Ivory Tower is the premier upperclassman dorm, but some residents walk into their building and have flashbacks of freshman year – yells by a University Police Department officer to swipe your GWorld and groups of people forming a line to sign in their guests.

Why is Ivory – usually full of only juniors and seniors – the only place besides the freshman residence halls where UPD has a constant presence at the entrance on weekends?

UPD Chief Dolores Stafford said officers were not always sitting in the lobby of Ivory Tower – the dorm originally followed the same protocol as the other upperclassman halls. The officers were added after much vandalism and ill-treatment of the residence hall.

“Students were literally tearing down bulletin boards, exit signs and other fixtures on a weekly basis,” Stafford said in an e-mail last week. “We were originally working in there from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. with a (community service aide).”

But annoyed Ivory residents should not be discouraged – due to more recent good behavior by students there, UPD monitoring hours have been reduced to 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday instead of starting at 7 p.m. In addition, students no longer have to sign in their guests, Stafford said.

“If things continue to improve and we experience a group of occupants this year who are responsible and behave in an adult manner, it is our goal to eventually remove the officer from the lobby area of the building and simply have our officers patrol the building periodically, the same as all other upper-class buildings,” she said.

But while UPD officers may soon be leaving the lobby, another security quirk in Ivory is there to stay – having to swipe out of the lobby to enter the adjacent food court. Stafford called the anomaly of having to swipe to leave the building “a standard security practice.”

“In all residence halls, if there is a retail area, we try to keep it separated from the residential area and require a GWorld card reader to have residents swipe into the residence hall portion of the building,” she said.

“What’s the deal with…” is a weekly feature in the Life section. If you have a suggestion for the column, e-mail [email protected].