George Washington University has made changes to its residence hall visitor management policies that will keep the campus in line with evolving COVID-19 restrictions. Students living in on campus housing can now invite one guest from their residence hall into their room at a time.

A report from the GW Hatchet reveals that students can invite one guest to their room between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m., but overnight stays are still prohibited. The latest measures are a loosening of the initial COVID-19 restrictions put in place at the university, which previously enforced a strict no-guest policy for the some 1,500 students living in campus residence halls.

An email circulated to on-campus students from Campus Living and Residential Education stated in part:

“We have confidence in our residents’ ongoing commitment to the health of our campus as we implement this revised guest policy for, hopefully, the rest of this semester. The host resident is responsible for their guest’s behavior when their guest is in their unit. A violation of the guest policy may result in the resident and the guest each receiving similar sanctions.”

The university's visitor management policy will still restrict guests from any outside buildings, including other residence halls, off-campus sites or athlete-affinity housing, and all guests must continue to heed social distancing guidelines in each room.

Student-athletes living in what the university is calling an "affinity space" must maintain their testing bubble, limiting gatherings to fellow teammates under COVID-19 guidelines. University officials say the alterations to the campus visitor management policy were implemented based on shifts in COVID-19 cases, transmission rates and "other public health or behavioral assessments” on campus or across the surrounding D.C. area.