Building Access During Campus Emergencies

This story originally appeared in IT Matters, the IT newsletter. 

The University’s ability to prepare for and mitigate an emergency always remains a priority. In the event of an emergency, University Police will activate the Emergency Notification System once it has been confirmed that there is any significant emergency or dangerous situation. Then we think, what next?

It was in October 2015 when a shooting occurred at Umpqua Community College. The suspect went from one building to the next, as we watched those events unfold live on CNN. The reporter asked, how the suspect could continue to enter buildings when surely Umpqua was in lockdown. Probably at a secondary school where there is typically a single building that would be easy. But we recognized on an open college campus, that’s not always so easily done, especially with so many buildings. Back then, facilities manually unlocked and locked all the doors. And in an emergency could we really expect staff to start manually locking doors, and how long might that take? Consequently, we recognized the importance of implementing some measures to prevent what happened at Umpqua.

Therefore, in 2017, University Police, Facilities and IT embarked on a project to be able to remotely control all doors through the Blackboard Transact system. Now with the click of a mouse, most exterior doors can be put into “Royal Card Access Only” or in an extreme situation, a total lockdown. Educating the University Community on how these systems work during an emergency is an ongoing effort.

Continue reading this story here.