For the Fall 2019 school year, the students of Saint Xavier were required to obtain new IDs from the Hub. Over 4000 new ID cards have been printed out by student volunteers. Besides the new face design of the student IDs, the functionality has also changed. In the previous years, the technology used was an access card it is now a contactless ID card.
According to Rola Othman, Director of Information Technology Services, the reason why the old IDs were replaced was that the school was using an outdated system. Over the last year, several parts were starting to become obsolete. There were no actual problems with the ID cards, but the card readers and the swipes were broken or needed to be replaced. If there were parts that needed to be fixed or replaced, the school would be unable to replace these parts because of how outdated the systems were. Since there were several problems with the old system, Public Safety and the Information Technology Services Department took the initiative to decide on updating the system for the school with the approval of the University’s president, vice president, CEO, Director of Facilities, Public Safety, and many others.
“It’s always about the positive experience of the students and faculty members at SXU,” according to Rola Othman.
In an interview with Officer Darrell Parks from Public Safety, the discussion of upgrading to a new system has been going on for the past decade. The old system had been in place since 2001 and had not been updated since then, only repaired. The reason why the systems were upgraded this term was because there was a sense of urgency.There were critical parts of the access panel that were irreplaceable as well as problems with the programming. Upgrading to a newer system solved several concerns that the school was having prior.
“The swipe readers were a challenge to keep operational and was on the verge of being obsolete as well, and the weather would also affect the old readers, but the weather shouldn’t affect the new ones as much since it doesn’t require any swipe process,” Officer Parks mentioned.
The old system would have weekly problems which became very labor-intensive. A lot of money was also spent on the frequent replacements of the readers and swipe IDs. Both students and the staff would constantly have to keep swiping their cards in order to gain access to buildings. This issue has become more frequent and problematic for individuals involved. It was a capital decision to upgrade to a new system and get new ID cards. The upgraded system was more universal, which means that it is more compatible and easy to integrate with different software. This allows the university to keep the panels if there was a need to change the software. Security with the cards has also increased and protects the information within the cards since it is compatible with more software.