident’s parent that she’d addressed the issue.
Psychology sophomore Daliyah Butler said that she loved living in Broussard overall, and she didn’t mind seeing men passing through the halls. But she doesn’t like that they could access the bathrooms.
“It’s unsafe because it’s already bad they have access to our hall,” Butler said. “We used to walk around our hall in our towels.”
Catherine David, assistant director of communications and development at LSU Residential Life, said that she hadn’t heard about the safety concerns at Broussard Hall, but that the department wants to maximize safety for its residents.
“We are constantly evaluating our safety measures and student experience to find the best balance,” David said.
Film and Television sophomore Simone Jackson had a male friend in Broussard who would let himself into her hall to reach her in her dorm. She said it made her feel unsafe when she saw men she didn’t recognize without a resident in her hall.
“We are supposed to be ensured safety, and I don’t feel safe when college boys have access to my hallways,” Jackson said. “I paid too much money for them to roam the halls free.”
Volquardts said that even if the keys only allowed women to enter the women’s halls, it wouldn’t make a difference. Butler said that she would’ve been able to access the men’s halls even without a key.
“You could just yank (the doors) open,” Butler said.
When Volquardts didn’t see enough action from the staff at Broussard to make her residents feel comfortable, she went higher up.
“If LSU has taught me anything, it’s that you must advocate for yourself because no one else will,” she said. “So I brought it directly to the top. From what they described, they’re about to rework more of the system itself so that it’ll only be possible to get into public areas like common areas and your personal floor.”
Although Volquardts heard this from Residential Life, she and Watson both have struggled to get any more answers. Watson said that she and the other residents struggled to be heard by Residential Life about their security concerns.
“I even spoke to the president of the Broussard student body council about it and she said the same thing,” Watson said. “No one will reach out to us.”
Watson said that she thinks Residential Life has a structural problem, and that she wishes the department would be more transparent and accessible.
Volquardts said that she thinks Residential Life is going to make a positive change soon.
“In my experience it’s just that there are issues, and they are on their way to fixing them but don’t tell anyone that they’re fixing them or how,” she said.