*Correction appended. Please see below.
When College sophomore Julianne LeGierse lost her dorm key five times last year, it cost her several hundred dollars and days of waiting to get replacements from Facilities Services.
Julianne's then-roommate, College sophomore Alyssa Mendoza, pursued an alternative route: She visited the West Philadelphia Locksmith and bought a duplicate.
Until recently, trips like Mendoza's have been an attractive alternative for many students who frequently misplace their keys, since it can cost up to $130 to buy a University-issued key.
That, in addition to safety concerns, were the major reasons behind Penn's switch to secure most dorm rooms on campus with a new type of lock, ones that require keys that a locksmith cannot readily duplicate.
At the end of the year, "a good number of students would return keys that were duplicated," said Dana Matkevich, a Housing and Conference Services spokeswoman.
That prompted safety concerns, which meant that the University would have to change the locks each time a forged key was turned in, she said.
As a response, the University began replacing the locks in 2005 with a new patented key system produced by Best Access Systems, a major national security provider.
The keys contain special peaks that raise pins to specifically placed shear lines within the lock, according to the company's Web site. Alternate keys can jam the locks.
Now all College House except Gregory and the Quadrangle have the new locks installed.
"The patented key cannot be duplicated by local locksmiths," Matkevich said. "The benefit is in the level of safety and security we can provide to our students."
Still, rates of on-campus burglary and theft have increased since the University began installing the new locks.
This past summer, for example, there were 40 more reports of theft on campus than during the same time period in 2006 - an increase of 27 percent.
The reported increase in crime, though, may have been due to chance and doesn't necessarily mean the University is less safe, said Vice President of Public Safety Maureen Rush.
Philadelphia as a whole saw an increase in theft of about 4 percent between 2005 and 2006.
The lock replacements are part of a broader campaign to make the campus more safe.
The campaign has included adding optical turnstiles to the Penn card swipe machines and improved security measures at building perimeters, including cameras at every outside door and alarms that map directly to Public Safety.
For many students, those measures are reassuring.
But replacing a key is still a major hassle.
"I felt like an idiot when I lost my keys," said LeGierse, who felt even worse when she found two of the keys she thought she'd lost behind furniture in her room at the end of the year.
Correction: Due to a reporting error, this story incorrectly included a statistic and a quote from Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush that were both taken out of context. The story should have included a statistic indicating that burglaries have remained relatively low since the locks in college houses were changed.
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