Last week a professor, who asked her name not be used, arrived to teach a class and all her students were in the hall because the door was locked. She went to the red security phone in the hallway and picked it up.
“I have not had a key or a swipe[card] to a room that I have been teaching in for 20 years….That [room] is supposed to be open and often is not. I had to explain to the security desk what I needed and the security guard hung up on me,” she said.
She added, “I called back to ask why he had hung up on me and got scolded for playing with the button.”
Eventually, she says, she was able to get the situation sorted out and a friendly officer came to unlock the door.
In a recent VOICE survey of 30 students, 87 percent reported they are unaware of what to do in a locked-classroom situation. Thirty-seven percent said they recall a time where they and the professor were locked out of a classroom.
Mercer’s website has a College Safety and Security section which can be accessed from the home page by going to the ABOUT tab and then scrolling down to MORE which opens a sublist that includes Security.
The security page indicates that there are non-emergency numbers to call for both campuses. The West Windsor number is ext. 3503, and JKC is ext. 3175.
In order to dial those numbers from a non-campus phone, such as a cell phone, the full campus prefix must be dialed. That number would be 609-570-3503 for West Windsor.
The page explains “Red telephones are located at either end of hallways and vestibules throughout the campus. These telephones provide direct communication with the Security office and should be used for emergency reasons only.”
According to Security Chief Michael Flaherty, issues reported through red phones or call boxes that are not presenting a real danger to individuals are like “using 9-1-1 to call for a pizza.”
Flaherty says, “A lot of people get offended when we remind them that they are using an emergency line for a non- emergency.”
But even using the non-emergency extension has not been successful for some.
Another professor, who also asked not to have her name used said, “I arrived at my lab room in AD this morning and the door was locked. My swipe card didn’t work, but I had programmed the non-emergency number for security into my phone so I called it. First, it rang a dozen times without an answer. I hung up and dialed again and I got a recorded message saying ‘all lines are busy at this time.’ So there was nothing left to do but use the red phone.”
She continued, “I didn’t want to use it. I understood that it was not an emergency, but I was out of options. I had 30 students waiting and we were ten minutes into class time already.” She says a security guard arrived five minutes later and opened the door, telling her she needed to have her swipe card access updated.
She says she asked, “Could someone please send out an email to all faculty to let them know that?” and that the guard told her “That’s outside of my job.”
Flaherty explains there used to be stickers indicating the non-emergency number, that should be used for issues like door opening, listed underneath all the call boxes and red phones.
“The problem is that people keep taking them down. I’m not sure why someone would want to do something so foolish as that.” Flaherty says.
Asked if security had any plans to replace the number stickers, Flaherty says, “That is a great suggestion and I think we should revisit it.”
