Dorm room locks enhance security at Mississippi State

Feb 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Karen Baxter

Students lucky enough to live in the new 400-bed Ruby Hall on Mississippi State University's (MSU) campus in Starkville, Miss., enjoy the finest housing in the institution's 144-year history.

The state-of-the-art residence hall features large, fully furnished single or double rooms with conveniences including private bathrooms, wireless Internet coverage, Ethernet access, individual room temperature control, free “super basic” cable television, refrigerators and microwave ovens.

But in addition to making life easier for students, university administrators also wanted to make sure they would be safe. Therefore, they have installed Wyreless Integrated Reader Locks from Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies on each of the hall's 223 interior doors leading into students' rooms.

MSU is located in the eastern part of north-central Mississippi, 125 miles northeast of Jackson and 23 miles west of Columbus. It is a comprehensive, doctoral-degree-granting university with more than 16,000 students. As a Land-Grant institution, MSU is dedicated to learning, research and service with an emphasis on agriculture, forestry and the sciences. Students can choose from more than 80 majors and programs in 11 schools and colleges. The university's grounds cover nearly 4,200 acres, including farms, pastures and woodlands.

In total, the university has 13 existing residence halls housing approximately 3,500 students. Ruby Hall, completed in 2005 and named for a former university vice president, is the first residence hall to be built on campus in 36 years, says Ann Bailey, Ph.D., director of housing and residence life. Three other halls are currently under construction. Some of the other buildings date back to the 1920s, with others constructed in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘80s.

“Students needed change,” Bailey says. In particular, she says, they wanted more space, privacy and convenience. Building new facilities proved to be more cost-effective than trying to reconfigure and upgrade existing spaces.

Ruby Hall is a three-story, 160,000-square-foot, co-residential building constructed in a square formation around a central courtyard. It houses 400 freshmen on the northeast side of campus, convenient to athletic events, the student union, cafeteria, library and most academic buildings.

Its construction afforded an opportunity to upgrade security measures in the residences. In terms of existing measures, the campus is served by a 27-member University Police force whose officers undergo the same rigorous training as municipal and county law officers. They must complete at least 400 hours of training at a regional police academy to become certified as a police officer in the state of Mississippi and then participate in a 12-week field-training program in which they learn how to apply training to a university environment.

Mississippi State University Police Department (MSUPD) officers, who are on duty 24 hours a day and have three substations on campus, are authorized to carry firearms to enforce laws and to make arrests on university property and adjacent roadways. The department works closely with other local law enforcement agencies, as well as MSU's dean of students and the housing department to enforce the student code of conduct and ensure the safety of the university community and surrounding area.

In addition to protection provided by MSUPD, all of the residence halls have fire extinguishers and a fire security system, controlled card-reader access at the buildings' entrances and digital surveillance systems at all perimeter doors and common areas; however, the older residences still use standard lock-and-key access for interior doors. “Our housing department wanted to get out of the business of reissuing keys,” says Richard Tollison, MSU's manager of data services. “If you give out a master key to that building and that key is lost, you have to re-key everything.”

After finding it would be too expensive to wire each and every door for card reader access, Tollison contacted IR Security Technologies (formerly Recognition Source) about three years ago at the recommendation of Jerry Acy of Software Data Systems, Jackson, Miss. Acy had developed the school's card access system to include POS, vending and copy machines.

Because the Wyreless door locks do not need to be hardwired, the cost is considerably less than a standard card access reader, and installation is much quicker — about 60 to 90 minutes per door compared to one to two days for a wired system.

The Wyreless locks work by communicating via radio frequency with a panel interface module, which is hardwired to the university's PC network. Powered by eight AA batteries, the locks continue to operate in a disaster because their cache memory can store IDs for seven days.

Additionally, the system is online and works in real-time, making it easier to retrieve data.

“If we get a call from our campus police department asking us if we can give them information on who went into a certain door in a dormitory, we have that at our fingertips,” Tollison says. “It's not a matter of having to go out to that door and download some transactions from a standalone reader. Each of these transactions comes back to a central system.”

Students use their university ID card, programmed by Software Data Systems, for access. The fact that the Wyreless system could be customized to integrate with the existing system is a huge plus, Tollison says.

To increase security, housing staff does not carry master keys to the student rooms. Instead, electronic key cabinets control access to the master keys. Through card reader access control, housing officials are able to control who has access to the master keys as well as record time/date of their use. Surveillance cameras monitor the cabinets.

MSU also plans to use the Wyreless locks in the three new residence halls currently under construction.

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Software Data Systems	46

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