Waiting in the cold outside a friend's residence hall may soon be a thing of the past since members of the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate are working with Tufts administrators to implement a universal JumboFob system.
Sophomore Senator Andrew Caplan has been working on the issue with the Office of Residential Life and Learning (ORLL) and the Office of Public Safety since last year. "In last year's Senate survey, 89 percent of students polled were in favor [of such a system]," he said.
But Caplan said the ORLL has been reluctant to implement the universal JumboFob due to an increased number of vandalism incidents this semester. The Senate is hoping for a one-semester trial period in the Fall 2005 semester, but plans "are not finalized yet," he said.
According to Director of the ORLL Yolanda King, low survey turnout in the annual Senate survey this year has also slowed the process and she has requested that another survey be conducted.
"I know that the Senate has conducted a survey with the student population, and less than half the students who lived on campus responded," King said. "As a result of this I have asked members of Senate to create another more extensive survey to be distributed to the students who reside on campus."
King said she would reconsider the issue once student opinion is in. "Once I have the results of this survey, I will continue to meet and explore the options with members of the Senate," King said.
Senators say the JumboFob will increase safety by eliminating "piggybacking" - when students hold open the door to their own building to let people behind them into the dorm. "Students would never have to ask anyone else to be let in," so it would be easier to tell who is a Tufts student, Caplan said.
Other specifics of the system remain to be worked out. Junior Senator Jos?© Vasquez said only students who live in residence halls would get the universal fobs because "they are the only ones who have fobs," excluding juniors and seniors living off-campus.
The system would likely resemble those at other schools, in which entry to dorms is universal only during certain daytime hours. At Dartmouth, students simply wave their school ID cards in front a scanner in a system similar to Tufts' fobs.
"We are relatively lax here," Dartmouth Resident Assistant Ali Amrhein said. "Any student can get into any dorm at any time of the day or night. It's interesting, because until about three years ago, the dorms weren't even locked at all."
Amrhein said Dartmouth's system has many benefits, including students' warmth and safety. "I think it is good to be able to get into all the dorms because it's freezing up here," she said. "Also, if there was ever someone creepy around, even a drunken frat boy that I wanted to escape, I'd be able to get into whatever dorm is closest."
Dartmouth is also located in Hanover, New Hampshire, a relatively remote rural location, unlike Tufts. "I don't know that it would work in a metropolitan area," Amrhein said. "We don't have to be worried about people from the community coming into the dorms, and there is also an incredibly low crime rate. Personally, if I were in a city, I might want there to be more security than we have here," she said.
According to Caplan, the technology required to make the fob system universal is already in place. "TUPD has universal fobs and every year there are a handful of flukes, in which a random student will have a universal fob," Caplan said.
"It only requires reprogramming. We already have the technology to do it," Caplan said. "It's just a matter of getting [the ORLL] and Public Safety to commit to it."
Tufts students seem to support such a system. "I like the idea, it's so easy to piggyback into dorms anyway," junior Kate Kriendler said. "I don't think it would really make anything more unsafe."
Sophomore Heather Roughton also supports the idea of universal fobs. "I think that it has worked for other schools, and I can't imagine that it would be a huge security concern. If someone outside of Tufts gets a hold of a fob, what does it matter if it accesses one dorm or eight?
"I think that as long as individuals have common sense when it comes to their own safety, like locking your door when you're not there or sleeping, then we'd be in fine shape with a universal system," Roughton said.
