Installation of electronic locks on the doors of all residence hall s -- which Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman initially said he hoped would be completed by the beginning of Fall term -- will not be finished until at least the winter of 2002.
Administrators announced plans in February to devise an exterior door locking system. In addition to residence halls, academic and College office buildings will be included in the system.
Prospective contractors and vendors have been interviewed and the College is trying to decide who to award the bid to and what the final timeline will be, Director of Residential Operations Woody Eckels said.
Work on the new system is expected to begin during the fall and will last until the system is deemed perfect.
"This is not just a simple little thing you throw out there and hope it works. We know that this system needs to take a lot of planning and a lot of thought. We want to make sure that we don't turn something on and then all of a sudden it doesn't work," Eckels said.
"It's going to be a hard sell as it is -- there's an awareness that some of the community members think that this is a great thing and some don't. So to turn on a system that doesn't work would be a disaster," he added.
Doors will be locked and will require a new identification card to access them, most likely starting during the Winter term, he said.
"The goal was to shoot for January of 2002," he said. "I'm not sure whether it's realistic that January 1st is the date that it's going to happen, it might be later than that, but it certainly will not be before Jan. 1. Nothing is imminent."
Some academic departments may "have a desire to only let very specific people into the building. And they're also going to want to know when those people are out of the building," Eckles said. "So, in certain parts of the building, the ID card may let someone in but it also may let someone out. That way they know who's inside the building."
"The initial goal was not to just go out and buy a system to lock the residence halls. As buildings were being built on campus for other departments the people were going out on their own" to incorporate security systems. "And none of them were compatible. So the idea here is that this is a system that anybody who wants some kind of building security on campus will have to use."
Students will be issued new ID cards that will encompass all of the current card's features and also act as a key to the exterior doors of campus buildings.
The card will unlock doors by being placed in the proximity of a "reader" installed by the main door. In addition, a telephone will be placed in front of every main entrance.
The system will be computer operated and managed by Facilities Operations and Management and Safety and Security, Eckels said.
Over the last three years, locking exterior dorm doors has periodically been a controversial topic at Dartmouth.
In January of 1999, the Residential Security Committee, charged with developing safety recommendations, released its report suggesting that all exterior residence hall doors be locked.
The Office of Residential Life supported the measure, but most students did not. According to the report, 73 percent of students were against any locking of the dorms.
The door-locking issue was shelved after the release of the Student Life Initiative, which created a campus-wide uproar and left many College offices with other issues to worry about and more complaints to handle.
But the topic resurfaced this year when intruders peered into the showers of two female students in separate incidents, on Jan. 12 in Smith Hall and on Feb. 19 in Topliff Hall.
Three years of administrative indecision and student resistance culminated on Feb. 26 when Redman announced in a letter delivered to students' Hinman Boxes that plans were underway to lock campus dorm rooms.
The Student Assembly voted to endorse the recommendation, and was quickly criticized by students as not representing the views of the student body. Of the 20 students who were present at the meeting, 10 voted in favor of door locks, eight were opposed and two abstained.
Some students -- then and now -- said that locked doors would mean propped doors.
Eckels said that the purpose of the new system would be rendered useless if students prop doors open or allow strangers to enter.
"If you walk in and you choose to let the person walking behind you follow you through the door, we're not going to know," he said. "And as long as you're comfortable that it's a fellow student, it's probably not a big deal. But I think there will have to be a lot of education for students that says 'you need to turn around and see who it is that's following you through the door.'"
