A Temple student decided to run an experiment last week with the school's security system.
Temple freshman Alyssa Mancuso started to realize how lax the security was in all of the buildings and decided to write about it in a piece for The Tab. Some buildings only require flashing the school ID — called an OWLcard —at a security guard in order to enter. She put this to the test in 13 buildings on campus by using an old Target gift card she found while rummaging through her purse. Mancuso was not expecting much to come from these tests, but she wrote that she was "not feeling very secure."
When Mancuso tried to enter buildings with swipe-access security, she was unable to get in, but rather than question the false ID, the guards simply told her to use her OWLcard. She was, however, able to enter 10 Temple buildings with ease; the security guards were either not present or holding conversations with each other as she walked in. One guard in particular, Mancuso wrote, had her head down and was not even remotely interested in checking for proper identification. Alas, she was able to enter the buildings with no problem at all.
"My most shocking success in illegally entering a building was, believe it or not, the Tech Center," Mancuso explains in the article. Even though the building requires swiping an ID, she walked in after someone else activated the card reader, making it seem like she also had her OWLcard. This additional successful entrance made Mancuso question the security protocols in place on Temple's campus.
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