The Tennessee Board of Regents met on Feb. 18 to discuss plans to create a task force that will research campus safety and security for nearly six months.
The goal of the campus safety task force is to prevent incidents on campuses rather than having to react to an incident, according to TBR officials.
Members of the task force will study the schools that are a part of the TBR, as well as other schools, and report its findings by the September board meeting.
The task force will include representation from each of the three types of postsecondary institutions headed by the TBR, including community colleges, technical colleges and universities—like the University of Memphis.
Although TBR has plans to strengthen security on its college campuses, the U of M is already two phases in on a safety project they began in 2014, said campus assistant chief of police and director of police operations Derek Myers.
Students at the U of M will soon need their student ID cards to enter more buildings on campus due to nearly $1.3 million in security updates and changes.
Electronic doors that can be locked and unlocked remotely are replacing scores of exterior doors, thumb latches and deadbolts are being added to classroom doors in older buildings like Patterson and Clement. These repairs will cost close to $400,000.
Using electronic doors will allow University security to lock and unlock the doors at specific times from a central location.
The U of M is adding the central locking system to existing electronic exterior doors, interior doors and electronic exterior doors to be installed, which will allow the doors to be locked even while open.
“The problem was that people started asking questions about active shooters, so we gave them guidelines on the best practices,” said Myers. “We recommended locking classroom doors, but people were saying that they couldn’t lock the doors.”
The University is also expanding the number of buildings that have card readers, which would allow a student to swipe his or her student ID card to enter a building that has been locked after normal operating hours.
Security updates and changes on campus have very little to do with a specific incident or threat, Myers said.
Amongst other universities in the state of Tennessee with more than 5,000 students, including those overseen by the TBR, the U of M continues to have an extremely low crime rate, Myers said.
U of M’s latest security updates are part of a project that will last for more than several years. Also known as Phase 2, the project seeks to equip every education and general-use building on the main campus with doors that can be accessed with a valid ID card outside of normal operating hours.
Phase 1, a $1.75 million project began in 2014 when the U of M began replacing the old exterior doors on nearly all campus buildings.
Board approval is not required in order for the TBR to create the campus safety task force.
