PA College Bans Tours Of Dorm After 'Contact High' Complaints, Student Paper Says

The first-year students who live in Swarthmore College's Willets Hall are apparently having a good time.

That's according to the student newspaper, which reported Wednesday that college officials have banned that residence hall from being included on tours for prospective students after visitors complained of getting a "contact high."

In a piece titled "To Put It Bluntly, No More Tours In Willets," published in Swarthmore's Daily Gazette, tour guide Jordan Reyes said parents were complaining of getting a “contact high” from walking through the dorm. The admissions office has previously "discouraged" guides from showing Willets, but as of this summer, it is outright banned, Reyes told Daily Gazette reporter Jissel Becerra.

Jim Bock, vice president and dean of admissions, disputed the report of the ban. Willets is excluded from the tour for practical and time-efficiency purposes, he said.

"From a practical point of view, we want to create an efficient, illuminating tour that allows prospective students and their families the optimal amount of time to see a wide variety of buildings close to the center of campus, where our admissions tours begin and end. Therefore, our practice is to show the three residence halls that are located along the tour route," Bock said.

But other tour guides tell the Philadelphia Inquirer there is a ban, and they backed up Reyes' claims. Natalie Flores, a student at the Delaware County college, told the publication she felt the contact high — "the smell of marijuana" — was a poor reason to "cut a crucial part of the college tour."

Willets Hall is described on the college's website as serving as home to 213 students. It houses mostly first-year students and is known as one of the "livelier" dorms on campus, Swarthmore says on its website. "It can be an excellent place to meet fellow incoming students."

Students weighed in on the Daily Gazette's report with mixed reviews of the apparently infamous residence hall.

"Willets is a miserable, noisy, smelly, outdated, ungodly hot, hellhole of a pit, but that’s exactly why prospective students should tour it. They might be unlucky enough to get stuck there," said a student who identified himself as Ian G in the story's comments section.

Another student expressed the opposite reaction: "yo Willets is the best hall," the student wrote in the Daily Gazette's comments section.

Photo: Bond Hall at Swarthmore College, Smallbones, Public Domain