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The Rice Thresher
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by Liora Danan thresher editorial staff
The Campus Police and Food and Housing made the decision jointly in response to last year's bathroom intrusions. Campus Police Chief Bill Taylor said that locks with card readers provided a record of which cards had been used, which allowed police to get investigative leads from the logs. However, Taylor said card readers had the disadvantage of allowing the doors to be opened by cards not in the possession of their owners. Old or lost cards could sometimes open bathroom doors. Students would also prop open bathroom doors because of the inconvenience of having to carry the cards, according to Taylor. Taylor said the personal PINs solve this problem and still provide the benefits of using ID cards. "With the individual pin numbers, we then do have an audit trail again," Taylor said. "We can go and check with the person whose number was used." New PINs will be assigned to students each semester for additional safety, according to F&H business manager Frank Rodriguez. Baker junior Emily Steinbis said that she thinks the PINs are beneficial. "I think people on my hall like it because they don't have to worry about carrying their card around or locking it in the bathroom," Steinbis said. "I don't think there're any negatives to it." Brown College junior Jacob Rhodes, however, said that he feels inconvenienced by the new codes. "My girlfriend's off-campus and can't even get in the bathroom, and I can't give her my code because it only works on the guys' bathrooms," Rhodes said. "For us to have these things is just a big pain in the derriere." To solve the problem of students needing to use the restrooms at colleges other than their own, F&H will provide a party pin which will be created for one night only for any registered party with 48 hours advance notice, Rodriguez said. To obtain a party pin, students should contact their college's student maintenance representative. Rodriguez said that off-campus students can request PINs for their colleges, and students can also ask for PINs for colleges other than their own, either through the college coordinators or by speaking directly to Rodriguez. "We're going to work with the student population and try not to inconvenience anybody, but our biggest thing is to make sure we don't have any incidences like last year," he said. Taylor said he was originally concerned about the possibility of trespassers randomly typing in correct codes, but he said that he thinks the likelihood is low. "They need to know how many numbers it takes, and they need to know one of the 300 possibilities out of the vast number of possibilities." Last fall, a man was reported in the women's bathroom three times at Will Rice College, and a man trespassed in women's bathrooms at Baker and Hanszen Colleges during the spring semester.
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