Students swipe for entry
By Helena Payne
News Editor
The Office of Residence Life and Housing recently announced Notre Dame students can enter almost all 27 undergraduate residence halls when locked between regular visiting hours with one quick swipe of their identification card.
By sliding their student identification cards through a card reader on residence hall doors, any Notre Dame student can enter another campus dorm between 9 a.m. and midnight Sunday through Thursday and between 9 a.m. and 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Their cards will continue to work for their own dorm 24 hours a day.
Also under the new system:
u All residence halls with card access will be locked between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.
u Students can enter locked dorms with card access by swiping their cards and entering the month and day of their birthdays
u The primary entrance will be identified by a green dot on the card reader.
u After parietals, only hall residents can access their dorms.
Currently, all residence halls have swipe access except Alumni, Dillon, Keenan, Stanford and St. Edward's.
The swipe access is in response to proposals made by former student body president Brooke Norton and vice president Brian Moscona. Their initiative, which was aimed at making it more convenient to get into other dorms, was continued by current student body president Libby Bishop and vice president Trip Foley.
Bishop said she met with assistant vice president of ResLife Bill Kirk and associate director Scott Kachmarik during the summer to ensure that the plan would be carried out.
"My fear was that they would have a uniform policy where every dorm would be locked during the day," Bishop said.
She said she was pleased with the flexibility of the new system, which allows rectors to decide if they want to restrict or allow entrances during the day.
"It's so much more welcoming and it's so much easier," Bishop said.
Prior to the expanded swipe access, students often had to call their guests, especially in women's residence halls, which are often locked at all times and only accessible by detex or ID cards.
Although the swipe access has been installed since the beginning of the school year, ResLife waited to announce it.
"We did not make it public because we wanted to make sure that the bugs were out," Kachmarik said.
One wrinkle the office is still working to iron out is swipe access for off-campus students. Because of the coding for student ID cards, off-campus students were left out in the procedure, but ResLife is working to correct that problem, Kachmarik said.
He also said the new system has an advantage over using keys to enter the dorms.
"It's safer than the old key system because in the past if you lost an outside key, then that key would float around and there are probably [keys] floating for years and years," he said.
However, when students lose their identification cards, they can call and deactivate their cards.
"From a security standpoint, this is actually better than the old key system," Kachmarik said.
Though the new access will allow more free movement of students between the dorms, Kachmarik said ResLife holds the right to deny access to students as a result of disciplinary sanction, for example.
"As a rule, we're not tracking to see who's coming or going," Kachmarik said. "There really is no need to do that at this point."
He also added that the hours of student accessibility to dorms other than their own could change for special weekends or during breaks.
All News Stories for Monday, September 16, 2002
