Recently, the administration has said that it is looking into converting access to all academic buildings on campus to the card-access modules that are used in residence halls. Currently, a public safety officer has to go to every building on campus after hours to lock it up, and the switch would allow for automatic locking, eliminating this job.
A card-access system would allow Public Safety to grant and revoke access to buildings on an individual basis, without having to worry about tracking down old keys or retrieving a key from someone. Aside from the ease of management, the card-access system would free up public safety officers to perform other important tasks on campus. These benefits, however, come with a large price tag; installation ranges from $50,000 to $300,000 per building, and with around 110 buildings on campus—not all academic—one can imagine that the worst-case scenario could lead upwards of several million dollars to implement. This does not include the cost of maintenance of a card-based system, which could very well surpass the cost of a key and lock.
Students could see a benefit in a change in the current system if it meant more mobility and ease-of-access to buildings that they need to enter after hours. However, if the system is just an expensive method of performing a manual task that does not solve the myriad of loopholes to accessing buildings without permission, then the cost of such a plan does not outweigh its benefits. Another item for consideration is the capability and practice of Public Safety recording access to a building within a given number of days. There may be added safety in such a system, but there is also the cost of reduced privacy.
The staggering cost of adding these systems to every academic building simply does not seem justified. At an institution whose annual budget is highly dependent on enrollment and tuition, one must wonder whether this year’s inevitable tuition hike will actually go towards learning or to pay for unnecessary electronic systems.
