One Card at a Time

Aug 1, 2005 12:00 PM, by Corrina Stellitano

For some, college is just a rest stop on the road to responsibility. Knowing this, proactive college administrators are selecting security systems that reduce both the number of keys students need to keep up with and the expense of replacing credentials.

When college administrator Jerry Ferguson moved to San Antonio's Trinity University after almost three decades at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, his first project was to implement such a system. Ferguson and his two-person staff, along with the 27-member campus police department, are responsible for the safety of the college's 2,600 students, 13 residence halls and seven academic buildings. Before Ferguson arrived as Tiger Card Office director, Trinity University administrators had already decided to move from mechanical lock-and-key systems to proximity cards that allow students access to their discretionary spending accounts — but the transition was not simple.

Trinity leadership had selected the Odyssey PCS one-card system by Ithaca, NY. -based CBORD Group. The system included Micros 3700 terminals and Lyric card readers in all dining areas and two Datacard IDWorks imaging systems. Act 1 readers would be used to confirm students' enrollment when granting personal check cashing privileges in the University Student Accounts Office. However, the CBORD system, with its patron database, would not integrate with the access control system. Ferguson arrived to find new systems in place, but operating separately.

“We were in big trouble. I inherited an access system that was absolutely dead in the water, and we were trying to make it work manually. If we had a larger number of students, it would have been gross chaos,” Ferguson says. “If a student were to lose their card, the card would be replaced and then someone would have to remember to call the access system administrators to change the card number. Some card changes got made, some did not. We needed to be able to know with certainty if we made a change with one system it would be made in the other.”

Larger goals also dictated the need for a solution: “We wanted to provide access control for residence halls and for academic halls,” Ferguson says.

Ferguson, on behalf of Trinity University Team, contacted Stanley Security Solutions, parent company of Best Access Systems. Fortunately, Best was entering into a strategic partnership with CBORD, and within weeks, Trinity University became one of the first clients of the partnership.

“More and more small and moderate-sized colleges and universities are replacing their old security systems with more technologically advanced systems,” says Justin Boswell, president of Stanley Security Solutions.

Trinity became one of Best's beta sites. While Best and CBORD rewrote the interface — a process that would stretch from January to July — the Best engineers provided Trinity with a work-around to allow staff to populate the database. The system went online just in time for fall classes.

Making a home: Secure but welcoming

Being a beta site helped build relationships not always possible with a vendor, Ferguson says. These relationships helped lead Ferguson to Best when he decided to upgrade the residence hall access control system.

“We wanted all of our campus doors protected electronically to be able to track who comes and goes,” Ferguson says. “Security is a huge issue for incoming parents. ‘How do you control the buildings?’ and ‘Do you restrict access during particular hours?’ are the two most frequently asked questions from parents.”

Ferguson and the Trinity team selected Best's B.A.S.I.S. system. Online locks guard exterior doors to residence halls and academic buildings. Both online applications and the Basis V series offline locks are used for interior building access to labs and electronic classrooms. Trinity installed the Basis G series to control access to 160 student rooms in the campus' largest residence hall.

“We felt that we could offset the cost of the initial installation in exchange for not having to recore locks and replace keys,” Ferguson says. “We control the outside of the building with our online system, then the students use their cards to open their room doors.”

Progress has been swift; the number of doors protected electronically jumped from 40 to 185 in one year.

The B.A.S.I.S. software allows for batch updating of data and works with many existing university databases, eliminating the painstaking process of re-entering student data. Designed for the residence hall application, the G software addresses daily difficulties such as lost cards or room changes.

Planning for lost cards is important, Ferguson says — do not assume prox cards are any harder than keys to lose. “Our students lose a lot of cards,” he says. “Some of our students are on their 13th or 14th card.” Excuses for the lost cards range from the hungry dog to the boyfriend who took the card to Iraq. Some students punch a hole to attach the card to their keychain, but alas, the hole is in the wrong place. Others use theirs to scrape windshields in a rare Texas frost.

But replacing cards is still cheaper than replacing keys, Ferguson says, and offers other economic benefits as well.

Trinity students use their Tiger cards to enter their rooms and certain classrooms, and to spend money in the campus bookstore, the on-campus FedEx Kinko's copy shop, laundry rooms, vending machines, dining halls, neighborhood restaurants and even the campus pub.

“The way to make them want to use it is to provide a lot of services,” Ferguson says. “Our chore is to make this system pay for itself. We have to provide a lot of uses to justify the technology.” Students have expressed their support with words — they complain about the few doors still armed with keys — and with their wallets; discretionary spending account deposits have jumped from $250,000 to $2 million in the last year.

When choosing locks, the objectives for the residence halls and the academic buildings differed, Ferguson says. “Most of our students are residents on campus, so this is home,” he says. “We don't want to make the experience more institutional than it needs to be.”

“But in the academic buildings, we want our security presence to be pleasant, but highly visible,” Ferguson adds. “The academic buildings are full of expensive equipment, and we have a need for very good records of who enters and exits.” As part of this objective, Ferguson's team has begun to tie in expensive electronic equipment like media projectors into the campus security system. When one is disconnected without authorization (with the help of bolt cutters, for example) an alarm is triggered.

Ferguson and his team are not pausing for summer vacation. More than 30 CCTV digital cameras will be in place before the end of the year. In addition, more than 4,000 visitors attend an intensive summer conference program at Trinity each year, and each must be issued a temporary Tiger card.

They constantly strive to improve other aspects of the system, as well. This month, the hot topic is propped doors and improperly working door latches. Alarm sounds are customized to draw the attention of system administrators. Next month? Stay tuned, Ferguson says. “We want to make the student experience the best it can be.”

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