Security measures that are familiar to students in the residence halls may be making their way to most other buildings on campus.

A steering committee has been formed to investigate the possibility of employing swipe-card access at non-residence hall buildings for evening hours, said Marlene Hall, director of Public Safety at Syracuse University. Although the recent assault of a student in a Newhouse I bathroom is an example of why the new restrictions would be instituted, Hall said, the idea had been discussed previous to the incident.

“It is something we are working on with design and construction,” she said. “It is on the table and we are actively meeting.”

Hall is a member of the committee along with Walter Banziger, senior project manager for construction and design at SU, who said the project is being discussed in the committee before it proceeds to the University Cabinet for approval and then possibly onto the University Senate.

Several groups have been and will be involved in the discussion as different groups have different needs and no specifics have been finalized, Banziger said.

“The system would be used [during] after-hours to protect those in the building,” he said. “We are not positive how exactly it will work in every building because various groups will have a say and several factors need to be considered.”

These factors include the security needs of the building and how the building is used, Banziger said.

Chris Barnhill, a sophomore in the School of Management, said he is not sure swipe access is needed and compared it to the Welcome Center on South Campus, which, he said, wastes time.

“I think security is fine as it is,” he said. “I never feel any danger on campus.”

Not only are these systems used on some metropolitan campuses throughout the United States, they are also being used already to some degree at SU. Several buildings, including the College of Law, Eggers Hall and the Science and Technology building already have swipe access in certain locations at night, but these additions to security were made by the departments housed in the buildings, Banziger said.

Claire Suntrup, a sophomore industrial design major, likes the idea of swipe access to Smtih Hall, where she often works in the studio. Students majoring in industrial design are already given a key but Suntrup said the swipe access may make it easier for students who are not majoring in industrial design but who also need to be working in the studio to get access.

Among those universities that have some swipe access buildings is Vanderbilt University, where Hall served as director of crime prevention prior to SU. Their system is much like the system currently in place at SU, where an individual department will decide if they want the access cards.

“The way the budgetary system is designed here, each building, which pretty much works out to each department, has its own budget, and the buildings that have swipe access have access because it’s the department’s preference,” said Andrew Atwood, director of crime prevention at the Vanderbilt University Police Department.

Northwestern University does not use swipe cards in their residence halls but an electronic coding on keys, said Daniel McAleer, assistant chief of police at Northwestern. The buildings are closed and locked when they do house classes during the evening, but some of these buildings have swipe access to certain areas, not to the exterior of the building. This does not have to do with the time of day, but instead how many people need access to a certain part of an academic building, McAleer said.

SU, Northwestern and Vanderbilt all have patrols on campus as part of their nighttime security activities. At SU, the campus is divided into zones with each zone patrolled by a Public Safety officer. Officers are not assigned to specific buildings that house evening classes, but those buildings are included in the zones and are patrolled, Hall said.

Matt Brill, a junior supply chain management major, said he is not opposed to the idea of swipe access but is sometimes more concerned walking to and from an evening class.

“I would be more worried walking to and from the class, especially off-campus, than I would people being in a building who aren’t supposed to be there,” Brill said.

Atwood said, at times, patrols are only marginally effective because officers can only patrol a given area at one time.

“When you talk about patrol, there is only limited effectiveness to the area an officer can cover. It is what he can see or hear,” Atwood said. “Access control tried to address this problem.”

Published on March 19, 2003 at 12:00 pm