While a 24-hour turnstile was expected to be installed over winter break, Fordham says it has not yet received the gate from the manufacturer. Samuel Joseph/The Ram
By Eddie Mikus
Despite reports that a 24-hour turnstile gate would be added at the entrance near Walsh Hall in time for the start of the Spring 2015 semester, the process continues to face delays, said Fordham administrators this week.
John Carroll, Director of Public Safety, explained that the delay resulted from the fact that the university had not yet received the new gate.
“We had ordered this gate months and months ago,” Carroll said. “We assumed we were going to get this gate around December 17. We are now almost a month later and still do not have this product. It was supposed to be delivered to Fordham—not to our systems integrator, but to Fordham.”
Residents of Walsh were caught off guard by the delay.
“I was surprised that they hadn’t even started work on it,” Kristin O’Grady, FCRH ’16, Vice President of the Walsh Hall Residence Halls Association Board, said. “I was just surprised that we had heard so much and that there was nothing going on.”
Carroll attributed part of the delay to the fact that, after its manufacturing, the gate had to go through a process known as powder-coating.
“The new turnstile gate must have the exact same colors that the rest of the gate is in order for it to look correct,” Carroll said. “When they fabricate that thing, it doesn’t come in that color, so it has to be powder-coated and sealed to match the rest of the fence.”
Additionally, Carroll speculated that the gate’s fabricator, Boon Edam, a company based in North Carolina, may have focused on producing security gates for entities that purchase them more frequently than Fordham does.
“If Fordham, every day, is going out and buying 10,000 pounds of grass seed, the grass seed provider is going to be much more interested in taking care of Fordham than he is taking care of Eddie and John, who are coming in to buy one bag of grass seed a year,” Carroll said, using an analogy. “That’s all it is.”
After arriving on campus, the gate will take a minimum of two weeks to become fully functional, according to Carroll.
“There’s a lot of installation work in this,” Carroll said. “We have to take out the old booth, level the concrete, we have to bring all sorts of power and data out to that device. It’s a minimum of two weeks.”
Carroll also stated that access to Walsh Hall would not be impeded by the installation of the turnstile gate.
“It will be no different getting in and out of Walsh Hall,” Carroll said. “They may just not be able to access and egress Walsh Hall Gate. It will never impact the entrance to Walsh Hall. Never.”
Many residents view a 24-hour entrance at Walsh Gate as a matter of convenience.
“It would really just be more convenient, and not to say that the Finlay isn’t very, very far, it’s not that hard to walk around Finlay and go out that gate,” O’Grady said when asked how a 24-hour entrance at Walsh Gate would affect her. “But it is more convenient sometimes if I wanted to go get coffee or down to Arthur Avenue to pick up groceries or something like that. It just makes it easier. Considering that there is a gate there, we might as well utilize it.”
According to Carroll, student convenience will be the biggest benefit from installing a 24-hour turnstile at Walsh Gate.
“A lot of kids who are out at night, out on Arthur Avenue and places like that, they tend to use that gate,” Carroll said. Referring to the Finlay Gate, he added, “So I want a guard there to keep it open for them. This is a very costly operation to have a guard 150 feet away from another guard. It’s not a security issue. It’s a convenience issue. Walsh Gate is a convenience, it’s not a security issue at all.”
The entrance, however, is currently closed down from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. due to cost concerns.
“Every week, if I was to leave guards there, that would be $4,400 a week,” Carroll said. “That’s a tremendous cost. Think about that over the year.”
Carroll told The Fordham Ram that a 24-hour turnstile was practical for Walsh Gate but not at the other university entrances because vehicles cannot enter the campus through Walsh Gate.
“The Bathgate entrance, the Third Avenue, or the Third Avenue entrance, every one of those entrances are also vehicular entrances that we may and do bring emergency vehicles through there,” Carroll said. “In Walsh, there is nothing being brought in there.”
Carroll also said that students would be able to swipe their ID cards at the turnstile in order to enter campus via Walsh gate.
“We’re not a big purchaser of turnstiles,” Carroll added. “So I guess we had to wait in line like every other customer.”
