Students received updated ID cards with new tap access capabilities when they returned to campus in August, a switch from the previous swipe system used to access university buildings.
The university changed the cards after Transact Campus, the company that produces all of the identification controllers and card codes at Washington and Lee, was purchased in September 2024 by another technology company known as CBORD.
Mark Keeley, Director of Information Technology Services Projects and Support, said the change in ownership meant Transact’s old equipment was no longer being produced.Transact said the university would have to switch out its hardware as a result.
“It would take hundreds of thousands of dollars to have to change out all our hardware, so we decided that they couldn’t do that to us,” Keeley said.
The company then offered to let the university move to a new controlling software with the caveat of switching all campus cards, Keeley said. To make this change more appealing, the vendors said these cards would be free of charge and would be upgraded from swipe to Near Field Communications (NFC) cards.
NFC cards have a chip that senses when they are near the electromagnetic field of an identification controller, usually near an entrance of a building,” said Keeley. When a card is near, it communicates a code that is unique to the individual’s card. The buildings that a university member can access depend on the permissions granted to their identification card.
The university approved the switch to the NFC cards and started reprogramming the controllers and cards in April, said Public Safety Technology Manager Alex Pritt.
“I essentially had to rebuild all the entire software architecture,” Pritt said. “There are over 400 controlled doors on campus, and almost all of the buildings are swipe controlled. So I’ve had to deal with each and every one of them and convert them from the old to new system.”
Pritt said the project is saving the university money. Washington and Lee will have to buy fewer door coders for the new system, as the new door coders work for multiple controllers when the old coders only worked for one or two controllers.
Pritt said that the project was more a challenge of time than money.
“I’ve put a lot of my hours into this,” Pritt said. “Some weeks it’s been my whole week, all 40 hours dedicated to it. Then sometimes it’s been okay, with two or three hours here or there. But most of my summer was just working on this project in particular.”
As of this month, the university is still incorporating some controllers into the new system, Pritt said.
The new NFC cards have been an interim step. But Keeley said they are not the university’s end goal.
“What we’re ultimately getting to with this technology is, sometime here in the near future, using just your phone,” Keeley said. “We’ll no longer need a card because phones already have NFC capabilities, and you would just have to hold it up to your door, or whatever you’re trying to access, to open it.”
Students could do this through an app on their phones with NFC capabilities even when the phone is turned off, Keeley said.
Other Virginia universities have already made the switch to cell phones. In Jan. 2022, Roanoke College announced that their “Maroon Cards” had gone digital, and they had switched to phone and other device access, according to the college’s website.
According to Roanoke College’s website, the mobile card is protected by two-factor authentication, which may lead to more steps than just a tap.
Washington and Lee will continue to adapt to students and surrounding colleges based on future needs.
