Sunday, February 16th, 2014

This is a card swiper outside the North Quad building, where the University of Michigan’s School of Information is housed. Notice how the area where the card should be swiped is filled up? Yeah, if you are in the know, then you realize that our student ID cards now have RFID tags and so you can just hold up the card to the front of the card swiper to get access after-hours. If you aren’t in the know, then you have to search out the sign which tries to explain this method (and the sign is not right next to the card swiper!).

This joins a litany of other inconveniences associated with North Quad – for instance, the ground floor is actually one story up, so there is no way to access the building without first going up a set of stairs. North Quad is actually two buildings – one academic and one residential – but they are only joined through the basement level. And so depending on what side of the building you enter from, you frequently have to go up one set of stairs, then down another, then up another, and you still might not be on the right level.

For anyone needing wheelchair access to this building, it would be a complete nightmare.

To top it off, here’s a lovely temporary sign that was put up last week next to the card swipers.

---