Let ideas flow, but not insecurity or organizational inefficiency. That has been the bet of educational institutions, even before the pandemic. The challenge of having control over those who tour the facilities in case of an incident and also  give  fluidity to the operational processes within the campus, remains the same.

A few weeks ago, Grambling  State University  (Louisiana, United States) suffered two shootings in a week that left two people dead. According to preliminary police reports, these action were performed by individuals not enrolled in the university.

The last of the shootings occurred about 90 meters from a welcome ceremony inside the campus. Following this fact, the campus open house, as well as the classes, were temporarily cancelled. Likewise, the University set a curfew from 9:30 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.

"Our students come here to receive an education and too often it is people from outside who have created these situations, endangering life and physical integrity," said University President Rick Gallot. He concluded,  "Our priority is to keep our students safe."

How to provide this protection to students and other actors in university life, without interrupting the normal development of academic activities?

Monitoring attendees in the midst of dynamic events

In situations as tragic and unpredictable as these, technology advances to live up to the circumstances and provide versatile and effective solutions in that commitment to safety and intelligent management of the entry and exit of different personnel. One of them is the  Alutel  Mobile solution from  Alutel  Mobility.

With Alutel  Mobile, the security department of a university can verify the identity of the people who are on its property, regardless of whether they are in open areas. The application is installed on a tablet (RAGTAB), which is used in a mobile reader for identifications or credentials, a quite convenient function to have a record of the attendees in the extra-academic events that take place in the educational facilities.  

Location in case of emergency

Whether it is because of natural phenomena or human failures, there is always the possibility of unexpected events that trigger general panic, in these situations, evacuation control is crucial to save lives.

For such scenarios there is an application like  Mustering, which helps keep counting people on the site, differentiating whether they are safe or not. This application uses both indoor and outdoor positioning systems that provide real-time location information to increase safety levels in these situations.

After the event of confusion and chaos, this solution automatically records the presence of each participant as they return to a safe zone. In this way, repeated manual controls and personnel lists are avoided.

Documentation control for external personnel

There are other situations that are less chaotic, but that occur frequently, and that repeatedly alter the nerves of the administrators of educational centers.

It is about managing the entry and reviewing the documentation of external agents, contractors and third-party operators who enter and leave for some specific work within the campus.

To keep a documentary control of the respective permits to the papers of the authorized driver, there is an application like Aludoc. This saves time by centralizing all documents, which can be driving licenses or other certificates of the operators, previously verifying that they have all documentation and paperwork in order to expedite their entry so that they can carry out their punctual work.

Dining room management

Linked to the above, the management of any resource is a fundamental for the campus authorities. This includes the management of food in events organized by the entity itself such as symposia or specific meetings of some faculties that in their repertoire include refreshments and lunch.

An example of the above can be the hiring of the famous food  trucks that are part of some university campuses. An application like  Tikas  guarantees its efficiency through the same access cards granted to the participants of the meeting to print  tickets that enable them to get food, controlling that they don’t exceed the ration destined for each one, and the logistics of the event are not put at risk.

Thus, security and operational efficiency are solved in a single technological tool that has done the task for a long time to bring educational entities at a new level, at the forefront of the changing needs of a mobile administration. Find out more here.