By Sarah Stortz | [email protected]

The University of Iowa Student Government is working on a proposal with the Iowa City City Council to allow higher security in off-campus housing.

The proposal would require rental apartments and houses in Iowa City to have unique locks that would only unlock on one pattern. The key-codes must also change annually.
The bill was proposed by Sens. Nate Weger, Elli Lenz, and Ziling Xia after a recent trespassing incident in a student’s residence. The bill will be fine-tuned by consulting with the City Council, and will later be proposed to the UISG Senate.

“There was an instance last year where somebody locked their door when they went to bed, and they woke up to find another person in their room with the door open,” Weger said. “As we looked into it more, we found out it’s actually very common in Iowa City for keys to other apartments to be able to get into many different apartments around the city.”

UI junior Jacob Simpson, the liaison to the City Council, said apartments could be potentially dangerous.

“We realized that apartment buildings off-campus have really faulty locks on their exteriors,” Simpson said. “A lot of times, you can just open a lock with any key, and the keypads may just be the address.”

Simpson noted this bill passing in the UISG Senate would be one step closer to preventing intrusion.

“[If this does pass], the Senate would be just proposing a resolution, which is only a statement of support for a change,” Simpson said. “We will work with city councilors on updating the code and communicate to property owners that their locks need to be functional.”

Lenz believes creating the bill serves an important role to protect the community.

“Student safety has always been a priority for UISG; I think that it’s an issue that’s been a concern for students, and I think it’s a very simple resolution,” Lenz said. “It’ll provide many long-term benefits for our campus.”

Weger echoed Lenz.

“Because many students in city housing are affected by this, we’re doing [it] specifically for the students,” he said. “Not only will it benefit the students, but it will be highly beneficial for the city as well.”

The senators have all the basic aspects of the bill laid out. However, they still need to go through the revision process and get the support from the City Council.

While it’s unknown if the bill will be put into practice soon, Weger said, he doesn’t see many drawbacks from it.

“It will make things more difficult for the landlords, just in that they have to be more careful for what they use [for] keys,” Weger said. “But I don’t think that’ll be too costly or time-consuming, so I don’t think anything major would be an issue.”

Lenz also has confidence in the bill’s passing.

“It’s a current issues and it’s also a comprehensive bill,” she said. “It addresses all issues that have occurred in the past.”

The senators plan to present this legislation on Feb. 28 to rest of the senators in hopes of having it passed.