During their first week on campus, some Suites residents entered their rooms through their windows because the ID card scanners would not let them open the front doors.
“We just stopped using the doors. It was just that inconvenient,” sophomore Luke Adams said. “They worked sometimes, but it was erratic enough that we didn’t even bother trying with our IDs because it was easier to get in through the window.”
According to Patrick Chartrand, Hillsdale College’s network systems manager, the problem was caused by an electrical surge that happened during a nighttime storm on Aug. 27.
The next morning, Chartrand said he switched the cameras, ID card scanners, and Wi-Fi over to the one working network switch and ordered new switches, which arrived on Aug. 30.
“Everything should have been fine after that,” Chartrand said. “It should have been better really, because when we did the upgrade, we made their Wi-Fi 10 fold faster. But when I left Friday, they never came back online, and I was unaware of it.”
That weekend, the Suites resident assistants kept the front doors to the building propped open for convenience.
“Because of safety precautions and air conditioning and heating costs we don’t like keeping the doors propped open, but it was what was most convenient for everyone,” said Suites RA Michael Di Pietro.
Chartrand said that electrical surges have caused problems three or four times at the Suites.
“The surge protectors should have worked, but with the added protection of the line conditioners, hopefully we won’t run into this kind of problem again,” Chartrand said.
Although the ID scanners are subject to electrical problems, Director of Campus Security Bill Whorley said that he would never approve of going back to key access; he recommends switching to card scanners any time a building is updated.
“Key control is a concern of security. If we switch completely to card then we wouldn’t have keys floating around campus that have been checked out and not checked back in,” Whorley said. “I call maintenance the ‘keeper of the keys’—they showed me a box that was about an inch thick of lost keys that had been returned to them.”
Whorley also noted that card access is better than keys because keys can be duplicated. Once a card is reported lost, it is deactivated.
Card access will be installed at the Margot V. Biermann Center soon; it will be the first building tested with the new card scanner software.
“We’re trying out the new software for Biermann because it’s more compatible with the cameras that we have. If that works successfully we will look to change all the scanners over to that software,” Chartrand said.
After a rough first week, Suites residents are finally able to use their ID cards.
As for climbing in the windows, Whorley said that sometimes necessity becomes the mother of invention, but that students should call security anytime they have a problem accessing their building.
