Dorm security differs from residential halls to plazas, suites

From 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., students working in Access Control form a security barrier with their swipe machines and guest forms to make sure no unauthorized visitors enter the elevators in the residential halls.

Though there is security for every residential building, access control exists only in the halls. In plazas and suites, meanwhile, students must swipe their BruinCards to enter the building, but anyone can enter just by waiting for someone to hold the door open.

“While the suites and plazas have private bathrooms, the halls have community bathrooms, which makes it easy for people to hide out and live there, as it’s a communal area,” said Marcel Owens, a fourth-year linguistics and psychology student who works for Access Control.

Owens added that because anybody can come into the building and hide, the environment could be potentially dangerous because unauthorized people could stay in the building for weeks.

Katrina Dimaano, a second-year psychobiology student who works for Access Control, said there have been incidents in the past where unauthorized people entered the building. The most notable was when a homeless person tried to live in the community bathroom.

Though security in the halls was mainly set up to keep unauthorized guests out, Access Control also helps to report and assist drunk students.

“Because we’re here during late hours, a lot of students come back drunk and can’t take care of themselves,” Owens said. “We’re here to prevent anything bad from happening to them.”

In addition to helping students return to their rooms, Access Control also reports these incidents to resident assistants, said Dana Pysz, assistant director in residential education at the Office of Residential Life. If needed, an emergency medical technician is called to treat them, and incident reports are also filed through the ORL system.

“(The students) may not realize it at the time, but we really are helping them in the long run,” Dimaano said.

Though the plazas and suites may not have as stringent safety measures, security in the halls affects a larger part of the student population, as more students live in them, Owens said.

Another reason that only halls receive stricter monitoring during nighttime is efficiency and cost.

Housing services works with consultants on the structures of the building when it comes to access monitoring, Pysz said.

“Residential halls usually only have one main entry, unlike a place like Saxon, which has many access points,” Pysz said. “This makes having access control at every entrance very costly.”

He added that if students wanted added security, ORL would take that into consideration, but the costs would trickle down to students in housing payments.

However, Pysz said the Hill still has more stringent security systems than those on campus.

“There’s a lot of staff that work in the dorms during the day, and they can stop anyone if they look questionable, whereas there’s nothing much on campus,” he said. “The Hill has many more layers of security.”

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