Six-figure System Still Offline

In fall 2008 UNM Housing spent $206,000 of student rent money to install a card-swiping system at Redondo Village, but it remains offline nearly three years later.

Brian Ward, Housing’s Physical Plant manager, said officials opted to turn off the system because it ran on different software than card-swipe systems on the rest of main campus. He said if and when the system is ever turned on again, Housing would have to spend more money to install the correct software.

He also said Housing was not able to secure proper technical support for the system.

“No one on the campus uses that system apparently, and within our department we don’t have the IT expertise to manage that particular piece of software,” he said. “We don’t want to necessarily go to the expense of making that system work when it’s not the campus standard.”

Housing Director Patrick Call said the system was tested during spring 2009, but that Housing had to turn it off in fall 2009 because it didn’t have the resources to keep it running.
“We did not have a system in place for turning cards off or adding them to the systems or any after-hours response of any kind on the operational end,” Call said in an email.

Ward said card-swiping systems on outer doors are safer for dorm residents than lock-and-key systems.

“If a student were to lose an exterior door key, you normally wouldn’t change out every student’s key and change out every lock on that building because it’s just too many,” he said. “If a student lost their apartment key within RVA, we would change all the keys there so that if someone found the keys and meant to do harm, they may be able to get into the building, but they wouldn’t be able to get into a student’s private space.”
Nicole Perez, a freshman in Redondo Village, said she lost her keys in October. She said Housing charged her $100 for replacement keys because a locksmith would have to go in and change the locks on her apartment door. She later found the old set of keys and discovered they still worked to open her door, meaning no locksmith ever came in to change the locks.

“They said the reason the fee was so much was because the locksmith was going to have to change all the locks,” she said. “I was cleaning my room about a month ago, and I found my old keys that I had lost, so I had two sets. I tried them out. They worked completely fine.”

Ward said Housing recently spent more money to install a card-swiping system at Hokona Hall. That system has also yet to be turned on.

“That’s going to be on the standard system,” he said. “So that’s the direction we’re going. So as money becomes available or as we do projects on campus … We include the door-card access in that project, and that’s how we’ll roll out to other buildings.”
Call said that the system in Redondo should be operational by fall 2011.

“We have now just been approved to hire the appropriate technical staff to successfully employ the access systems properly,” he said.

*Full disclosure: Nicole Perez is a freelance Daily Lobo culture reporter.