For the third time, I met with a person from the administration to discuss the issue of PAC access to residence halls. Amy DeBaun, Director of Residential Life, explained the history of dormitory access here at Trinity, going from keys to codes to network cards. A disdainful but strong theme iterated during the code access period was once again the sharing of codes, for which there is actual data (not made available to me, except as a citation for the fact that every month tens of PAC’s are replaced). Actually, an interesting data point brought up was the fact that during code access, access was granted to an individual only for his/her own dormitory; only since the advent of network cards was it viable to allow students universal residence hall access (i.e. due to the very nature of the cards being networked). Thinking about it in this way, the PAC dorm hall access is sort of a step backwards. Taking it from the angle of safety, I pressed the point that a student losing their ID card would be very much at risk from all sorts of malevolent forces with no way to get to the safety of the dorms especially at late night, should such a terrible circumstance ever arise. A terse but admittedly adequate response to this concern was that such a student should simply call campus security, from either a personal phone or from the “safety phones” installed around campus (yellow poles). This would actually be quite a bit troublesome, but campus security is required to assist any student in getting in to their residence halls when such troubles arise. I cannot question this logic. A major aspect of this brought up was the financial requirements needed to even undertake the project. It cost the college quite a huge amount to actually install the card networks and to continue this takes quite some resources. However, the administration holds these costs justified due to the safety they seem to provide. To actually add PAC access to dorm would require eventually going to each dorm individually and programming all of them individually to the regular inhabitants and also to reprogram every year, on a manual basis. In this sense, the network cards are easier. In addition, with the financial tragedy that we are currently experiencing and the resultant cutbacks, no such action would be technically feasible. In summation, the administration has answered rejected this venture at all levels for myriad reasons, but mostly because they believe in the cards and refuse to implement PAC access to residence halls. There is apparently little that the student body can do to sway this opinion. At this point, I am currently marginalizing this issue, for I have met with all the top people in charge of these things, and also waiting for results from the student survey.