University Housing makes front-desk staffing changes in residence halls

By Anaum Hussain •

This semester, the student front desk staff at the resident halls work new hours from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday to Friday. Their hours were previously from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.

From 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. on weekends, Allied Security, a third-party company, will staff the front desk.

During the hours when no staff is at the front desk, Allied Security conducts foot patrols around the residence halls.

The affected residence halls are Mako Hall, The Commons, Rolling Hills and Leo Goodwin Sr. Hall.

Victoria Myer, director of University Housing, said residence hall students have to scan their SharkCards when entering the building.

“Now, residential students have access, no matter where you live, to every residential hall. That actually is going to help us in terms of knowing who’s exactly in the building,” Myer said.

Commuter students have to be let in by a student who lives in the residence hall. Previously, commuter students would need to be signed in at the front desk. Now, there is a QR code at the desk that residence hall students can scan. Through the code, residence hall students log who they’re letting in, so the Office of University Housing knows who is in the residence halls at what time.

Myer said the QR code works better because more residence hall students are using it.

“Students weren’t stopping to sign in their guests, and we found that our student staff weren’t really being, I don’t want to use the word ‘aggressive,’ but they really weren’t, no matter how much we trained them,” Myer said. “Some of them were a little bit uncomfortable with stopping people. So now having the scan in, it’s actually giving us a much better idea of who’s coming in and who’s actually here in the building.”

Jaime Valdez, junior computer science IT major who used to work at the front desks, feels that the change was for the best.

“It’s not really making a big difference since a lot of these students didn’t really watch the desk that well, and the third party could do the job way better at midnight,” Valdez said.

Valdez heard student front desk staff were reduced because the system wasn’t working as intended.

“As far as I’m aware, they just wanted to cut back, and they found that the front desk staff was not as useful, since a lot of the staff was either hard to come by or not doing their job properly,” Valdez said.

With the front desk change, there will still be some student staff during the day. Security will be present during the hours when incidents are more likely to occur.

“Looking at statistics, we found that pretty much every single instance that occurred over the entire academic year happened between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m., so there was pretty much really nothing happening in terms of the daytime,” Myer said.

Myer said that the change is proving to be a safer alternative.

“Anytime we try something new, we wait for feedback, we see how it’s going based on what we’ve seen,” Myer said. “We’re always willing to try new things. Whatever our students want to do, we’ll work with them. But from a safety perspective, I think it’s working out better.”