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Campus residents at Utah State University can now invite their guests to stay overnight, after a recent policy update removed restrictions on opposite-gender sleepovers.

Guests must be approved in writing by a student's roommates and a member of the USU Housing staff, the policy states, and are not allowed to stay for more than three consecutive nights or more than eight nights in a single semester.

Steve Jenson, USU's senior executive director of Housing and Residence Life, said the update is intended to clarify the procedure for having a visitor stay overnight in on-campus housing, particularly that guests should not displace or inconvenience rent-paying tenants.

"The right to sleep will always take precedent over the right to socialize," he said. "This is not to encourage people to bring guests. It's to make sure we know who is in the building and that there is proper approval."

The change brings USU in line with similar policies at the state's other colleges and universities, most of which allow overnight guests, including a proposed revision to housing rules at the University of Utah.

Roughly half of on-campus residents at the U. are currently allowed to host visitors of any gender, Housing and Residential Education Director Barb Remsburg said, and that policy is in the process of being extended to the remaining residence halls where overnight guests of the opposite sex are restricted.

"The framework is that residents can have a guest 24 hours a day," Remsburg said, "as long as they escort their guest into and out of the building and as long as the roommates agree."

Housing policies at Southern Utah University and Dixie State University do not place gender restrictions on overnight guests.

But guests of the opposite sex are not allowed to stay overnight in on-campus housing at Weber State University and Snow College.

Salt Lake Community College and Utah Valley University do not offer on-campus housing.

USU student Alyssa Roberts first reported on the school's new policy for the student newspaper The Utah Statesman.

She said the change has gone largely unnoticed by the student body, as residents who want to host overnight guests were likely doing so already.

"People didn't really know about it unless they were residence staff," Roberts said. "For most of the students, it's not a big deal."

Jenson acknowledged that students may have violated the policy, or will continue to host guests without written approval, as his office would only become involved in the event of a complaint from a roommate.

But he added that it is in a resident's best interest to follow procedure and register their guests.

"When I have the complaint come to me," he said, "that [authorization form] is the first thing I'm going to ask for."

At the U., Remsburg said her staff focuses on roommate dialogue and cooperation more than enforcement of guest policies.

And housing rules that place an arbitrary curfew on visitation, she said, can interfere with a number of activities, like study groups or the common socialization after a football game.

"We don't do curfew checks or bed checks," she said. "There's a very fluid sense of people's schedules."

There's an inclusion element to the new policies as well, Remsburg said.

She said the "opposite-gender" language denotes binary gender, and implies that only heterosexual relationships exist on campus.

"Our students' needs have changed," Remsburg said. "We want to ensure that all students have the same rights to have guests in their space."

bwood@sltrib.com Twitter: @bjaminwood