During exam weeks and before big breaks and holidays, a great deal of Longwood University's student body tends to get caught in a frenzy of projects, essays, tests and due dates, all seeming to collapse in the same short amount of time.
Longwood student Taylor Bedsworth commented on how during this period, most students tend to gravitate toward Janet D. Greenwood Library as a study space, causing the normally quiet building to become "crowded … loud and noisy."
"I can't study in my room," said Bedsworth. "There are a lot of distractions in your hall, on your floor, in the building … some people can study in their room. I cannot. I get distracted." Bedsworth added, "You can't go anywhere in Longwood … everything's locked down."
Today, while most residential and academic buildings utilize LENEL, the card access security system on campus, there are still some buildings that simply do not use card access for every entrance, such as Lancaster Hall, Hull Hall, Wygal Hall and more.
Debra Wooding, senior manager of the office of integrated security services, said, "We have quite a few buildings with card access and a lot that don't. Regardless of whether they have card access or they're key unlocked, we have certain hours that these buildings stay unlocked. The ones with card access, it depends on the building coordinator and the departments that are in that building."
Bob Beach, chief of police for the Longwood University Police Department, added, "[Chichester Hall] has various chemicals stored there and so forth … There's apparently a lawsuit going on in the west coast where an undergraduate was allowed to work on projects or was in a laboratory working on a project unsupervised and was killed because of the chemical reaction."
Beach said, "There are those things that say that for a building to be unlocked or to have card access available, there's a certain set of hours and those certain set of hours between the building administrator and the professionals that work there, they know who's coming and going." He added, "They're responsible for managing students and telling Longwood students and so forth. So, there's a block of time to do that."
Beach said the restriction of time access to academic buildings is to ensure "a safe environment." Wooding added that one cause of limited access to academic buildings after certain hours of the night is past acts of vandalism. Additionally, there had been an instance of an individual attempting to sleep in buildings overnight.
Beach added that inside academic buildings, "There's literally millions of dollars worth of equipment and stuff in there. You have to worry about theft and breaking into the drink machines and other things."
Beach said, "One of the big issues we have here … is people allowing tailgaters in, and we don't know who those people are … We have cameras that are watching, so we can determine who's coming and going, and of course there are the desk aids and RAs [Resident Assistants] … Again, it's all for security purposes."
"Our officers do a building check every evening right around the time and make sure the doors are locked," said Wooding. "They test the doors physically … So, we know that there shouldn't be anybody in there once the officers have done their check and haven't found anybody in there, we know that we're locked up for the night."
Beach added, "If something bad happens … if we know a building is locked up and secure and no one's in there, then we don't have to worry about sending an officer or a firefighter inside and try to search and see if anyone's there."
Wooding noted that most academic buildings do not allow students after hours, save for maybe computer labs. "We have a close watch on building unlocks. Card access is not given to academic buildings except for Bedford where those art students can go in there a certain time after hours with their cards, but all other academic buildings that are on a time zone … At midnight, everything locks down."
Beach said while students wish to be let into buildings when it is convenient for them, there are numerous safety and security issues involved.
Bedsworth said, "I don't have a huge problem with card access in general. My big thing is we don't have a space on campus for people to go." This is a sentiment that may be the root of student criticism toward card access limitations.
If interested in accessing academic buildings after hours, Beach said students' professors must send him an email at beachrr@longwood.edu to have card access.
