Safety & Security
ISTOCK © ANDIPANTZ
PREPARE AND BE AWARE
How to Welcome
Campus Visitors
If it feels like too much security to talk to every visitor that walks into every
building on campus, you may be doing it wrong.
BY MICHAEL FICKE S
C
AN SECURITY PEOPLE ON
an open college campus ensure
that a visitor — someone from
outside the campus community — doesn't
walk onto campus and begin stealing laptops or, worse, start shooting people?
Of course they can't. Then again, it
probably is possible to discourage crime
at all levels by presenting a friendly and
welcoming yet security-conscious face to
visitors.
Start with a policy of requiring students,
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faculty, administrators, and staff to wear ID
badges. The reason? It makes it easy to tell
who among those walking across campus is
visiting.
Follow up with a policy of asking visitors to wear ID badges inside buildings
on campus. "Whether your campus is in
rural Ohio or downtown Philadelphia,
whether you have 10 buildings or 50, you
need a centralized visitor management
system that provides a badge for every
visitor in your buildings," says Rick
COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / FEBRUARY 2013
Thompson, senior consultant with RETA,
a Lamont, IL-based security consultant
with a specialty in education.
Should you do this in all of your buildings? Maybe. It depends where your campus is. Is it in a part of a city where thieves
can walk in and take laptops? Yes. Is it near
a small town where everyone leaves their
doors unlocked during the day? Perhaps
not. Consult your security master plan.
There isn't much you can do to badge
visitors in common areas outside. Security
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