Starting Monday, May 4, approval and distribution of new keys for employees on Health Science Campus will be handled under the control of the UT Police Department. Chuck Lehnert, vice president for facilities and construction, the department that previously handled key policy matters, said the change is being made for safety reasons.
“Campus police is ultimately responsible for security, so they should be the ones controlling access to space,” Lehnert said.
After May 4, requests will be examined, approved and finished keys distributed by UTPD. Those making requests will have to pick up finished keys in the Health Science Campus UTPD Dispatch Office in the basement of Mulford Library. Also, the change will move the current Health Science Campus key request documents to a new online location under the employee tab of the myUT portal.
Chief of Police Jeff Newton said this change is just the first of many coming to the key policies on all of UT’s campuses.
“We are still looking at moving toward more significant changes,” Newton said. “We need to make the process more electronic and more accessible because right now it’s a lot of pen and paper.”
Newton said future changes would allow for UTPD to keep better track of who has what keys, how long they’ve had them, and various other data that is hard to bring together with the current system.
“The process is not going to change much now,” he said. “But it will.”
Key approval and distribution for Main, Scott Park and Toledo Museum of Art campuses will remain the same, under the direction of Facilities, until an as-yet-undetermined date, Lehnert said.
