Students are required to pay considerably larger fees to replace lost cards, but do not have to pay for stolen or broken cards.

"If a card is stolen, and the student files a police report specifically indicating that the card was stolen and presents a copy of that report, the student will not be charged," Wamback reports. "We have no desire to charge a student who has been victimized. If the student so wishes, we will take a new image before the card is reissued. The same is true for broken cards that have not been abused."

Plus, unlike ATM cards, students don't have to worry about the magnetic strip being erased.

"Harvard cards are much more resistant to erasure than ATM cards," Wamback says. "The only time we've heard of an erasure was in an MRI. Any card can be worn out, but that too is a very unusual because the annual expiration and replacement schedule for all cards minimizes any negative impact on convenience. Failure rates are therefore extremely low."

But in case you are planning to save your card forever, Wamback says that "all cards of this type...will break between two and three years because of the hardening tendency inherent in this kind of plastic."

Switching the System

According to Lichten, universal keycard access looms as a distinct possibility in the near future.

Most card readers are set up to accommodate only the residents of a particular House or dorm, Lichten says, meaning that the switch to universal access would mandate a memory increase in many of the older readers. However, Lichten says that some of the newer systems are capable of handling the increased swipe load without modification.

Take, for example, Quincy House, which has been experimenting with universal access since late-October, the longest time period for any House.

"The main doors at Quincy had been sized to accommodate the 400 students," Lichten says. "With the possibility of 6,500 students, the system needed more memory."

In most cases, such a memory upgrade is all that is needed to convert a door panel to universal access.

Cynthia Langille, Yard Operations and Access Control Systems Coordinator for FAS Physical Resources, says that in Houses with more recently-installed card readers, switching to universal access simply means making technical changes to an already existant system rather than adding equipment.

"We've had requests for equipment upgrades, but we haven't installed new equipment specifically for universal access," she says.

Both Langille and Lichten say the switch is "not a big deal," and Lichten adds that "it's something that has to be done."

Lichten also says the cost of the switch is not, nor should it be, part of the equation.