By Ryan Menard
Call it karma.
Just a week after sophomore computer science major Chris Sabanty criticized the lock system in his West Village apartment in a letter to The Northeastern News (“Housing card key system needs to be swiped,” Jan. 12) he again found himself out of luck and out of his apartment.
This marked the third problem Sabanty had with the new key card access system in the last month. The system was first implemented in West Village G and H last fall, said Marina Iannalfo, director of housing services, in order to make it easier for students to access their rooms.
This time he left his Husky Card at a friend’s place at Boston University, and found himself on the other side of his residence hall room door.
But Sabanty’s problems began a month ago, when a glitch in the lock kept it from recognizing that the door was closed and secure, rendering his card useless. He sought out help from Residential Life staff, but found his efforts useless.
“They don’t really have the people that can fix the problem around, and they aren’t always there,” he said. He said it took a few hours before a staff member could arrive to help him.
When residents become locked out of their rooms, the usual procedure to get back in involves visiting a staff office or paging a Resident Assistant who would sign out extra keys for the locked door.
And Sabanty once again had to wait for help when he found his replacement Husky Card was not encoded to work on his door.
The only people authorized to encode new Husky Cards are staff members at 4 Speare Place and Resident Directors (RD). It took him a few hours just to find his RA to unlock the door with a master key.
Sarah Sargent, a middler biology major, shared similar experiences. She had also lost her card and went through the process of finding an RD, but urges even more caution because the individual room doors lock when they shut.
“You try to keep it open, but the door can get locked while you’re in the shower,” she said. “Then it’s not like you can go back outside the apartment.”
Iannalfo said her department is looking into what, if any, improvements need to be made to the system, still in its infant stages.
“We have had concerns about access to staff during certain hours and the need to come to 4 Speare for service,” Iannalfo said. “We are currently in discussion with residence life staff to review future staffing patterns that will allow greater access moving forward.”
Iannalfo said another problem Housing Services is already aware of is some cards, made with a faulty encoder earlier this year, didn’t transition to the spring semester, but they have “taken steps to correct this for the future.”
Until then, the students would need to have their cards encoded manually.
Despite the problems with the Husky Card access, some have had no problems, and find the card access to be more convenient and a step to a more efficient system on campus.
“I like it better than using keys,” said middler computer science major Kevin Lundberg. “You have less to carry and you already need your card to get in the building, so it just makes sense.”
For now, it seems students will continue to swipe their way through school, and Housing Services will be there along the way to remedy the problems.
“With any new system conversion like this, we expect a minimal amount of problems to arise and we have addressed each of them as quickly as possible,” Iannalfo said. “There are always some short-term pains associated with working toward long-term gains.”
