5 Things That Hurt Your Residence Hall Security

More than 80% of college students are concerned about their personal safety on campus. More than half report being very or extremely concerned. Is your residence hall safe enough to put students at ease? Can parents feel confident that their child is safe at school? If any of the following five factors apply to your on-campus housing, you might have more work to do to improve your residence hall security.

Factors That Increase Security Risks 

1. Having Residence Halls

Simply being a higher education institution with residence halls makes it more likely to experience crime. It makes sense – with more people spending more time on campus, there are more opportunities for crime to occur. Visitors are more common as well.

2. Proximity to a Large City

It's no secret that the bigger the city, the bigger the crime. That criminal activity trickles onto campus.

3. High Alcohol and Drug Use Rate

Campuses with high levels of substance abuse are more likely to experience elevated crime rates. When someone is impaired, their judgment suffers, making them more likely to break the law.

4. Employee Turnover

Like many other industries, higher education institutions experience high employee turnover, especially with more Baby Boomers retiring. As remaining staff members stretch themselves to cover additional responsibilities and new hires adjust to their roles, it becomes easier for security issues to slip through the cracks.

5. Ineffective Key Control

Do your key management systems and policies give facility access to the people who need it when they need it? Are you able to prevent unauthorized people from taking keys? Are you able to track which keys, access cards, or fobs employees are using? If you answered no to any of these questions, you have security gaps you need to close.

How to Improve Safety and Security in Your On-Campus Housing

You can’t change the first two factors — you’re not likely to permanently close your institution’s residence halls or relocate your well-established campus to a small town away from big-city crime.

You can address substance abuse and employee turnover, but they’re difficult to combat since they involve people’s independent choices.

Creating a safe living environment with effective key control is within your power.

However, creating a safe living environment with effective key control is within your power. By managing keys with an electronic key control system that controls user access, your school can cut down on incidents in which keys are either lost or end up in the hands of unauthorized individuals. Here are a few examples:
 

• Storing keys securely prevents unauthorized people from taking keys. Securing keys is especially important if you have gaps in front desk coverage due to staff shortages.
  
  
• Establishing access levels for users ensures staff members can only take keys essential to their job functions. This helps prevent someone from using a key to access resident rooms for reasons unrelated to their jobs.
  
  
• Having an electronic, automatically updated key log helps keep track of who’s using keys, when, and why. This audit trail is especially important if a key goes missing or if a student complains of unauthorized access to their room. 
  
  
• Setting up text and email alerts allows campus officials to be immediately notified when someone doesn’t return a key on time so they can investigate and address potential security breaches promptly.

There are some uncontrollable factors that leave your residence halls vulnerable to crime, but don’t let that stop you from doing everything in your power to give residents a secure place to live. Don’t let your key control practices add to students’ — and their parents’ — worries about personal safety.

This post was originally published in 2022 and updated in 2025.