Two Maryville University of St. Louis (Mo.) students swipe their cards to enter a building. The exterior security doors in all residence halls were upgraded from a stand-alone card reader system to a prox system. SECURITY Colleges and universities get serious about building access control. By Michele Herrmann A SENSE OF D URING HIS 17YEAR STINT AS DIRECTOR of Duke University’s key card program, Lowell Adkins remembers responding to a system problem at a residence hall one Saturday morning. Students who were living there saw him standing outside the entrance door and offered to let him in without question. If students would open the door for a complete stranger, he thought, then security clearly wasn’t a high priority for them. It would be left to administrators to improve safety conditions involving access control. Administrators everywhere face similar situations. After the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the shootings at Virginia Tech and Delaware State University this past year, surveys show that campus safety and security is parents’ number one concern. New technologies—and some new twists on older methods—are helping security officers ensure that building access is granted only to those who should have it. February 2008 | 43 universitybusiness.com
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - February 2008