To provide faculty and staff members with an extra level of security, facility services staff members will be installing 269 peep holes in doors across campus beginning Oct.28.

Kyle Owen, assistant vice president of facility services, said, “Last fall I got an email from Dr. Carlson. It had been suggested that we add peepholes to faculty offices.”

Faculty members discussed getting peepholes at the Faculty Senate meetings in response to campus shooting incidents. A few faculty members thought that peepholes were a preventative solution to be able to see a visitor if their office door was closed.

Owen said, “We had very little money for Higher Education Assistance Funds, money the state gives us every year to keep the place going.”

He said he had about $10,000 to use for the installations. Each of which cost about $35 a piece, about $9,400 total.

“The objective was that if you didn’t have a way to look out, you were getting one. If a professor didn’t want it, they could request not to have it,” Owen said. “The intention wasn’t to make it optional, the next person may have an incident [where they could have benefited by having a peephole].”

J.B. Scales, assistant professor of biology, said, “I told them I didn’t want one. No thanks. I didn’t want to have to move the stuff off my door and I am very seldom in my office with the door closed.”

However, he said, the could be beneficial for the same reason people have one in their house.

A peephole allows the person on the inside to look outside without opening the door.

Becky Green, assistant professor of English, said “when I’m up here working by myself, late at night I’ll appreciate it.” On the other hand she said, she wouldn’t be able to see if someone has a gun through a peephole.