"Developments" in Campus Security

 I got to spend some time several months ago on the campus of my now-alma mater, Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. I must say I did not feel very welcome. This is not a slight to Concordia in any specific way; I think it's how I'd feel on most academic campuses in the US (it is how I've experienced getting around when I visit my undergrad alma mater, Covenant College for a number of years now). Even though I'm a student of this organization, and was issued a visitor key card when I arrived, every door I encountered was locked, and I have yet to find one that my key card worked on. I don't think that experience is entirely due to my visitor status. Students I have interacted with seem unsure when and where their cards will work, and it seems from comments made by the graduation ceremony marshals that dealing with unreliably locked doors is just a continuous part of campus life.

This has gotten me thinking about the problem of campus security that we're trying to solve, and whether or not our new measures are solving that problem, or making it worse. So I'd like to explore a few scenarios, set on the same campus; one in, say, 2012, and one in 2022. All the locked doors on a contemporary campus are, I believe, supposed to make students safer from predatory intruders. So lets picture a scenario in about 2012, when most of the external doors on a campus are unlocked for most of the time—maybe they switch from unlocked to locked 11pm-7am and only the front door to each dorm can be opened by your dorm key during that window (like Covenant College did in the '90s). Most of the dorm rooms from sometime in the '80s on default to locked, and a lot of students use little blocks of wood to keep them from closing/locking because they find the convenience of not being constantly locked out worth the risk their door being unlocked poses. I think we're afraid that an intruder is going to get into a dorm and assault a student with the scenario we find between the 1980s and early 2010s. So let's play that out: the intruder gets through an exterior door during "unlocked hours" and poses as a normal student in common areas until after lights out, then either takes advantage of someone leaving their dorm room door propped open, or surprises a student getting up to use the bathroom. It seems that this scenario gets shut down pretty quickly by the student calling for help, or by someone recognizing that the intruder isn't in fact a student while they're trying to single out a victim. 

Now let's move the scenario up to the present day: all doors—dorm room, exterior, etc.—are fitted with card locks and without the card you can't access anything on campus—can't enter the library, the cafeteria, the administrative offices, the dorm buildings, etc. Let's assume that everything is working properly as it's designed with no hiccups (I'm being very generous here, because it appears that hiccups are the norm, not the exception): a student's key card will always give them access to their dormitory and their individual dorm room, will give them access to library, administrative offices and cafeteria during business hours, etc. So now, an intruder arrives on campus looking for a victim. Let's also assume they don't find any doors that students, faculty or staff have braced open because they find that constantly being locked out is annoying. Now a student moving across campus who gets targeted by this intruder will most likely find every door they run to to get away—library, offices, gym, other dorms—just as locked to them as to the intruder. Unless they happen to be near their own dorm, their campus has become a trap for them. I think we can see that in these two scenarios, being generous, at best the odds are fifty-fifty whether the student in 2022 is any safer than the student in 2012. 

But I think there's a bigger problem, and a greater safety threat posed in the 2022 scenario than the situation in 2012. The very technology we have decided is going to be the final solution is breaking down the community bonds that used to offer a certain level of security. Every locked door severs a small community bond that used to surround the student with relationships (not deep, meaningful, soul-mate relationships—just people you recognize on sight, generally trust as another member of your community, and would expect to respond if you called out to them). What is breaking down is in part the phenomenon Jane Jacobs called "eyes on the street"—the reality that where there are people who see things there is greater safety. We're trying to substitute technology for relationship when we were both designed and evolved to depend on relationship.