By Klaudia Sobczyk
This Monday, April 22, tenants of the AUC dorms were greeted with a surprising email from DUWO, the housing organisation providing accommodation to AUC students on Carolina MacGillavrylaan Street. The announcement detailed a change in the electronic keys used to get inside and around the building. With the new system also comes another change: electronic keys will no longer provide access to the entire building. Moments after receiving the message, AUC student WhatsApp group chats erupted in strong opposition to the new decision.
An email from DUWO informs that from May 6 to June 30, all electronic locks in the building will be replaced with a system from a new supplier, Salto. Although the old system will continue to operate until the locks are changed, students should pick up their new keys within the next three weeks. The author of the email, Danielle van den Tol, the social caretaker at the AUC dorms, informs that the change was decided in cooperation with AUC. The grounds for the decision are “security reasons and to limit waste dumping in the halls and stairways.”
This is not all: until now, electronic keys held by all dorm tenants provided access to all doors in the building, allowing students to move freely through the zigzagging corridors of the dorms. Van den Tol informs that with the replacement of the system, students will no longer have access to the entire building. The new key will open doors to students’ own strings (clusters of residential units within each corridor, all of which are behind locked doors), along with laundry rooms, corresponding central halls, and the strings of the event spaces. This means that passing through the building will not be possible without calling the tenants of the strings via the intercom.
The information about the new key system has triggered waves of reaction in the Buy, Sell & Trade group on WhatsApp, which unites the majority of dorm tenants. Students of various years started objecting to the decision made without consulting them, and which will have huge consequences for their comfort of living.
Resident Assistants (RA), a group of four AUC graduates living in the dorms and taking care of safety in the building, report being informed about the key change by the Student Life Officers (SLO) during one of their regular meetings. However, they weren’t consulted before this decision was made. They acknowledge DUWO’s rights and reasons to implement changes around the dorm, however, in their opinion changing keys rapidly in the last few months of the semester is not the right time. “It should have been made in consultation with the student-led organisations like the AUC Student Association (AUCSA) or Student Council (StuCo),” they say.
Many students disagree with DUWO’s reasons for restricting movement within the dorms. Ava Weld, a first-year Humanities student who sent an email complaint to DUWO on Monday, April 22, does not believe that limited access to the building will improve security in any way. Not only will movement be restricted, which could be restricting in the event of a fire, safety from break-ins will not be improved. According to Weld, it is not the tenants of the dorms who are the danger, but outsiders. “I don’t feel any safer that only the people who live in my string can use a lock on the door,” she says.
Weld adds that the cases of break-ins that have occurred this academic year happen on ground floor apartments which are not locked out in the strings. Changing the system will not improve their security in any way, as the break-ins were not related to access to the strings. In addition, students living in the proximity to the event spaces will not enjoy improved security at all, as access to their strings will still be available. “Why do we focus on the security purposes that only function for half of the building?” Weld asks.
The main concern of dorm tenants is limited mobility. Until now, moving through the building to visit friends in other strings was extremely easy: a magnet key opened all the doors, so students could just show up at their friends’ doorstep. “DUWO needs to understand that it’s a tight-knit community,” says Weld. She shares her experience of hosting get-togethers with her friend group. The intercom opens only the entrance to the main hall of the building, not the string door, so receiving multiple guests would mean constantly leaving the room to open the door at the very end of the hallway. “It is extremely inconvenient when you’re hosting a lot,” she says.
It’s not just visiting friends that will be more difficult. According to Alice Humphreys, a second year Science major, closed strings will restrict people from accessing any type of gatherings. Living rooms are commonly used by committees, small-scale communities such as Bookclub, or academic-related meetings. Not being able to move freely between the strings would strongly inconvenience people who simply want to use the common spaces that are part of the dorms.
Another second-year Science major, who prefers to remain anonymous, points out the problems of moving internally in the dorms after the first academic year, which some students undertake. Last year, she and her roommate moved internally to another apartment in the dorms. With the accessibility of strings, they were able to move heavy furniture through the hallways without leaving the building. This will no longer be possible.
Although, as she admits, the current lock system is not ideal – “a lot of string locks don’t work, and you need to use two hands to open the locks in some places” – limiting accessibility only further exacerbates the problem. It would also not solve the issue of littering or leaving belongings in the hallway. The student believes that there is no clear link between all strings being accessible and littering in the building. She admits that many problems could be solved if the tenants’ voices were heard. “That’s us against them. And we should work together, not against each other,” she says.
Already on the same day, several students took action against the new decision. Willemijn Eijsink, a first-year Science major, contacted DUWO by phone shortly after receiving the alarming email. The person answering the phone did not personally know the details of the case but recommended that students with complaints contact DUWO via a contact form. The number of emails sent turned out to be large. In response to Welt’s complaint letter, DUWO wrote back on Wednesday, April 24, saying it plans to send a group return email in which it will respond to the objections.
On the day of that DUWO announced the new system, the Student Council provided students with a box to anonymously submit their safety concerns. Ema Torcato, co-chair of the Student Council, informs that the concerns are already communicated to Marcus Smit, AUC’s Head of Services and Communications department, who will directly relay these concerns to DUWO. From these discussions, it appears that the waste dumping, especially clothing, is the main factor influencing the DUWO decision.
In addressing this issue, the Student Council is going to put forth the idea of working with the RAs to create a year-round pop-up store. Through this initiative, students would have the opportunity to give away their unwanted belongings, in order to reduce waste in the hallways. While the Student Council is still working on this, it hopes that by submitting the proposal to DUWO, it will draw attention to how critical it is to tackle this problem in cooperation with students.
In light of this event, the Student Council recalled the formation of the Residents’ Committee, an initiative in cooperation with the Duwoners (the tenants’ association for DUWO’s residents) to represent the interests of the dorm tenants in conversations with DUWO. The committee is expected to get started as soon as enough applicants gather. An online petition for keeping the universal building access has been launched as well.
At the time of writing this article, the issue is still developing. The Student Council remains in conversations with AUC about further solutions.
The Herring 