Campus experiences access control outage

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include the most recent Hawkwatch alerts. 

A Hawkwatch alert stating Lehigh’s campus was experiencing access control failures was sent to the campus community at 8:21 a.m. today. 

The alert said the control failures occurred due to complications in an overnight system update, and control panels in each building are being reset, which could take up to 30 minutes.

Staff are manually unlocking doors to academic buildings, the Clayton University Center and E.W. Fairchild Martindale Library, the alert said. 

At 9:43 a.m., an updated Hawkwatch alert was sent to the community that said a significant number of buildings were still offline due to the access control outage, including many residential buildings.

The updated alert said Campus Safety teams “continue to prioritize manual access for residential buildings and critical areas.”

A third Hawkwatch alert was sent at 11:08 a.m. that stated the access control outage was still occurring. Johnson Controls and Campus Safety have restored over half of the affected panels, and will continue to monitor the situation, the alert said.

The third alert stated that full access control is estimated to be restored within the next two hours.

At 1:48 p.m., a fourth Hawkwatch alert stated access control had been restored to the majority of campus buildings. The alert said crews are continuing to work on control panels at 125 Goodman Dr., an access panel at Building C on Mountaintop Campus and the doors to Zoellner Arts Center.

The Lehigh University Police Department declined to comment on the access control outage at this time. 

This is a developing story. Check back for more updates.