<p>"Shortly after 7 p.m. on Monday, May 4, 2009, a female Swarthmore College
student returned to her room in Wharton Hall. When she entered the
room, a man emerged from her closet brandishing a handgun. The man fled
the room without harming the student in any way. Police from Swarthmore
Borough are currently on campus with assistance from neighboring police
departments. They have not yet observed anyone fitting the suspect's
description.</p>
<p>"At this time, according to the victim, the suspect appears to be a black
male in his early thirties, height approximately 5 feet 9 inches, medium
to stocky build, medium to dark complexion, clean-shaven and with
short-cropped hair. Suspect was wearing a light gray hoodie, gray sweat
pants and a cream-colored scull cap.</p>
<p>The campus and surrounding areas have been thoroughly searched by Public
Safety and Swarthmore Borough Police. The suspect has not been found.</p>
<p>We have new information that the suspect may have been in Willets Hall
prior to the incident reported."</p>
<p>The incident is definitely disturbing, but it’s important to note that there was almost immediate notification of students, campus wide, via text and email. (I believe dchow08 is quoting from at least two different emails here.)</p>
<p>The Gazette reports almost a 1-hour delay. </p>
<p>This again raises the disturbing issue of campus safety at Swat, or the lack thereof. What tragedy will it take for the board of governors to finally cough up the approximate 1 million dollars to install a campus-wide card reader system? Having just returned from yet another college-hunting trip for another child, I remain concerned that Swat just doesn’t care about student safety. Most of the cohort (and “lesser” schools) have adopted the card-pass system.</p>
<p>The Gazette also includes a quote with the much closer to accurate estimation, “a half-hour after the event,” regarding when texts were received. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, it seems that none of the students in Willets who later realized they’d seen the intruder reported the incidents in their dorm until the Wharton incident had already been reported and was under investigation. </p>
<p>The card-pass system’s time probably is here - but to assert that
<p>I have had multiple conversations with the past dean of students concerning student safety. All I got was stonewalling and obfuscation. If Swat truly cares about student safety, show me the money…</p>
<p>How do you know a half-hour is “much closer to the accurate estimation”? Do you have additional data to add to this discussion? Or is this another opinion?</p>
<p>Honestly, the card system doesn’t always feel safer to me - students here have always had mixed feelings about it. As of now, people do prop the doors, but any student can also make sure that the doors get closed behind them - that’s where the community effort comes in. If a universal key got lost, it could be used to open <em>any</em> dorm at any time, unlike one lost key to some unknown dorm…which honestly seems like more of a risk to me, since often people wait some time to report lost keys/IDs. Swat students have never really overwhelmingly wanted card keys - not to say that won’t change - but it seems like there must be other options that don’t involve universal card keys.</p>
<p>Nothing that has happened yet that we as students here can’t take action to prevent (like locking our doors and walking in groups at night) - but since we’re a safe, trusting campus, people forget that these incidents can and do happen. I really would not characterize Swat’s nature as uncaring about student safety - this has thrown us all for a loop.</p>
<p>For clarification purposes, most colleges (and other institutions where physical security is an important issue) do not have a “universal” card that is issued to most users. The “universal” cards are typically restricted to security personnel. Students are typically issued cards that allows them access to their own dorms 24/7. Students access to other dorms is usually restricted at a certain time in the evening (I have encountered 10 pm, midnight, and 1 am at various colleges). These systems are highly customizable. Although I’m not a salesman for these systems, I do use one on a regular basis while at work to access various restricted areas.</p>
<p>It is a big bad world out there. The Swat bubble is permeable. Be careful.</p>
<p>By the way, if you loose most RF cards the security folks can selectively deactivate your card. Then all you have to do is beg for a replacement usually associated with a tithing ;)</p>
<p>there’s very little security at Swarthmore, the campus is a fairly
decent size with tons of areas to hide and run to. There is also
a busy state highway directly by campus and a crime ridden, low
income city 2 miles down the road. The boro itself is very safe, but
often when the economic situation declines, the wealthy area becomes
an easy target. Neither Swat boro nor the college have the coverage
to stop a determined criminal or random crime. There was an
on stick-up just a couple of weeks ago. The college doesn’t pay real
well and uses a lot of part timers so protection is a little unreliable.
They need to upgrade and put more officers out there, and get them
out of the suv’s. That said, crime is still relatively rare and not really
something to worry about. The location of the new dorms, right along
the highway I don’t think was a good idea.</p>
<p>But I don’t see how cards that let you into your own dorm solve the issue - isn’t that the same as normal dorm keys? And if they let you into other buildings, that’s precisely the problem: none of these incidents happened after midnight. Plus I can’t imagine Swatties being interested in a 10PM curfew, since that would just lead to lost keys that can open all dorms AND people propping doors after the keys stopped working. While I’m sure that reported-lost cards can be deactivated, people still have to <em>report</em> missing cards for them to be deactivated. If someone doesn’t realize their key is gone, or thinks it’s just lost in their room someplace and therefore don’t report it, dorms could be vulnerable for days.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that this isn’t a system that could have promise for Swat, but it’s definitely not without it’s flaws, and students really have never been behind it - it’s silly to argue about, anyway. If it were to be in place, it would take years for the campus culture about doors to change regardless. For the short-term, what’s important is that students actually take steps to keep themselves safe and not take our safety for granted. Which I think we’re trying to do. :]</p>
<p>The advantage attributed to the electronic keycards is that if someone reports a keycard missing, it can quickly and easily be deactivated so that it no longer opens any doors. It is impractical to manually re-key every exterior dorm door when someone loses a physical key.</p>
<p>While electronic keycards are common at many other schools, I’m not sure they provide a meaningful increase in security. A bigger increase in security could be realized if students kept the doors to their rooms locked at all times, never propped exterior doors open, and never let anyone in the dorm who didn’t have a key or wasn’t accompanied by a student who lived in the dorm. If those practices don’t change, it’s not clear to me how much benefit the electronic keycards would provide. I don’t know, however, how easy it would be to make those changes to community norms and practices.</p>
<p>As a parent of a Swat student who will begin this fall, I am more than a bit concerned about this incident and the one that happened in April. I would like to hear from current students about how the school is dealing with this situation. I have also heard that Swat does not use a blue-light system and that lighting on campus is inadequate. Additionally, many students prop the outer doors to the dorms open, which is asking for trouble IMO. I also found this incident reported:</p>
<p>If you go through the Gazette files, you can find a lot of current student point-counterpoint on the subject of the blue light system and whether the campus is adequately lighted. (Look at the threads about the candidates for StuCo.)</p>
<p>From the perspective of an alum/current parent/about to be current parent x 2, the thorniest aspect of the security problem is and always has been this:
, as current students and other alumni and parents have already noted in this thread and elsewhere. </p>
<p>(Please note that I’m not saying crime is the students’ fault; it most certainly isn’t. What I’m saying is, this is the hardest aspect of the overall problem to address.)</p>
<p>But if there is a keycard system, doesn’t it beep or sound an alarm of some sort if a door is left open for too long? That would probably stop or at least limit the door propping.</p>
<p>I don’t think the key card system would change anything, unless the keys were to give 24/7 access to all relevant buildings. If they didn’t and I were a student, I know I’d still be propping doors. Also, regarding this:
I’m pretty sure it would take an engineering student all of 10 minutes to rig a solution to this.</p>
<p>I think you guys are worrying too much but, seeing as how a lot of you are overprotective parents, this isn’t surprising. This stuff happens everywhere in the world, all the time. It has been happening at Swarthmore for decades and will continue to do so. At least at Swarthmore it is kind of rare and doesn’t generally involve anyone getting shot or stabbed. Asking Swarthmore students to stop propping doors because it’s not 100% safe is like asking fraternity brothers to stop drinking to excess. It’s just not going to happen, and hoping it does is wishful thinking. A better public safety force might be a good step toward improving campus security overall, but I seriously doubt Swarthmore is interested in throwing any money in that direction right now.</p>
<p>I feel it is my duty to interject here with this news from Wesleyan: a student employee at the campus bookstore was shot just hours ago. Rumors are flying, but, the student-run blog has been pretty trust-worthy during past emergencies. As far as I can tell, the school is still in lock-down:</p>
<p>Very unfortunate about the Wesleyan student. Very difficult to prevent this type of violence.</p>
<p>Concerning the key-card issue vis-a-vis propping doors: I know Swatties are an intelligent lot, but students at other perhaps equally high-brow colleges haven’t been able to rig the doors so they don’t alarm if they are kept open for typically more than 1 minute. Although I think the card system is worth a try, I’m frankly a little tired of the laissez faire attitude at Swat. I will just be happy and relieved when my child safely graduates. Interesting that safety at Swat generates a lot more consternation on our part than the other colleges we have first-hand knowledge of-maybe its seeing the huge endowment that we have contributed to as full freight paying parents not being used to address fundamental issues such as safety, upkeep of buildings, …</p>