The start of the school year always brings about many changes. This year, one of the more technical ones, tied into campus safety, is the new and improved ID system to keep track of Fieldston Upper students who go off-campus. This new technology consists of a card reader and computer. “All of our cards have a chip. There’s a profile created on our access control system. Say I scan on the [computer], it will populate my photo from my ID and who I am in my position,” David Argenzio, Director of Campus Safety, explained.
Student IDs on campus were initially implemented in the 2017-2018 school year, which was later followed by the requirement of students to use their IDs to leave campus during the school day. The school uses this as a safety precaution to keep a rough estimate of students on campus, which NYSAIS requires it to do.
Prior to the ID scanner, students handed in their IDs when exiting campus and picked them up upon return, but this generated some obvious inconveniences. “We saw that it was becoming too much for both the students and the campus safety officer, because you could have ten or fifteen students in and out at one time,” Argenzio shared.
Students expressed the same worry about the time spent waiting in line to be given back their ID. Regarding the new system, Lucia Lung (Form IV) shared, “It’s less stressful because we don’t have to worry about rushing back to get our ids before everyone else.”
Sojo Brown (Form IV) agreed that “it’s nice that we don’t have to wait in a line to get our IDs back and have the security person have to flip through like fifty student IDs and we can just keep track of them ourselves.”
While it definitely makes the process of going off-campus easier for everyone, some students are indifferent about the matter, including Harlan Stark (Form IV) who explained, “honestly it doesn’t really make a difference to me.”
Regardless of how one feels about it, one must acknowledge the huge role the new system plays in protecting our campus. Argenzio sums it up with “Everything campus safety does and our purpose for being here is to make sure our students and the adults that work here are safe.”
