The safety and security of our campus community are critical. We are continuing work on a project that started over the summer to enhance the daily security of campus buildings and allow Public Safety to better control access to buildings in an emergency.
Best practices for public safety in higher education and recommendations of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission indicate that people should enter buildings through doors with electronic entry such as card readers. Doors with only keyed locks should remain available as exits but should not be used as entrances. We have been adding card readers to doors across campus and are preparing to restrict entrance to key-only doors to Public Safety and law enforcement personnel. We commit to communicating with building managers in advance of any actions taken in a particular building so they can share information with the employees who work there before changes are made.
What you can expect
- UT Facilities Services will begin restricting entry at keyed doors in buildings that already have doors with electronic entry. Police and Public Safety personnel will maintain access to all doors – keyed and electronic – for emergency purposes.
- Keys will no longer be issued for exterior doors in buildings with electronic entry.
- Existing keys will still work on interior doors.
- Work will continue across campus to expand electronic entry access and correspondingly restrict access to key-only doors.
- Once a transition to electronic entry is made for a building, all doors with electronic entry will remain unlocked during the hours stated by building managers. Building managers may need to adjust the electronic locking and unlocking schedule for buildings with new access patterns. To request a schedule change, building managers should contact utcentralalarm@utk.edu clearly stating the requested times and days for doors to be locked and unlocked.
- Doors with key-only locks will remain locked at all times and be available for exit only.
- Under no circumstances may doors be propped open. Propping electronic entry doors will trigger an alarm.
Adding electronic entry and restricting the use of key-only locks is a project that will happen in stages and take months to complete. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience caused by changes in building entrance patterns. Our primary objective is the additional security provided by the change, and we are pleased to be moving forward with this new layer of physical security for our buildings.
Thank you for your commitment to the safety and security of our entire campus community.
Allen Bolton
Interim Senior Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration