House Security: The Other Side of the Peephole

IN THE LAST MONTH Harvard has sought to tighten House security precautions in a manner reminiscent of the bureaucratic bungling that supposedly went out of vogue with the coming of Derek Bok. Not only has the University presumed the need for more security without examining the alternative of maintaining the status quo, but the security issue has also developed antagonisms between House Masters and the Administration over who has the responsibility--both planning and financial--for installing security precautions. Stephen S.J. Hall, vice president for Administration, blames the Masters for dragging their feet on security, but they unanimously counter that House budgets allow no leeway for security expenses.

Security precautions got a slow start last year as more street lights were installed and double locks were placed on suite doors in selected Houses. The most recent measure--peepholes in every suite door--comes on the heels of three armed robberies and a continuing high level of burglaries amounting to $2500 per week. The peepholes are a very passive sort of security and can be used or ignored as the individual student wishes. But the electronic door system, now nearing completion in Eliot House is a different matter. The locking system, masterminded by a Honeywell Delta 2000 computer, will limit access to Eliot to House members and threatens to make inter-House visits difficult or inconvenient.

Eliot House residents soon will receive a non-reproducible plastic card with a magnetic coding which will open the entry door to the House. This electronic door, the first in a series scheduled for installation around Harvard, will force students to go outside to meet their friends after being called from a telephone located by the entry door. What is a minor inconvenience in fall and spring will become a hassle involving freezing temperatures during the winter. The locked door could prove especially bothersome in the wee hours of the morning, explained one prominent clubbie, who often has trouble after a night on the town finding Eliot House, much less his keys or plastic card. No one insinuates that students are unable to endure the irritation, yet the bottom panel of the door has already been kicked in once and the installation isn't even complete.

The locked doors also present a real fire hazard that hasn't been examined. In the interior courtyards of Winthrop House, for example, a key is necessary to get into any entry, even those leading to the street. With the gates to Mem Drive chain locked, a fire in the middle of the night could leave many disoriented people trapped and roasting in the courtyards.

Locked doors and telephones bring out a further difficulty--namely that every student must have a telephone or no friends. Phone installations are now private business transactions between students and New England Bell, but if the security system requires telephones for its operation, it will be the University's responsibility to install them in every suite.

ASIDE FROM IRRITATION, the most pressing problem with locked doors is their ineffectiveness in excluding strangers. Anyone frequenting the Yard dorms knows that he or she can gain admission by waiting outside until someone comes either in or out. If students do not rigidly enforce the security precautions, and they won't, the expensive paraphernalia becomes totally useless and may even offer a false sense of security.

As the Houses are locked and peepholes installed, they become more like apartment buildings minus the doormen or buzzer system. The best guarantee of security is the bells desk approach now in operation at Currier House; any Harvard student can always get in merely by presenting his or her bursar's card to the student at the desk. Registered guests can enter without bursar's cards and no one must go outdoors to admit visitors.

Harvard has yet to answer the basic question, "Who are we locking out?" Two Tufts students, certainly indistinguishable from any other students in the area, allegedly perpetrated the recent armed robbery at Eliot House. If Harvard students are doing any petty burglary, the system will be ineffective in stopping that, and if professionals are ripping off students' stereos, they are unlikely to be detered by one more locked door.

Security beyond the peepholes only isolates Harvard from Cambridge and makes the free mingling of people within the Harvard community more difficult. Do Harvard students really want to carry around little plastic cards with magnetic codes implanted in them? It sounds too much like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. to be true.