Penn State Intercom......May 23, 2002
Locksmiths the key to
building security system
By Julie A. Brink
Public Information
Gary Green, Kevin Potter and Harry Evans may be the only three people on the University Park campus who can legally crack a safe. As a matter of fact, they took classes to learn how to do it.
"Yeah, Gary and I went to school in Kentucky to learn 'manipulation' for combination safes," Potter said. Evans went to school to learn how to drill safes.
Green, Potter and Evans are the University's locksmiths. They're on the front line of University Park security. They spend their days changing and repairing locks and replacing lost keys. They work on file cabinets, desks, key switches on elevators, panic hardware, anything with locks.
Green is the senior in terms of experience with 21 years as a University locksmith. Potter and Evans each have 14 years of experience.
Much of the work with safes involves changing the combinations for security purposes, although Potter does have a pet peeve about the repairs they do.
"People will say 'oh, we've been having trouble for two weeks'" and wait until they can't open it, he said. "Safes are lot easier to work on when they're open than when they're shut."
"When they're shut, it can be a boring job," Green punned as Potter chimed in, "Yeah, with a drill."
The locksmiths are about a third
of the way through a massive project. For the past three years, they've
been working to re-key all of the residence halls -- that is to install
new lock cores and new keys in 44 residence halls. That's 6,000 student
rooms, plus another 6,000 rooms such as janitor's closets, bathrooms,
etc. 
requiring
a lock and key.
To prepare one core with one key takes about an hour. Cores are the cylindrical lock part into which keys are inserted. The locksmiths use tweezers to stick a series of tiny pins into the blank cores to make each combination unique. Matching keys are coded to the cores and punched in on a series of key machines. Green estimated that they go through about 10,000 to 12,000 key blanks per year.
Their work requires detailed, meticulous records. For instance, in Old Main, which recently had the locks changed, the job entailed 12,000 pieces -- keys, cores, caps, pins and springs for about 280 doors.
The locksmiths do a block plan for each project. For a building, that's a rough blueprint that denotes the loca tion of all the doors. Then they fill out a form that lists the key schedule with core numbers. Keys, room numbers, etc. are listed on a matrix chart.
The information for every lock and key on campus is filed away in a series of loose-leaf binders that fill two safes at their office.
"We don't haphazardly choose key combinations," Potter said.
"We don't switch cores around, change keys around like they do at some small colleges," Green said. "Everything is by the number."
Not surprisingly, "students are our biggest customers," Green said. They get locked out or locked in, they lose their keys and they leave the University without turning in their keys. Consequently, locksmiths work a 7 a.m.-to-3:30 p.m.- weekday shift, but are on call 24 hours a day, answering summons from the service desk.
"They get called out quite often when the students are here," according to Gary Powers, supervisor.
Security is foremost. When the University took over the Scanticon, now The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, Green and Potter changed about 500 locks overnight. Locksmiths also helped to prepare the residence halls for the 24-hour lockdown that begins this summer. Access to the halls will be by ID cards only.
Since the newest residence halls on the University Park campus are at least 40 years old and have the original locks in them, there's plenty of hardware repairs. They've come up with some creative methods. For instance the steel brushes recycled from street sweepers work dandy to repair springs on deadbolt locks.
"The West Halls locks are from the '30s and '40s," Potter said. "The manufacturer just laughed when we tried to buy parts for them."
Julie A. Brink can be reached at jab81@psu.edu.