Effective Oct. 1, anyone visiting the South City Campus will only be able to access the main building through three entrances, a change that security officials implemented rather swiftly.
Exterior doors that will remain open and unlocked during regular hours will be limited to the east lobby entrance, the south lobby entrance and the doors next to the multipurpose room. Before the change, the main building had 13 locations of access.
Shane Crabtree, associate vice president of public safety, cited community safety as the reason for the reduced number of entrances. Limiting entry points, he continued, will help campus police focus their security efforts.
“SLCC Public Safety has seen a rise in crime and community members using services that are not part of the SLCC mission,” Crabtree said. “This has caused some concern [among] our students and staff.”
Crabtree went on to acknowledge that the sudden change may cause confusion among students and employees, but he anticipates the community will quickly adapt once articulate signs appear on closed entrances. Crabtree did not specify when the signs would be placed.
Kaitlyn Meldrum, a psychology major, said that, while the matter of security is understandable, a smoother rollout and explanation for the limited entrances would have been appreciated. “I feel that this was a minor inconvenience that could have made students late to class or added stress to students who don’t know [about] the other entrances,” she said.
Meldrum added that an email “[could] have been sent out to the students a few days in advance” to avoid any potential confusion or inconvenience.
Crabtree did not indicate how long the South City campus will retain a limited number of entrances.
“We can modify and adjust if this solution is not as effective as anticipated,” Crabtree said. “This will be reviewed again before the spring term in January 2024.”
For those visiting SLCC in the evening, a parking lot safety escort service is available at all campuses, including South City, from 6–10 p.m. Anyone looking to use the service can do so by calling 801-957-3800.
It would be cool if we could use our OneCard to badge into the closed entrances, and change those entrances to be “OneCard only”. I believe that the badge readers at the doors are already set up for this purpose (for customers with controlled access facilities) and just have to have the policy applied to the OneCard so that student’s OneCards unlocks those doors. I think this would be an acceptable compromise of safety vs convenience.
I love this solution!
Thanks, I love having to haul 50-60 pounds worth of painting supplies all the way around the building instead of just going straight in and up the stairs to my class.
Except now there is an accessibility issue. The wheelchair ramp on the north end of campus is closed. And even if we park in the handicapped parking we are walking twice as far to get to classes sometimes. How is that ok?
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