Northwestern prepares students to enter the world. We grapple with complex issues in classes, gain work experience through school-sponsored internships and grow as adults thanks to the relative autonomy from authority figures that college affords. I find it ironic, then, that NU has so poorly prepared us to enter its own campus buildings.

If anything, we are overprepared. NU has at least three ways for students to gain access to most facilities. Our WildCARDs have barcodes that scan us into the library. These same student IDs can be upgraded to allow tap-in access to student organization offices in Norris. We also tap key fobs on scanners to enter our residence halls before we use keys to open our rooms’ locks.

As an economics major with a penchant for efficiency, I find this fragmented system unnecessarily complicated. As a student leader who helped ASG collect and act upon campus-wide survey data, I think that a more unified system would have tangible benefits for students. And as a member of this community, I believe that such a system would make me safer in emergency situations.

Many senseless hypotheticals terrified me as a freshman: What if I forget my shower flip-flops? What if I get a B on this paper? But few had such clear and tangible consequences as losing my room key. The price of this offense is $181, or, as I imagined it, 45 trips to Dunkin’ Donuts. Freshmen have enough on their minds already without having to remember the myriad ways to gain access to campus facilities. Making the switch to non-RFID keys would be a chance to give them one fewer headache and would likely cost NU and its students less in the long run, since such keys are almost certainly easier to duplicate.

Students should be able to use RFID-enabled WildCARDS for every facility entrance other than their bedrooms’ doors, which have deadbolts that require physical keys to operate. The long-run cost of this solution is low; the upfront cost of replacing the libraries’ barcode scanners and other redundant systems is the biggest financial barrier to implementing it. Additionally, students with student organization office access in Norris already tap their WildCARDS to enter these rooms; this solution is consistent with what many students already do and with what the University is able to provide.

On the administrative side, it must be unnecessarily time-consuming for the University to support three facility-entry systems. With only one system to worry about, administrators could dedicate their time to more pressing matters. And from a campus safety perspective, I believe that implementing this system is a no-brainer. If an active shooter situation or other emergency were to take place, University Police could lock down the entire campus in a single mouse click, or restrict access to holders of certain WildCARDs. I am sure contingency plans for such a scenario are already in place, but I imagine simplifying the campus door-locking system would make a campus lockdown easier to implement.

Moreover, a single system would streamline the process of recording facility usage patterns, making it easy to use the data (and administrators’ newfound free time) to improve the student experience. If facilities usage data were centralized in one location, University administration and student organizations could gain cross-facility insights. Here are a few possibilities that come to mind:

• Knowing how many students are in the library at different times in the day, or when they are likely to move from the library to Norris and back again, could inform where Norris targets Exam Relief programs.
• Tracking the number of students who enter dining halls at different points throughout the day could help make the case for different meal schedules.
• Knowing how many students use academic buildings late at night could help Facilities Management determine which buildings need light and heat throughout the night — helping us become a more sustainable campus.

A unified facility entrance system makes life simpler for students and administrators. It makes our community safer. And every tap of a student’s RFID-enabled WildCARD would essentially be a vote to use more resources on the facility she enters. This is an empowering thought, and one premised on a feasible and cost-effective solution.

Noah Kane is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].