After a year shrouded in mystery, Maple Hall will be opening in the fall to great fanfare and heightened expectations.

Unfortunately, no one may want to live there.

To make Maple Hall resident-friendly for freshman students, the university has established specific rules and regulations concerning dorm life.

This would be fine if the regulations weren’t completely ludicrous.

Students living in the “new and improved” Maple Hall this fall won’t be allowed to have alcohol in their rooms, even if they are of legal age.

Upperclassmen living in the hall must have at least a 2.5 GPA. They can’t have any serious disciplinary problems, and they must have a record of campus involvement.

And best of all, students living in the dorm can only have guests of the opposite sex in their rooms during certain times.

No members of the opposite sex are allowed in the rooms between 1 a.m. and 9 a.m. weekday mornings and between 3 a.m. and 9 a.m. Saturday and Sunday mornings.

This is by far the most ridiculous regulation ever imposed by the Department of Residence.

Students at a university are adults — even freshmen. And adults can decide when members of the opposite sex have to go home. The university has no business deciding when students need to be alone in their rooms and when they can have friends over — even friends of the opposite sex.

Most of the other regulations aren’t that bad. Most of the students in Maple will be underage, so they can’t legally have alcohol anyway. And it is a good idea to have at least a 2.5 GPA.

But what about those students who can legally have alcohol? What about those students who slip below a 2.5?

No, students don’t have to live in Maple Hall. If they can’t deal with the university’s regulations, they can live in one of many other dorms on campus.

But, by all accounts, Maple Hall is an indication of where residence halls on the ISU campus are going. It is a “test site” for the regulations, and if the hall is successful in still attracting students, the regulations will be used in other dorms around campus.

Eventually, the only option for students who wish to be treated as adults will be to move off campus.

If that’s what the university administrators want, they’re on the right track.