Response to Ciara Colbin's "Is the HPER Center doing too much?"

    When Ciara Colbin discussed the HPER Center changes in management, in guidelines, and in employee expectations, there wasn't much background given on the reasons for these new modifications. I would love to shed some light on this because I don't believe it was talked about much around the university.
    Last spring, a Physical Plant employee discovered that there was a man unaffiliated with Wittenberg University living in the HPER Center and apparently had been living there for quite some time. Maigan Larsen, HPER Center Coordinator, was in her first year employed with Wittenberg University when this information was acknowledged. The immediate reaction to this knowledge was to establish some sort of check-in for the safety of students. Thus began the routine checking of student ID's for all visitors to the HPER Center.
     So there's the background to the new changes. Now to answer the question if the HPER Center is doing too much. I would call myself a sort of live-in visitor at the HPER Center as well, especially during my season and have been watching the development of these new changes with great interest.
     While I definitely agree that the HPER Center changes are annoying and seem over the top, there are specific reasons that Larsen is implementing these with such vigor. The reason that the student workers are being restricted and held to a stricter standard is because safety at the HPER Center is still very much an issue. The uniforms that the workers have to wear now are not unlike the uniforms that the student workers in Recitation have to wear, not to mention the uniforms allow the workers to stand out in a crowd for athletes to find them quickly if needed to get entry into a locker room or training room.
    Another big plus about the changes is that the student workers are asked to make rounds of the HPER Center once every 30 min to make sure everything is still locked up and secure. This can be somewhat beneficial when you need a key into your locker room and the worker happens to be walking by. But it can be a disaster if the student worker is on a round and you have to run around the HPER to chase him/her for the keys.
    Now I know what you are thinking because upon first glance, this all seems very excessive. But (as much as I hate to say this) it still may not be enough. Last week, the volleyball shed in the arena was broken in to while people were working, swiping people in, and making rounds. Apparently someone took a hammer to the combination lock and gained access to a ton of volleyball equipment. As far the team could tell, nothing was taken but the incident was reported to Larsen. Additionally, we had someone break into our locker room that same weekend who messed with our stuff in our lockers, wrote on the wipe-off board, and rearranged the locker room. Security is also breached routinely when the Upward Bound students are on campus: during my sophomore year, we had someone go through all our backpacks and take a total of $200 in cash. These are only incidents happening to the volleyball team so I have no clue about the other sports teams and if they have experienced any issues in security. However, I imagine that this crime pattern is common especially with the locker rooms that the swim teams have to share with the overall community. One last point I would like to bring up here is that bigger universities and colleges also have this type of security. I know Wittenberg is not a big school in lots of ways but we do need to recognize that Wittenberg is growing. I think some changes are necessary right now and should continued to be expected/embraced if the changes will assist us in the long run. 
    The new changes to the HPER Center are definitely annoying because we are not used to the new regulations. But in my opinion, I believe they are a necessary evil. Larsen is also talking about how to help the situation a little better and provide more security with a swipe system, not unlike the swipe system that the library has for study tables.