The Verkada Pass locks are becoming a familiar addition to the UD residence halls. During winter break, the Office of Student Life conducted preliminary testing on the app’s functionality before students arrived back to gauge how well it would work once the semester started.
“We asked for it to be done over winter break, just since students wouldn’t be here, [so] we could make sure it was actually working before it [was] brought to the whole student body,” said Director of Residence Life Sarah Baker. “Since RA’s have to get back early, it was a good way to kind of [have] them as, almost, testers to make sure it was easy for students to use, and it was working well before, then it was emailed to all students, so our ease [was] kind of used as like a pilot group.”
Joe Teson, junior philosophy major and RA for Gregory Hall, commented on his reaction upon hearing the news about the new residence hall lock system due to the nature of the previous card readers. “I was very glad,” said Teson. “I was overall optimistic, because the previous system was very old. It was running on Windows seven, and the manufacturer did not make these card readers anymore, so they were very difficult to repair, and it was very much in need of a change.”
Baker explained the responses that OSL has received so far to the new system. “We’ve checked in mostly with RA’s and had RA’s check in with residents. It seems like residents are appreciating that it’s a more reliable system, especially with some of the doors that were pretty frequent issue[s].”
Teson mentioned, “I have heard of people having trouble with the app, anecdotally, but that’s only been a few people, and I recommended to them to go to OSL and get the card instead, because, typically, it’s an issue with specifically the app, and not with the lock itself. That’s why I think it is helpful to have the cards as an option.”
UDPD Chief Russell Greene explained how UDPD is continuing to uncover specific Verkada Pass functionalities that impact security measures.
“We’re discovering that there’s a lot of things that go with these locks, and we’re unraveling that because there’s a lot of capabilities that we haven’t touched yet,” said Greene. “So a couple of them [are], we could audit who goes in. We could audit who props the doors right, and that’s our primary security issue, and we can remotely open things. We can monitor the cameras that are associated with those.”
Greene explained how having monitoring access to the locks and cameras facilitates a better security response from UDPD or external police forces such as Irving PD if an incident should occur. He also mentioned how it provides better allocation of UDPD resources: “If I can identify a student by looking at a camera and open the door for you from [the UDPD office] that means my people are being more efficient elsewhere.”
Dr. Benjamin Gibbs, Assistant Vice President for Facilities and Operations, explained the logistical process of implementing the Verkada Pass locks.
“UD’s IT department did a pretty thorough investigation of who they thought we could use as a security provider,” said Gibbs. “So I’m not exactly sure what [or] how many firms they considered or what they looked at, but we should probably also distinguish between [the] different pieces of this. So there’s a different company that did the installation and helps us with the monitoring, and then there’s the Verkada, which is the hardware itself, the locks, which can kind of be two separate things. So we saw demonstrations of the Verkada program, and also how the Verkada program is tied into a larger security system. UDPD, student life, facilities, IT [and] different departments were involved in reviewing that data and then ultimately going with the system that we now kind of put in place.”
Gibbs explained some of the university’s future plans with the goal of campus safety in mind: “We’ve spent the last couple years, and I think we’ll continue into next year, spending [a] certain portion of university’s capital budget on swipe blocks and access control measures, because we want campus to be as secure as it can be,” said Gibbs.
Teson reminded students to reach out to OSL for specific feedback and to keep the novelty of the lock system in mind.
“It is important to note that it is still in a beta testing period, technically, and that OSL is very much open to hearing your issues or concerns about it, because it is still very new,” said Teson.