This year I was one of hundreds of students across campus who moved into a university-owned house and found that my basement was locked, I was immediately filled with a sense of relief.

I had toured the house the previous semester and unfortunately at that time it was unlocked. I had to walk down relatively steep stairs, tilt my head slightly, find a light, see a scary shadow and even get my shoes moderately dusty.

What a burden! Imagine my sense of joy when I moved in this year and my basement was locked.

As I slowly realized that I would be spending the next year in a house with half the square footage that I had planned for, I finally realized that the University of Dayton really values students' opinions.

But then an unsettling thought came over me. The university has stated that the reason the basements were locked was to protect student safety, but is this enough? Granted, some houses across campus have legitimately dangerous basements, but every house has a far more dangerous kitchen.

In fact, the most dangerous places in a house are the kitchen and bathroom, not the basement, why is the university not concerned about these dangers as well?

That is why I am proposing a solution that is both simple and totally in line with the policies the university is clearly already following: students should be locked out of their houses.

I am twenty two years old and I can't be expected not to burn myself on a stove, accidentally drown myself in a bathtub or resist the urge to jam a fork into those little holes in the wall just like I can't be expected to know when it is safe to go into my basement.

While I can be drafted to war, drink alcohol responsibly and sentence someone to death on a jury, I am certainly am not able to know which parts of my house are safe.

And think about what wonders this will do for those incessant parties college kids seem to like so much.

If the university thought closing the basements would cut down on the crazy parties, imagine what locking the houses would do. Wild college kids would be replaced with quiet, studious, frostbitten box-dwellers.

Now some may think that because students would be locked out of their houses, the university would lose the revenue it made from housing, but I see no reason why this should be the case.

The cost of housing through UD has actually increased as basements have been locked and square-footage reduced, so I see no reason why this pattern can't continue when houses are locked.

Now I know what you are probably thinking, isn't this going a little too far? Couldn't the university allow students to make their own decisions about safety, or provide them with some notification about the dangers of their house rather than locking them out entirely?

Well, it's stupid ideas like that that force the university to proceed with its housing decisions without any student input whatsoever.

Students here are always clamoring about how the university should value their "opinions" and protect their "rights" and its abstract and confusing ideas like these that oblige the university to make important decisions on our behalf.

I just ask one simple thing of this university, and that is for a little bit of follow through. Why not finish what has been started and lock student houses as well? Only then will students know whose interests the university really wants to protect.