Many students expressed confusion and frustration after receiving an email from Upper School Dean of Students Will Miller announcing the deactivation of certain building access codes.
After noticing that multiple students were using the same code, Miller sent the email Friday, September 17, following the deactivation of multiple access codes due to security concerns.
This cancellation has affected many students in the MFS community.
Senior Colin Cooper stated, “The cancellation of a bunch of codes really was frustrating to me because a code that I had used for maybe five years, and thought was mine, had recently been deactivated.” He shared that “one day I was walking to Hartman Hall and was unable to get in the building so I was late for class and this was deeply frustrating.”
Junior Eva Vanterpool noted that while she has not been personally impacted by the cancellation of multiple codes, she has noticed that “it affects a lot of other people. People are getting locked out, especially at Hartman, and if no one is over there [to help] you can’t get to class.” Vanterpool continued by saying that she thinks the school should not have deactivated the codes.
To clear up the widespread confusion, Director of Finance and Operations Lisa Carbone Warren explained the reasoning for the deactivation. She stated that each person has a unique code with different parameters.
“For instance,” Carbone Warren explained, “if you are a student, that code only allows you to enter the buildings at certain times. For example, on weekends you wouldn’t be able to use that code, it would be inactivated. Teachers, on the other hand, have different classifications so they have access at different times. Maintenance, for example, has 24/7 access.”
Each member of the MFS community having their own code enhances the school’s security by allowing the administration to track who enters the building and at what time. “If there was some sort of vandalism over the weekend and the student was using somebody else’s code, we wouldn’t be able to know who [did it] because we would think the wrong person is in the building,” shared Carbone Warren.
However, many students were unaware of the reason why they should be using their own code. Senior Jules Boreas said, “I don’t understand why everyone using the same code is a problem. If anything, I think it is more helpful if everyone [uses] the same code because then it is less likely that an intruder could guess it.”
Agreeing with Boreas, Cordelia Glos ’23 said, “I feel like we’ve all used these codes for a long time now, and we all are very comfortable with these codes and suddenly they were changed. I think it was very frustrating especially with everything going on lately with COVID and just the disorganization, I think it was just another thing on top of my frustration.”
Since many students did not know the reason for the individual codes, they were not in a rush to ask the business office for their personal code.
Junior Tia Obermeier had been using her friend’s code for years, not knowing the consequences of sharing codes. After her friend’s code was deactivated, she said that “now when I go to Hartman or the main building I don’t really have a code to use.” Obermeier explained that she was hesitant to ask the business office for her personal code since she “would have to then memorize [a new] code.”
Obermeier is not alone in using friends’ codes — many students have started asking their friends for their codes instead of contacting the business office to learn their personal one.
Sara Chesnick ’22 shared that she and a friend “were code sharing.” She continued, “that code has been eliminated and I am sharing somebody else’s code now. Many students do not know how to access their own code and their old ones were shut off, so now people just continue to code share.”
In response to hearing about students “code sharing,” Carbone Warren explained that this is “a little bit of a concern because again, if you don’t use your own code then we are not able to know who’s in the building at different times.” However, she realizes that this behavior of students sharing codes was expected to a certain degree and that “the primary reason that we are using codes is because we are locking the buildings to keep bad [people] from coming inside the building.”
