Issue date: 1/31/08 Section: News

Senior student adviser Kati Smith manually locks her door on the third floor of Missouri Hall on Wednesday morning. She said automatically locking doors result in residents being locked out, more than anything.

For now, exterior ID card access into the residence halls is half a decade from becoming a reality.

To enter any residence hall between 10:30 p.m. and 6 a.m., students must check in with the night monitor on duty and present their ID cards to be swiped. John Mounsey, coordinator of facilities and process design for Residence Life, said Residence Life has had many discussions regarding that security policy following an incident Jan. 20 when a man walked past the night monitor in Dobson Hall and entered two students' room (see Jan. 24 issue of the Index).

"We haven't come up with a better solution at this point that we can roll out now," Mounsey said. "We're continuing to look at perimeter access, and some people suggested full-time security, professional security. ... From what our experience has been it's not going to be feasible a) because it's going to cost a fortune and b) in my time here they have had a very difficult time actually keeping DPS fully staffed."

The possible implementation of perimeter access for residence halls is nothing new at Truman. Mounsey said he can remember it being discussed five or six years ago.

"We convened a committee a couple of years ago with ITS, DPS, [Residence Life], the dean of students office and facilities to look at the feasibility of it," he said.

At that point the committee passed on a recommendation to then-Campus Planner Doug Winicker to move forward with perimeter access, and Mounsey said the committee also discussed the ability to add closed-circuit televisions when that became possible. He said that although current Campus Planner Mark Schultz made the final decision to equip each newly renovated residence hall with the ability to house perimeter card-access equipment, that system would not be implemented until all residence halls are outfitted with that capability.

"All along our goal has been to roll it out campuswide because we felt that an implementation system ... would be difficult on a building-by-building basis the way that we do our hours," Mounsey said.

Continued...

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