Approximately four weeks ago, when Harvard detectives stopped a suspect for stealing wallets near Harvard's athletic facilities, they received a somewhat an unusual admission of guilt.

"The suspect told us that because of the new card key system in the Yard, he had to move his trade to the athletic facilities," says Sgt. Lawrence J. Fennelly, the Harvard officer in charge of crime prevention.

With Cambridge crime on the rise and the College searching for new ways to protect its students, officials looked for a solution by installing an electronic card key system in the first-year dormitories and 29 Garden St.

The card keys, to be installed in all of the College's residential houses, raised questions of Harvard's ability to restrict students' access to dorms electronically.

Jewish students who observe religious laws forbidding the use of electricity during the Sabbath have expressed concern about having to use electronic keys.

In addition, students have worried that key card entry data could be used as circumstantial evidence by the College's Administrative Board against students in disciplinary proceedings.

And if student concerns weren't enough, the College was also left to contend with system sabotage, exemplified last fall by vandals who damaged a card key validator by filling it with glue.

So Par a Success

Despite these concerns, Harvard police say the card keys have stemmed the number of break-ins at first-year dorms. "My instinct is to say that crimes have gone down," says Harvard police Lt. Charles Schwab.

"[The system] is reducing crime," says Fennelly. "I'd project that crime in the last nine months is less than the previous school year. In the summer we'll do a study to see what the figures look like."

Acting Director of the Office of Physical Resources Michael N. Lichten says Harvard police had conducted a limited study of the effect of the card keys in the Union dorms. "The number of incidents dropped," Lichten says.

Card Keys In the Houses

The University may install the card key system at three of the College's residential houses as early as this summer, Lichten says. "We're investigating the technical issues and getting prices in," he says. The houses currently under examination are North, Quincy and Mather, according to Lichten.

The University's new multipurpose identification cards, which will be issued next fall, could facilitate the use of the card key system at the houses. The new student IDs will harness state-of-the-art magnetic strips compatible with the electronic access system.

Under the current system, a computer in the Yard superintendent's office records the time of use, location of entrance and owner of the card key every time a student enters a door. The information is stored by the University in a computer database and erased one month later.

More importantly, because the cards are individually coded, the University can regulate when and if a student's card can open a specific door. The cards have been used 67,000 times per week in the Yard, according to University officials.

Access to certain parts of the Yard, like the East Yard, can be denied to students from the West Yard after a preset hour. Some first-years, unhappy with what they perceived as a damper on their social hours, successfully lobbied Dean of Freshmen Elizabeth S. Nathans, to extend visiting hours last fall.

Despite the increased access, some students, such as Robert W. Yalen '95, assistant director for student affairs at the Civil Liberties Union of Harvard (CLUH), warned about the potential for abuse of the information stored in the computer database in the security services office at 29 Garden St.

"The Ad Board should not be able to access the card key information because the information is very prejudicial and circumstantial," Yalen said.

In a meeting with Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 in February, Yalen discussed a proposal which he submitted to Jewett in November. Approximately one month after Yalen's meeting with Jewett, the Administrative Board passed a policy restricting the release of information recorded by student's electronic card keys.

The new policy prohibits the University from releasing the records of the use of a student's card key unless the release has been specifically authorized by the student or the dean of the College.

Information logged via card keys will be released under the new agreement to University police "under circumstances when the information is important in investigating a crime or other incident related to campus security."

For observant Jewish first-year students, the use of card keys has proven a particularly prickly issue.

To meet their concerns, the College this year adopted a new escort program, in which escorts would open doors for observant Jewish students during limited hours of the Sabbath.

Next year, these students will be housed in Matthews and Hurlbut halls, where they can use metal keys to enter side doors on the Sabbath, according to College housing officials