Rebecca Rosner: Inconvenience for the sake of safety

It's pretty much a given that move-in will be hectic every year. There are long lines for elevators, boxes falling out of cars, student volunteers who threaten you with fees if you don't return your cart on time and freshmen rolling their eyes at every embarrassing thing their parents say. No matter how much you plan, moving in will be chaotic.

But this year, moving in was dangerous for one student. Two weeks ago, the DP reported an incident in which a female graduate student was assaulted in her dorm room by an employee of Penn Jersey Window Cleaning, the company that Penn hired to work on the renovations in Hamilton College House. The woman, who is also a College House System employee, was moving into her room before the standard move-in period when the assailant entered her room. He has been charged with indecent assault, burglary and criminal trespassing, among other charges.

After I read the article about this incident, I was outraged. I planned to write a column to express that I was appalled by the lack of effective security and demand that changes must be made immediately. I was going to say that this is only one example of incidents that have happened and will continue to happen unless we completely revamp our policies. I was going to make suggestions about how to keep students safer in their dorms. I decided to be ruthless in my attack on Penn's Division of Public Safety.

But it turns out that they're one step ahead of me. After doing a little research, I found out that the DPS is doing a better job than I expected at finding the flaws in security and creating a safer environment. But that being said, there are still areas in which the DPS could be more vigilant.

It's Penn policy that employees in the Facilities/Maintenance Department may enter your room, using a key, whether or not you're in your room. Granted, this is like a landlord system in which someone either comes when you request assistance (or, in most cases, weeks after you request it) or, in the case of last year's window inspections, they will notify you of their visit via a mass e-mail to the dorm.

That's good. But wait a minute -- just because someone lets you know he will be showing up at some point that week to inspect your window does not mean that his presence in your room will necessarily be a safe situation. Even if Penn does background checks on employees, incidents may still occur.

At Temple University, there is a policy that when someone from the maintenance staff enters the dorm to go to a student's room, a student worker at the front desk will accompany that person to the room. Yes, it creates a bit more work for the front desk staff, but the presence of a third party decreases the possibility of threat to students. Penn would be wise to follow Temple's lead.

It's true that most people do not have access to students' rooms. In the case of the Hamilton incident, the worker entered the woman's room because her door was unlocked as she was moving in. In fact, he wasn't even supposed to leave the first floor of the building.

But guess what? Once you're in a dorm, it's not that difficult to wander around. Clearly those workers that Penn contracts out need to be examined more closely since they have access to Penn buildings.

PennCards give access to dorms and therefore to lounges, laundry rooms and mail rooms, places where students are sometimes alone. And everyone at Penn -- students, faculty and staff -- has a PennCard.

Not only that, but people tend to lose their PennCards a lot. I've found several over the past few years, which I've either returned to the owner or left at the building's front desk. But suppose I had no affiliation with Penn and just happened to be passing through campus when I found a PennCard. Immediately, I have access to most buildings on campus, including dorms.

Card swipers, while usually perfectly pleasant in wishing everyone a nice day, unfortunately do not always check to see that the face on the PennCard matches that of the cardholder. The Division of Public Safety actually knows this. In the Quad and in Hamilton, you must now swipe your card and enter the last four digits of your Social Security number in order to pass through the turnstile.

I have heard nothing but complaints about this from students. The lines are so long, people don't know how to use the machines, it takes forever to get inside. But these longer lines are worth the wait. How about considering that you're much safer in your building because everyone actually matches up with his PennCard?

These new PennCard machines are on their way to every dorm, and Penn needs to install them this year. In the meantime, I implore the card swipers to take a second to glance at PennCards and ensure that they match the cardholders.

In our busy lives, it's a few extra seconds that are certainly well spent.

Rebecca Rosner is a senior English major from Lawrenceville, N.J.

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