With the addition of Lawson Hall to the list of dorms with 24-hour visitation, there are now an even number of limited visitation and 24-hour visitation halls on campus, bringing Eastern closer to fitting the policies of several other Illinois public universities.

Eastern has far more restrictive visitation policies for residence halls compared to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois State University and Western Illinois University; however, the University of Illinois in Champaign has much stricter regulations.

At Southern all 19 dorms on campus have 24-hour visitation, seven days a week, Steve Kirk, associate director of Housing and Resident Life at Southern, said Tuesday.

Males and females are segregated by floor in Residence Halls at Southern, but they are also able to have males and females on the same floor in housing suites, which are two rooms conjoined by a bathroom.

Students could hold a vote on their floor at any time to change visitation hours, but no one has ever exercised that right before, Kirk said.

“Since no one voted on anything other than 24-hour visitation during those times, it became evident that that’s what students wanted,” Kirk said.

With the mix of male and female students of all different ages, Southern has a policy that gives control at the room level and lets guidelines be set by roommates. However, Kirk said “the privacy rights of a student will always prevail.”

The residence halls have had 24-hour visitation since the late 1970s when students on each floor were allowed to decide their own visitation policy, Kirk said.

At Illinois State, housing suites on separate floors of two buildings are the only residential housing with restricted visitation of the 13 residential halls on campus, Rick Lewis, associate director of residence halls, said Tuesday.

Residence halls at Illinois State are also co-ed, except for specific wings of two buildings.

While Illinois State University and Southern Illinois University have a rather lenient visitation policy, Western Illinois University had to restrict 24-hour visitation to upperclassmen residence halls, Kathy Cavin, associate vice president for student services, said Tuesday.

Several decades ago both upperclassmen and underclassmen residence halls were 24-visitation, but complaints from students and parents about roommates keeping visitors overnight on week nights prompted Western to change its policies in 1985, she said.

Western reserves residence halls by academic year, allowing six upperclassmen halls and four underclassmen halls. For underclassmen, doors lock at 11 p.m. Monday though Friday. No one of the opposite sex is allowed in after that time, but 24-hour visitation is allowed on weekends.

However, upperclassmen residence halls have 24-hour visitation, seven days a week.

“(The underclassmen students) know they are here for school and don’t mind that they don’t have 24-hour visiting,” she said. “We don’t get very many complaints about it.”

Western offers many of the same security measures as Eastern, including required key access to doors and elevators and a staff member on duty during nighttime hours. In addition, Western also monitors entrances and other key points with a TV close circuit monitor system and has a 24-hour desk attendant on the main floors of every residence hall.

The University of Illinois at Champaign is an exception to the other universities with 24-hour visitation policy.

None of its 22 undergraduate dorms allow overnight guests who are of the opposite sex or not a student of the university. The university’s halls are co-ed by floor or co-ed pair buildings, except for two that enforce a non-visitation policy. No one of the opposite sex is allowed to visit in these rooms at any time, Anna Hernandez, assistant director of marketing of university housing, said Tuesday.

“We need to prevent someone who is not a student at the school from permanently living in here,” Hernandez said.

Lawson Hall is slated to go to 24-hour visitation next fall, making it the second female residence hall with 24-hour visitation since Lincoln Hall currently maintains 24-hour visitation.

The new policy was passed by the Residence Hall Association on Jan.17 and then approved by Mark Hudson, director of Housing and Dinning.

Stevenson, Douglas, Thomas, McKinney, Taylor and Weller are all 24-visitation halls.