Dartmouth Locks Up

IT ISN'T EASY TO CLOSE THE DOOR on an era. After nine months of planning, six months of installation and a $500,000 investment, Dartmouth's residence hall doors aren't just closed, they're locked. Since last September a students ID card doubles as a key to all the dorms on campus. The lock system offers "universal access," meaning that when held up to a scanner, a student's card opens any dorm, not just his or her own. (For the visiting or forgetful, each dorm also has an external telephone.) Locks had been proposed by the Office of Residential Life (ORL) in the past but were never installed because they were unpopular with students. Sadly, the Zan-top murders and incidents of non-student intruders peeping at women in dorm showers made it distressingly clear that Hanover wasn't immune to crime, so prevention has become a priority among administrators.

A majority of students understands that the College has to act in loco parentis but still thinks it's a little, well, loco. According to an FBI study released in October and oft cited among students, not only was New Hampshire the safest state in the nation in 2001—with a crime rate 45 percent lower than the national average —but Hanover was safer than most communities in the state. One student, Jordan Schmidt 'O3, finds that among upperclassmen comfortable with Hanover's safety, door locks seem more strange than comforting. For first-year students, she says, it's more a normal part of life.

Any change in campus life has been relatively minor. Students now pick up food deliveries at the door to their dorm, not the door to their room, and College- funded student publications such as the Jack-O-Lantern are now stocked in dorm lobbies rather than delivered to rooms. And while a few students are skittish that the College can track their movements because the ID number is automatically recorded whenever a card is used to open a door, administrators say they aren't interested in keeping tabs on students' social lives. Should an incident occur, however, the locks offer the benefit of providing investigators with the names of students who had recently entered the building. "Safety & Security is the only one who can access that information, and only with a formal request," says ORL dean Martin Redman, adding he has better things to do than scan 80,000 names each day.

The bottom line: Most students are neutral about the change, seeing the locks for what they are—a preventive measure.