But Yalen says the Ad Board should not be allowed to access unreliable information.

"We felt that it would be hard for someone not to make unwarranted assumptions based on this information if it were used before the Ad Board," Yalen says.

"Just as lie detector tests can't be used in the court of law, because of the uncertainty, we felt that similarly there was too much uncertainty in this information for them to use it," he says.

Some changes are in store which may appease some students concerned with the issue of privacy. Currently whenever a card is used, the time, place and card holder's identity appears on a computer screen in the police department.

The information is used not to determine who is entering the building, but to notify police officers to close the door of an open entryway, says Lichten.

"People really have to think that there aren't that many break-ins," says Lichten. "A great advantage of this system is that it tells us that someone left the door open. That's where the great enhancement of security is."

Soon only an alarm that indicates an open door will appear on the screen and the name of the person entering the dorm will be removed, says Lichten, who is in charge of the system.

"It's just a matter of computer programming," Lichten says. "But the decision has been made to definitely not show the card holder's identity."

Nathans says the administration reacted in part to the issue of surveillance. "We were concerned about some things that we discovered about things that appeared on screens," Nathans says.

"We have asked that those things be immediately removed," she says. "We have no wish to keep track of students."

Lichten says the change was made as much for practical reasons. The alarm that will appear on the screen to indicate an open door will simplify work for the guard who watches the computer.

"We realized for a guard monitoring the system, 67,000 transactions a week was a lot of visual stuff to watch," Lichten says. "It just seemed that what we were just looking for was the alarms."

Although the time, location, and identity of the student will not appear on the screen, the information will still be recorded in the database.

Nathans says the student's card use will still be recorded so that officials may use the information to help apprehend unauthorized entry.

Once the computer is reprogrammed so that the names are no longer listed on the police's computer, officers will not be able to directly access the information.