Swarthmore College has been an Allegion client for eight years, and they have been working toward a goal of the complete elimination of brass keys on campus.

The campus has 1,800 total doors and to date all exterior doors are equipped with electronic access control as well as 75% of the interior residence hall doors.

Though the Allegion interior locks have manual key override, very few people – only public safety, lock shop, and card office – have access.

“Our goal is to get to 100%,” says Anthony Condo, Director of Campus Services at Swarthmore College. “It'll probably take another two summers or so, but that is where we aim to be.”

He is starting to recognize that some students have never carried a key in their life, whether getting into vehicles, homes, hotels, or offices.

“I know my own kids at home, we have the little touch pad lock on our house,” he explains. “I don't even know if they even know how to put a key in the lock.”

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TRANSCRIPT:

I’m Jeff Koziol with Allegion. I'm here with Anthony, Anthony, a little intro about yourself and your institution.

Sure, I'm Anthony Condo, the Director of Campus Services at Swarthmore College.

How long have you been an Allegion client?

This summer will be eight years. We began our card office program in the summer of 2016.

So what's, what does your infrastructure look like in terms of the head end access system? What do you have for hardware, your standards, door counts, things of that nature?

So we are a CBORD CS Gold school.

We have one-card locks on the exterior doors on all our buildings on campus, and we're slowly working towards getting all of our student rooms done. We also have some offices and labs done too.

In regards to total doors on campus, I think we're at about 1,800.

With regard to student doors, by the end of this summer, we'll have about 75% of those done also.

Goal is to get to 100?

Goal is to get to 100. It'll probably take another two summers or so, but that is where we aim to be.

Many students just don't have keys. I know my own kids at home, we have the little touch pad lock on our house. I don't even know if they even know how to put a key in the lock.

Are you still handing out some brass keys to students?

So we have to hand them out, obviously, to the ones that don't have card access on the room. But, you know, one of the reasons why we wanted to put card access on the student rooms was so we wouldn't have to hand out keys anymore.

So over the years, we've seen that number of keys being handed out go down and down and down.

You know, it's one less thing that the student has to carry around with them. It's one less thing that they're going to lose. It just makes things easier for everybody.

Have you found that some students may not have even ever carried a key in their life, whether getting in and out of vehicles, their own homes, what?

I think now definitely we're starting to see that.

Maybe not so much eight years ago when we started, but I mean, now definitely they just don't have keys. I know my own kids at home, we have the little touch pad lock on our house.

I don't even know if they even know how to put a key in the lock.

So what do you do for your camps and conferences and what do you do for access for those students that are coming to Swarthmore for a week or a couple of days?

We don't have formal classes during the summer, but we do have about 300 or so students stay. They're doing work on campus or research and then we do host camps also.

So for the rooms that still have a brass key, there's a little bit of work involved or our lock shop has to go around and change out the core for all those locks.

But again, that number is slowly going down and down.

Um, so now the rooms that have the card access on it, it's just a matter of doing some backend programming, start date and everything works.

Awesome. Last question. You know a lot of what you have in terms of the Schlage electronic locks on the interior doors, they have a key override. Who actually has access to those master keys now? Who is that limited to?

Very few people. Our public safety team, our lock shop, and then our card office has a key too.

There's just times when we may have to go and kind of be the first line of call when we have to go look at a lock or something, but that's, that's pretty much it.

Appreciate your insight.

Thanks, Jeff.