To the Panther Family,
Last spring, we held a very productive safety town hall meeting with the university community regarding ways to continue to secure our campus spaces. We discussed several security improvements that we implemented last year, including upgrades to campus lighting and parking lot infrastructure. We also received great feedback from the community including three specific recommendations.
The first recommendation was to extend our bus routes to match our library’s business hours. We also heard a need to add emergency training for residence hall employees, and the third recommendations was to limit access to our buildings after hours.
When you ask, we listen.
The day after the town hall, we extended our blue, green and purple bus routes until 2 a.m. We revamped our incident response training and added additional active shooter FEMA modules for our residence hall employees.
In response to the request to limit building access, we are pleased to announce that we are piloting a program beginning Monday, Aug. 28, to add PantherCard swipe access to Atlanta Campus building exteriors after 8 p.m. As you are likely aware, the majority of our Atlanta Campus buildings are closed to the public at 11 p.m. at the latest. This change will limit access to our buildings just to our university community between the hours of 8 p.m. through 11 p.m., Monday through Friday. Swipe card access will also be required before 7:30 a.m.The Student Center and other buildings that hold evening events open to the public will have protocols in place to allow community access. Buildings that already require 24-hour card access will not be affected.
Our goal is to control access and monitor who is in our spaces after regular business hours.
If you do not have your PantherCard or are locked out of a building after hours, please call 404-413-3333 for assistance. If you need to replace or update your PantherCard, please visit our PantherCard office between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 5:15 p.m., Monday through Friday. Your first PantherCard is free, and replacements are $25. We are offering a discounted replacement fee of $10 until Aug. 28 to encourage our community to get a card.
In addition, 55 Park Place and the University Commons have been designated as “Panther Places.” Panther Places are facilities that will always be staffed with security 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so that the university community always has places the Atlanta Campus that are open and secure to seek refuge in the event of an emergency. These new Panther Places will be prominently featured as part of the campus wayfinding initiative that we will be announcing in the coming weeks.
Your Georgia State Administration will always listen closely, plan carefully and roll out improvements to facilitate the experience that our students, faculty and staff deserve and require to be successful. Never hesitate to share your ideas and to let us know how we are doing.