Lost master key prompts plan to change locks in more than 800 dorm rooms

University employees have lost a master key to eight dorms and Forbes College, forcing Public Safety and the University Lock Shop to scramble to change the locks on more than 800 dorm room doors, Crime Prevention Specialist Barry Weiser said yesterday.

The lost key provides access to room doors in Pyne, Spelman, Little, Foulke, Henry, 1901, Laughlin, Lockhart and Forbes — which house nearly one-quarter of the campus population, Weiser said.

According to Weiser, two University employees checked out the master key Friday to perform standard maintenance on several upperclass dorms and later discovered they had lost the key.

For security reasons, the University must now change all the door locks in the compromised dorms, Weiser explained. Installing new locks in these buildings will take about three weeks because the University must order and manufacture new lock cores — the figure-eight-shaped locks that fasten dorm doors — for all the dorms the master key opens, Weiser said.

He added that while the University does carry a small inventory of spare cores, there are not nearly enough available to change all the compromised locks.

Personnel from the University's lock manufacturing company, along with workers in the lock shop, are working overtime to produce the necessary lock cores, Weiser said. "This is a logistical nightmare," he noted. "We have the facilities to change a few locks, but it's very difficult to try to do all these dorms at once."

Weiser also said Public Safety officers have been instructed to pay extra attention to buildings with the compromised locks. He added, however, that no thefts have been reported in those buildings as of yesterday afternoon.

According to e-mails sent to residents of the dorms involved, students will be informed their locks have been replaced after technicians install the new cores. Those students can then collect their new keys from the housing office.

"If it's late, and there's nobody in the housing office, you can call Public Safety for a lockout," Weiser said, adding that Public Safety and housing will make arrangements to have keys available at no charge for students in the affected dorms at all times.

Weiser said he expects the process of installing the new locks to be very expensive.

Vice President for Finance and Administration Richard Spies GS '72 said he did not know how much the new locks would cost the University. "Our first priority right now is the safety and security of the students," he said. "We will figure out the cost and work it into the budget later."

Spies added that University administrators would worry later about activities and programs to be "squeezed out" of the budget to compensate for the cost of replacing locks and keys.

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"We take this very seriously, and it doesn't happen often," Weiser explained. "Public Safety, as well as many shops, have to utilize these keys. We make our workers sign out the keys. It's a serious subject and an extensive proposition to re-key the buildings."

"The University has learned from this catastrophic breakdown," Weiser said. "Locks in separate buildings will be sub-mastered in the future so a single loss of a key won't affect so many dorms. We have learned our lesson."