'It's definitely a rule that gets broken a lot'

Watch me go behind the scenes to uncover how women feel about parietals at Notre Dame.

For my final video project, I decided to answer the question: How do women feel about parietals at Notre Dame? Notre Dame's visiting policy regarding members of the opposite sex staying in the dorms at night is called Parietals. Throughout this project, I explored how the policy impacts the lives of undergraduate women and the hall staff in a women's hall on campus. I was specifically interested to learn how parietals impact in the social culture at Notre Dame, if they can have a negative impact, what the benefits of the policy are, and how the social culture would change on campus if the policy didn't exist at Notre Dame.

This project opened my eyes to many sides of the issue that I did not consider previously. The women I interviewed brought forth strong points that both supported and opposed parietals. They made it clear that the policy has a noticeable impact on social culture and gender relations at Notre Dame. Through interviewing multiple subjects, I found that parietals hinder friendships between men and women on campus more often than relationships. The women spoke about an underlying assumption that the policy is in place to prevent sexual relationships. In reality, the policy cuts in on the time men and women can spend building friendships by creating a blatant division between sexes. It also puts in place an assumption that any relationship carried on between a man and women in the middle of the night must be a sexual one, and leaves no room for heterosexual friendships to grow.

After completing the project, I came up with a few suggestions for how University could improve the policy. First, as Sr. Mary Donnelly suggested, would be to raise the number and quality of 24-hour spaces in the dorms, giving men and women a good alternative location to spend time together after parietals go into effect. Second, I suggest the University extend the policy to 2a.m. during weekdays (the policy currently requires students to vacate dorms of the opposite sex by midnight), which would allow slightly more time for men and women to hang out or study together at night without a curfew that can get in the way. By 2a.m. it is late enough that the curfew would be less of a nuisance.

This project also clarified the ways which parietals and the dorm culture at Notre Dame have fundamentally played a role in how our community is shaped. While the rules can be annoying at times, the hall staff that I interviewed for the project pointed out strong benefits of the system. She argued the policy helps to solidify relationships between women in residence halls by allowing them a time to comfortably just "hanging out with the girls."

The policy remains a fact of life at Notre Dame, and likely will for a long time. Although the rules now seem outdated and hinder social dynamics, there are ways the policy could be updated to serve the student body better while still maintaining the values of the University at the same time.