Door knob replacement adds to campus safety

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Starting in mid-March, door handles and knobs began being replaced throughout campus, with the intention of adding more security to Delta College.

By the end of the process, every door handle and lock on campus will be new. 

Instead of the round knobs, the campus now has handles. 

The new handles allow for locking from the inside, which wasn’t the case on many of the old knobs.

That was dangerous for everyone on campus in case there was a active shooter. 

“I like it. It allows us to be able to lock the door from the inside by just pushing in a little button. Before we had to go outside and lock it by sticking our key in the lock and turning it counter clockwise. While this normally is not a big deal, if there ever was an active shooter on campus (and I hope there never is) I think being able to lock the doors without having to go outside could end up saving lives,” said Steve Graham, Communication Studies professor. 

The campus is improving one step at a time. 

“It’s good to have uniformity on our campus because we had Omni codes, fobs, and keys, and I would like to see there be one way to open most doors on campus,” said Tina Candelo-Mize, Associated Professor of Applied Science. 

However, there’s still some more work that has to be done. 

The project started coming together a year ago, said Gerardo Calderón Vice President of Operations.

The main focus was accessibility and safety according to Calderón. 

However, like any project there can be issues and Gerardo Calderón states “staff is in contact with instructors to quickly resolve these matters, on a case-by-case basis because there is a tremendous amount of doors.” 

One change: Everyone is only getting one key. In the past people had multiple keys to many doors on campus. 

Calderón said that’s because standardization is needed to manage keys to control who has access. The school is relying on the deans because in the past some keys haven’t been recovered but if they need more keys they are asked to talk to there deans because it’s about safety. 

Calderón said there was a misunderstanding on how many doors were on campus and that’s why they ran out of so many blank keys.

Candelo-Mize said she thinks some decisions were made to block off doors without consulting faculty. For example, a room in Shima that goes from a lab classroom to a stock room for faculty has been blocked off. 

No one knows if there is going to be a door there anymore. 

“There will be locked access and that’s going to cause problems for some faculty. I think there should’ve been more faculty insight on which rooms should be blocked off,” said Candelo-Mize. 

From what she understands there will be no access but she doesn’t know what exactly that means. 

Calderón said he wasn’t aware about locked access on campus. He said their intentions were not to block off anything, just to address safety.   

There have been some delays in different buildings on the first week back from Spring Break. Some professors didn’t have the right keys to their rooms which caused class cancellations. 

At least one students said the door handle changes are good. 

“It’s nice to see the campus making changes for our safety,” said student Candace Smith. 

Calderón’s response to the process is, “more preparation was needed and communication, we learned our lesson and we need to learn more about what’s in place and ask our instructors on their insight on the situation.”

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