Following recent assault case near Mayflower Residence Hall and a robbery near Rienow, safety of UI students in the dorms has been brought to the forefront of conversation.

Gregory Thompson, the director of residence education at UI Housing & Dining, said card swipes to enter residence halls and external video monitoring of doors have been in place for several years.

These main security measures, he said, took three to four years to develop. The university, at the time security switches were made, recognized using superior technology would ensure safety more efficiently, he said.

Before, Thompson said, there was concern over how to store video data and have someone checking the footage. However, he said, the UI Department of Public Safety has helped with this, and the technology became available to better store camera footage.

By having external video cameras, Thompson said, doors can both be monitored in the moment and can be reviewed if any violations arise.

Thompson also said the past security upgrade made sense as the UI began using ID cards for all the students. This way, he said, students can easily swipe their card outside doors to enter their dorms.

Before upgrading to a card system, he said, every UI student had a key for their room and to enter main doors in the residence hall. If that key was misplaced, he said, anyone could easily pick it up and enter a dorm. Now, he said, if students lose their IDs, building access for that ID can be shut off in seconds.

Thompson said he still feels these current security measures are the best fit for dorm security, especially combined with an employee monitoring front desks 24 hours a day.

“Having a person monitoring [dorm entries] supplements our technology,” he said.

Two UI students who spoke to The Daily Iowan said they feel campus and its residence halls are still safe and secure.

Senior Janessa Davis said she’s living in the dorms for the first time having lived in apartment buildings in her first few years of school. She said in comparison to her previous places of residence, she feels safer living in Catlett Hall.

“I think the university is doing its best to make it as safe as possible,” she said.

There’s always a chance something bad could happen to a student at a residence hall, Davis said, but she feels this is a rare occurrence. The benefit of dorms, she said, lies in the number of people roaming the halls at a given time, granting safety in numbers.

Sophomore Daniel Folchert said he feels the card access into residence halls isn’t the best way to ensure security.

“So many people go in and out of the dorms and hold doors open for people,” he said.

Folchert said, though, he feels the university has provided students with the best security measures that are also cost-effective. For example, he said hiring guards for each door isn’t realistic, so key cards are the best form of security economically.