Locked out in the dark: A tale of access restriction on campus

Imagine that a certain someone (me) walks up to the doors of Gottwald on a weekend. This person (me), being a bio major, expects to be able to get into an academic building after hours. He grabs the door handle, and — thud! — discovers he's locked out.

Access-frustration incidents like these have become notably more common this year and are due to get a heck of a lot worse if certain mass emails are to be believed. What started out as a reasonable set of policies to keep UR's students from being savagely raped and murdered by strangers has ballooned into a truly annoying matrix of ineffective rules. Most recently, we've been informed that our OneCards will no longer let us into a dorm we don't live in on days a football game is being held.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of using the swipe-in process as a means of preventing strangers from walking into our dorms. But, at a certain point we've got to realize that a determined assailant or clever vandal will not be stopped by virtue of their lack of OneCard access. If anything, it provides the professional criminal with the stimulating challenge of stealing a OneCard or attempting to blend in with the student population in order to infiltrate his target building. And in the case of academic buildings, thieves and vandals merely have to (gasp) walk into the building during class hours and wait. So while I'm staring disappointedly at the doors to Gottwald at midnight, all the professional criminals are probably hanging out on the upper floors pointing and laughing at my misfortune.

If the tickler or, God forbid, the ruffians who assaulted students last week wanted to kick down my apartment door and tickle/assault me to death, there is nothing stopping them. Sure, the campus police would arrive, but only in time to drape a sheet over my body. And thanks to the fact that university rules have disarmed us of all weapons or articles that could be used as such, there's a fair probability that even a skinny crackhead with a sharpened toothbrush could severely injure or kill someone before being apprehended.

As you can clearly see, access rules are not making us "safe" by any stretch of the imagination. The low probability that locking UR students out of campus buildings will deter crime combined with the high probability that those reading this have experienced being locked out of places they needed to be illustrates the pointlessness of selective access.

The ultimate tragedy is not the fact that students everywhere will be pulling their hair out trying to get around campus on game days, but rather that these rules do nothing to actively prevent the victimization of UR students. In fact, access restrictions could theoretically increase the chance of students becoming the victims of violent crime.

Access rules put vulnerable persons at greater risk, since it prevents them from seeking shelter in the nearest dorm if a strange man starts following them at night. If the Commons is closed (as it always is late at night) and their dorm is too far, it would seem all that's left is for the potential victim to find a panic box after they've been victimized, or hope that the Spider Shuttle drives by before their hypothetical pursuer has a chance to strike.

I appreciate that the powers that be care enough about our safety to restrict our access. If they truly cared about our safety and overall experience, they would do away with selective OneCard access and rely more heavily on police presence and unarmed security.