Saint Louis University is having its locks changed; 707 to be exact. Residents in Marchetti Towers East and West and the Grand Forest Apartment were given notice on Feb. 3 that their locks and keys had to be changed due to a “misplaced” master key set for those buildings.

According to Department of Public Safety and Security Services Sergeant Pasquale Signorino, a DPSSS officer misplaced the keys during the first week of February and that officer has no idea were they are.

“We think the keys are somewhere in a pile of snow and rather than take the time to go through all the snow and everything, we are concerned about the students’ safety, and that is why the cores were all changed,” Signorino said. “It was human error, it was something that we were very concerned about and we acted as a result and hopefully it won’t happen again.”

Signorino ensured that the keys that were lost are no longer able to open the doors to those residence halls since the cores of the locks were all changed. It cost $11,400 and about 270 man hours by the University Facilities Services staff to change all of the locks and to make new keys for all residence in the residence halls, according to Vice President for Facilities Management and Civic Affairs Kathleen Brady.

According to Signorino, DPSSS has changed its policy on the way they handle the keys and “the possibility of us losing keys is very remote now.”

DPSSS has a key for each beat or post an officer will patrol for easy access to the buildings incase of an emergency. The key set that was lost was able to access the main doors for the Marchetti Tower and Grand Forest individual apartments. Signorino said that no instance of anyone accessing those building with the keys during the change was reported.

Though no incidents were reported, Vice President for Student Development Kent Porterfield felt that this matter was in need of an immediate response.

“When you have a key out there that can access student housing, you don’t want to leave that to chance,” Porterfield said. “Human error does happen; I mean, I have lost my car keys before.”

Grand Forest resident senior Amelia Blanton was one of the students who had to have their keys replaced. She was notified by her resident advisor in person about the changes and was also e-mailed by the Department of Housing and Residence Life.

“I thought that the University did a great job of being so open with this process, but I mean how do you lose something like that? You can lose a lot of things but that is a big deal to lose something that important,” Blanton said.

The new director of Housing and Residence Life Joshua Walehwa also felt that this situation needed to be immediately communicated to students. Walehwa addressed the inconvenience some students are feeling with these changes.

“I’m sorry that you are having to deal with this. We hope that you trust us and despite the inconvenience, we are taking the best steps to ensure your safety,” Walehwa said.