<p>What are the room keys....real keys or like swipe cards?</p>
<p>for freshmen year, neither actually, though closer to swipe cards (unless they’ve changed stuff w/ the frosh dorms over the past 3 years). it’s essentially a swipe key with a unique pattern of holes in it. i think some kids use boxcutters+credit cards to make copies of their keys, if that gives you any better of an idea. as you move to upperclass housing it varies, in somewhere like nussbaum (i think it’s called 600 w 113th on the housing site) you use your id card as a key, but in watt you use a traditional metallic key.</p>
<p>Only John Jay uses the VING cards with holes in them. Carman and Furnald use your Columbia ID. Hartley and Wallach have conventional, metallic keys.</p>