Faculty are figuring out ways to give Columbia students easier access to classrooms.

A plan proposed by Martha Meegan, director of Campus Safety and Security, aims to put key card readers on certain doors throughout Columbia’s campus that will be compatible with Columbia’s student and faculty IDs, in an effort to help protect the campus.

“We are always scheming to make [the campus] a safer place,” Meegan said. “This is just another step in our growth process.”

The key card readers will soon be drafted into the request-for-proposal phase, so the company taking on the project hasn’t been selected yet.

“We may have a vendor by the end of the calendar year,” said Micki Leventhal, director of media relations at Columbia.

If and when a vendor is chosen, the key card reader proposal will go into the pilot program phase. In this phase, a small amount of multi-use rooms where the cost of contents is greater than that of regular rooms because of computers and other equipment will have the readers installed on their doors.

“The Director of Security [Martha Meegan] proposed this project as a means of providing a system that would record access into spaces utilized by a variety of users,” Leventhal said.

Multi-use rooms are also the rooms that must be unlocked by security guards who have to leave their post unguarded.

“The [key card readers] would also allow security personnel to remain at their stations in order to monitor the entrances of the buildings and to be available to receive emergency calls,” Leventhal said.

The readers will be set up to allow students access at certain times of the day with the swipe of a student ID card.

“Getting into classrooms if the teachers were not yet present is not the function of the key card readers,” Meegan said. “They are simply for accessing multi-use rooms.”

It will also record times the rooms are accessed, as well as the names of students who access them. If an altercation were to happen, campus security would be able to know who was in the room and when.

“I know a professor who has had to chase a thief down the street outside the Book and Paper Arts Center,” said Brad Freeman, studio coordinator for the Book and Paper Arts Center. “I think [the security enhancements] are a great idea.”

According to incident reports provided by the Office of Campus Safety and Security, out of the 379 incidents that were reported on campus from Sept. 2 to Oct. 2, 23 percent were access-related incidents, while less than 1 percent of incidents were due to theft.

Throughout the past year, the Office of Campus Safety and Security reported no robberies on campus, while DePaul University’s Public Safety Department reported five—in both their South Loop and Lincoln Park campuses.

Meegan said this plan is not due to recent break-ins, including a recent incident where a man found masturbating in a classroom at the 1104 Center, 1104 S. Wabash Ave.

“We are committed to providing a safe and secure environment for our students and faculty,” said Steven Kapelke, Provost and senior vice president of Columbia.

Meegan said the college’s security must learn to grow and change with the times.

“We are still researching and planning this out before we take the next step,” Meegan said. “But I promise that this operation does not sleep.”