Lock And Roll
University working groups agree to update dorm locks
- By Ralph C. Jensen
- Jul 01, 2012
Chartered in 1746, Princeton University is the
fourth-oldest college in the United States
and well known for its scholarship and service
to all nations. The independent, coeducational,
nondenominational university assists
undergraduate and graduate students in
humanities, social sciences, natural sciences
and engineering.
As a world-renowned research university, Princeton reaches for the
highest levels of distinction in knowledge and understanding and also
is dedicated to undergraduate teachings. With 1,000 faculty members,
5,000 undergraduates and 2,500 graduate students, security at Princeton
is not taken lightly.
Perhaps what most people don’t know about the university is how
well it blends together its faculty, staff and students into pristine working
groups to make decisions that matter on campus.
Nearly 20 months ago, university officials wanted to replace the old
brass locks on the campus dormitory rooms. That meant more than
3,200 doors needed to be retrofitted with a new, state-of-the-art locking
system, but nothing was going to happen until a university working
group had explored all the details.
“We met with a university working group for about 14 months to do
our research and make a decision on the type of door lock that would
best benefit our students and the university,” said Paul Midura, Princeton’s
manager of life safety and security systems . “When we narrowed
our choices down to three candidates, we vetted the technology
through many departments on campus, including public safety, housing and dining services, among others.”
Because the doors involved in the retrofit
were interior doors of the dormitories, reliability
was a key issue. Once the working
groups made their selection, all research and
recommendations were given to a steering
committee, including several university vice
presidents and stakeholders on campus.
“This was a very intense project for us,”
said Mike Mahon, senior vice president of
commercial sales for Salto Systems. “The university
did its due diligence, and the 27 people
on the working group were keenly interested
in the strengths of the product and anticipated
real-world demonstrations of the product.”
Understandably, the university wanted to
make sure it would be well served by the
dealer network of whatever product the
working group selected, and that the product
was not only the right fit for today, but was
forward-thinking.
Princeton selected Salto’s lock software,
which is proprietary to its own platform and
the HID iClass 32k card to be used throughout
the campus. The university also selected
the standalone A9 660 wireless lockset, which,
if lost, can immediately change permissions
to entries and door access control. Work on
the campus is already underway.
“We are currently in the second phase of
this project with about 600 locks changed,”
said Dan Hogan, president of Hogan Security
Group in Pennington, N.J. “We anticipated
this project would be wireless-ready, but we
moved into the online phase because Princeton
University has its own wide area network.
With that established, we began the retrofit.”
One of the challenges that the Hogan Security
Group has encountered is that the dormitory
rooms are still occupied, which limits the window
of opportunity for changing out the locks.
“First of all, we are very conscious about
making a mess and protecting the private
property of the students’ rooms,” Hogan said.
“And, let’s face it, students live on a different
time schedule than most of us, but installing
these locks will enable the university and the
students to be and feel more secure in their
surroundings.”
The A9 660 wireless locking system is a
card credential that has memory in place,
and, according to Hogan, it is good for the
students because it enhances the security of
the dorm room and the overall dormitory.
The university had been using brass keys,
which, if lost, could fall into the wrong hands;
as Hogan said of the keys, “they are dumb
devices that offer no reliable means of letting
you know that someone has entered a room.”
The new system is anything but dumb.
While the iClass cards, or TIGER Cards as the
university has named them, and readers won’t
speak to each other, all the information stored
on the cards is kept in a main database that
can retrieve, change or review information in
the blink of an eye.
Without a key, the protection of students
and staff is taken to a higher level. Students
won’t have to keep their dorm room key on a
lanyard and worry about losing it. The cards
are dual authentication, meaning a student
merely presents the card then enters a PIN
for entrance.
“This way, student protection is heightened,”
said Keith A. Tuccillo, a system administrator
in the life safety and security systems
department at Princeton. “If needed, we know
when a card is used and where it is used. Our
in-house technicians have been trained on
this new system, which also makes better use
of their time by not having to chase down a
master key. It’s all right there in the university’s
database.”
The game changer for the students’ safety
and security is that with the credentialed ID
card, they likely won’t leave their dorm rooms
without their identification, which is their
passport to campus security.
This article originally appeared in the Security Products Magazine - July 2012 issue of Security Today.