Student Senate’s 2009 Housing Report, in which dorm security was identified as a major area of concern, has led to the student initiative of making dorms accessible via proximity cards rather than keys.
“It will be similar to a system
that was installed in the library,” said Student Body President Nick Swiatowski. “It’ll be applied to dorm doors and main stairwells.”
Swiatowski said any buildings
that have offices won’t have proxy card access.
“Residence halls with communal
access would have them be placed at the internal stairways,”
he said.
Swiatowski said another reason for this initiative is Bradley doesn’t have a way of retrieving lost keys.
“If I lose my key, get another
one, another student can find it and can get into any building if they wanted to,” he said. “Students are also known to pass down keys to their friends. This initiative should combat people that shouldn’t have access to certain dorms.”
Assistant Resident Advisor Abi Vogel said she has noticed how easy it is to get into residence
halls because of keys.
“From experiences of people
I know, keys of different residence halls can be easily
used in the doors of other buildings,” she said. “Thus, students who do not live there are able to get in, so this does have a security risk.”
Another benefit that would come with proxy cards is Residence Life Staff could easily be given access to all residence halls and respond quickly for emergency situations.
Though Vogel said she agrees this would be beneficial, she also does not think it is completely necessary.
“If an emergency situation
occurs, having the access would be beneficial, but residence
halls have numerous amounts of staff for these situations
so all staff wouldn’t need access to all dorms,” she said.
Sophomore early childhood
education major Jackie Velasquez said she feels like having proxy card access would be a lot safer, but there are also downsides to it.
“It would be one more thing that students have to lose,” she said. “But I do think it would be beneficial because if you lose the card, you could just cancel it, and that way a random stranger wouldn’t be able to get it.”
Swiatowski said he hopes eventually the proxy cards will be somehow integrated into the student IDs.
This initiative is still in progress.
Though it was planned to be installed by move-in day 2010, there still has not been a response from the university.
