Key Me In

I never realized how boring the dazzling brilliance of the stars can get if you stared at them for long enough. Especially if you're staring at them while locked out of your dorm in the middle of the night because your ID card that typically lets you in after curfew has shown its bipolar side and has refused to let you inside. Guess you can learn something new no matter the circumstances. Now imagine this. I come home from a movie date, just three minutes past the curfew. I walk up to the door and slide my card through the slot. A blaring, red light flashes me. I slide the card again. Sometimes the card just doesn’t register the first time. Red light flashes me again. I slide it again, and again. But no. I am officially locked out in the snow, with no dorm mates to call. So I call the number on the door listed for emergencies. One freezing hour later the Helaman Halls Advisor finally drags himself out of his warm bed to let me into my own warm bed. This experience is not unique to me. Other girls have also experienced being locked out in the cold, rain and the dark. Which is why I want the outside lock to be changed from using our ID card to get in to a regular key, so that this occurrence doesn’t happen again.

To understand the locking system issue you need to understand how it is that we get into our dorm. At Helaman dorms there are two keys that are used, our ID card (key card) is used to open the outside of the dorm, and a regular key is used to unlock our actual dorm room. The issue that boggles my mind though is that there is still a key that can be lost, so why not issue a key for both entryways to make an easier process? If the dorm residents can keep track of one key, then they can keep track of two. The change from card entry to key entry is easy as well. The entrances do not even need to be recalibrated for the use of keys. All doors already have key holes that can be used.

Now that how the locking system at Helaman Halls works is understood, a counterargument can be brought up. One argument against switching the lock system could be that we can just call someone from our dorm to let us in. Let me ask you then, who wants to be disturbed at odd hours of the night to let someone in? Wouldn’t like that? Thought so. We don’t either. So it would be so much easier, nicer and warmer if we had a dependable key that would always let the dorm residents in.

Many people say that by freshman are just irresponsible, so this issue about the keys is stupid to talk about because their irresponsibility can’t be fixed. Ask yourself this, how many times have you misplaced your keys? I know of several people, including my Writing and Rhetoric 150 teacher, that say they sometimes lock their keys in their car or leave their keys in the house. It’s human nature to forget things. Helaman residents are not exempt from this law. They too lose their keys, but generally they are simply locked in the room just as anybody else can accidentally lock their keys in the car. According to a Helaman Room Advisor, of all the lock outs she has helped out with only about 5% of the students had actually lost their keys, the rest had simply locked their keys in their room. There are 42 girls on our floor, which means that only about two girls actually lose their keys. To replace two lost keys is about $40. What does that have to do with changing the key card system back to metal keys? Less lost keys equals less extra cost. So BYU’s stance that using the key card is cheaper loses its validity when relatively few keys are being lost.

Another reason to switch to regular old keys is because being locked out is stressful. Every time I use my ID card now I tremble in fear that it won’t work, and I’ll have to once again call someone else out into the cold with me to let me in. Now as most people know stress is not very good for the body if it’s prolonged, such as constantly worrying about being locked out in the cold again. A student’s life is a constant string of mounting stress because of homework and tests, so why add on to the mountain when it could easily be resolved? Just switch out the key card system for a simple key and lock.

Security. That is the one distinct advantage that a digital key card locking system has over the key. Between the two systems the key card is much harder to break into; however it is not impossible. An article in the magazine WIRED included a study done by wealthy software entrepreneur, Van Bokkelen. Bokkelen wanted to know how if card based locking systems could be hacked into. The “felon” only needed a laptop and cloning device that copies the signals or codes on the card. A copper wire touches the card and all the information on the card is copied into the device and downloaded into the laptop. It took all of 2 minutes to complete the process. Now all this study does for my argument is to prove that card based locking systems are not invincible. They can still be broken through, it’s just harder to bust through compared to a key based system.

Brigham Young University was founded in 1875, but this technology was not used in the outside of military use until about a decade after WWII. Why did BYU change from normal key lock systems to the key card? The answer comes down to cost, ease of changing the lock code and security. To replace the ID card if it is lost would only cost ten dollars, because the lock doesn’t need to be changed. However, the installation of the key pad for the ID card is incredibly expensive. For one system it costs $550. That’s just for one key pad. At each dorm there are four key pads, meaning that $2200 was spent to install the key card system per dorm. There are eight halls total at Helaman. So BYU spent about $17,600 to install the systems. While the replacement fee for a metal key can range from $15-40 to replace the key and change the lock. Over all the dorms generally about 5% of the keys are lost. 2048 people are in Helaman Halls. The cost for all those replacement keys would only cost $2048 at twenty dollars per key replacement. So you tell me, which one do you think will be cheaper in the long run?

Stress and being stuck outside in weather situations that can be detrimental to a student’s health are the main reasons why the lock system should be changed at the Helaman Halls. With a simple change these issues can easily be resolved to the improvement of the student’s life.