University Business - June 2012 - (Page 64)

By Thomas W. Durso THEN: Unified NOW: The door’s failure to close triggered an alarm at headquarters. The dispatcher took to her console and called up video from the security camera trained on the residence hall. She double-clicked a few times to zoom in. The recording of the footage from the residence hall had automatically tracked back to show the 30 seconds before the alarm had gone off. The dispatcher saved the clip and emailed it to a security officer patrolling that part of campus. The officer watched as a couple of students swiped their ID cards and entered. A textbook—a hefty one, by the looks of things—dropped out of an open compartment in a student’s backpack and fell to the floor by the door jamb. The door swung back inward but stopped short of closing, blocked by a corner of the book. Had she spotted trouble, the officer would have radioed for help immediately and proceeded straight to the residence hall to respond. Instead, without having to leave her patrol, she simply radioed back to headquarters: false alarm. The lecture had run late, and on top of that the sophomore biology major had joined a couple of friends for a cup of coffee afterward to kick around the speaker’s provocative ideas. It was well after midnight when he made it back across campus to his residence hall, where he noticed a side door that was ajar. Hesitant to enter—who knew who might be lurking around inside?—he called the public safety office to report what he was seeing. The dispatcher took the report and glanced up at the bank of monitors displaying live shots from dozens of spaces across campus. Sure enough, there was the open door, flickering in the fuzzy, black and white picture. The dispatcher radioed an officer patrolling that area of campus and relayed the student’s report. “What are you seeing on video?”, the officer asked the dispatcher. “The door’s open,” she replied. In a couple of minutes the officer arrived at the residence hall and found the student, wearing nothing heavier than a hoodie, shivering on a bench along a pathway leading to the front door. The student repeated what he had seen upon returning. A full 20 minutes after the open door had been reported, the officer cautiously entered the residence hall and shone her flashlight ahead of her while making her way along a darkened hallway. After several minutes of checking, she reported back to headquarters: false alarm. 64 | June 2012 universitybusiness.com http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - June 2012

University Business - June 2012
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Viewpoint
Marketing
Independent Outlook
Special Section: Thinking Green
4G: Is It Time for an Upgrade?
Unified Security: All Together Now
Collaborative Workflow
Campus Finance News
3 Student Aid Myths
Deepening the Donor Pool
Keeping Tuition Within Reach
Internet Technology
End Note

University Business - June 2012