The Whitworthian

Some doors are missing a necessary piece that allows them to operate in the case of a power outage, Director of Facilities Services Ed Kelly said.  

Kelly said some residence hall doors were not installed with a specific core that allows the door to switch over to battery power if electricity is lost. 

Assistant director of student housing Alan Jacob said if the locks were changed before these cords are installed, they would be taking a risk because students would have no way to access their dorm in a power outage.

Kelly said they chose to hold off on changing the locks until every door has this necessary cord. 

Kelly asks that students still, however, use their ID card to access their dorm.

"Although your dorm key will work in your door," Kelly said, "It will cause a forced entry alarm to go off."

Once the doors are fixed and the locks changed, students in all residence halls will no longer be able unlock their dorms with their room keys and must use the new identification cards to gain access, Kelly said.

Stewart door installed

The door and card access system of Stewart was installed Nov. 17 and is now up and running, Kelly said.

 

Door ajar alarms set

Door ajar alarms have also been enabled in residence halls and academic buildings that have the card access system.

The door ajar alarm will sound any time a door stays open for longer then 15 seconds without another proxy card being presented, Jacob said in an e-mail.

Jacob said if a card is presented at any time between zero and 15 seconds, the timer is reset to zero.

The 15-second alarm was set by ADT as the default setting, Jacob said.

Jacob said he and Kelly agreed the timer would be set to 10 seconds as a trial run. The timer will be increased if necessary.

When a door is opened from the outside of a building, the timer resets every time an ID card is swiped, Kelly said.

“Every student going through an access card controlled door should be presenting their ID card to the reader,” Kelly said in an e-mail interview. “So even if a long line of students goes through a door and they hold the door open during the process the alarm will not sound until 10 seconds after the last card is presented.”

When a door is opened from inside a building, the 10-second timer resents every time the request exit device installed on most exit doors senses a person approaching the door, Kelly said.

The door ajar alarms will remain activated 24/7 in residence halls, but will be deactivated in academic buildings during the day, Kelly said.

Kelly said there have been relatively few problems with the system so far.

Small problems that Kelly refers to as "learning curves" include alarms going off at unnecessary times due to improper setting of the alarm system.

All reported problems have been dealt with quickly, Kelly said.

Kelly said if students experience any problems with their ID cards, they should e-mail idcardoffice@whitworth.edu for assistance.

Contact Natalie Johnson at natalie.johnson@whitworthian.com.