Cokesbury Court Apartments officials installed new pedestrian gate locks, but some of them don’t work correctly.
Campus Living Villages, the company contracted by OCU to maintain the apartments, purchased the new locks for an undisclosed amount and installed them during the summer.
Students said the gates close before the locking timers reset, so the gates sometimes stay unlocked. When the gates do lock, some don’t unlock whenever the key code is entered.
Onnika Hanson, acting senior and Cokesbury resident, said the main gate she uses doesn’t work properly.
“Basically, if the gate closed, it didn’t open,” Hanson said. “And so you would press in the key code, and nothing would happen. If you were on the other side, you couldn’t get out.”
Most residents leave the gate open for this reason, Hanson said.
“No one closed it, on purpose, because they knew it wouldn’t open,” she said. “So it’s been open for weeks.”
Hanson said she worries about the safety of Cokesbury with the gate always being open. She is concerned about people who do not live in Cokesbury being able to get in, she said.
“I was walking to a sorority meeting, and I literally saw a homeless lady walk right by me and go, ‘excuse me’ and walk in Cokesbury,” she said. “This homeless lady walks straight into Cokesbury because, A, she saw students walking in and out, but B, she knew she could go in because it was unlocked.”
Even one gate not functioning properly compromises the safety of the whole system, Hanson said.
“It’s a great system, except it doesn’t work if one gate doesn’t work,” she said. “As soon as one gate’s wide open, there’s just no point.”
Becca Young, business administration sophomore and Cokesbury resident, said she has had similar experiences with the gates.
“It is a little bit worrisome, especially for safety reasons, because anyone can just kind of walk through,” Young said.
Young said the gates don’t close on rainy or windy days and have to be physically pushed.
Liz Richardson, associate director of student housing and apartments, said she has companies working to fix the gates. She has not given specific dates on when the gates will work properly and refused to comment further.
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