Dining Halls Introduce New Swipes

When students swipe their Harvard ID cards in dining halls starting this Monday, they’ll need to flip them upside down.

Instead of using the large stripe, students will need to start swiping with the smaller stripe to get into dining halls, to use Crimson Cash or Board Plus, and for M2 shuttle rides.

The decision to switch to the small stripe was made for security purposes, according to Harvard University Dining Services officials.

“It’s just a more secure technology,” said Crista Martin, director of marketing and communications for HUDS. “Separating personal information from that transaction is what makes [the new stripe] more secure.”

Last January, Theodore R. Pak ’09 was caught creating duplicate Harvard IDs that could potentially have been used to access Crimson Cash accounts.

The big stripe on the top of the backside of the Harvard ID is associated with the Harvard University Identification Number. Neither the ID number nor the big stripe will work in the dining halls after the switch takes place.

If students forget their IDs, swipers will have backup cards to let students eat while they are getting used to the new system, Martin said.

The switch does not require new card readers.

The second stripe is only on new ID cards, which undergraduates and house affiliates received in September. The remainder of the campus will get new cards from the University in December and January, HUDS Executive Director Ted A. Meyer said Monday on the HUDS blog.

Students interviewed were generally unaware that the switch was going to take place, despite the fact that dining halls have displayed information about the change on signs and on tables.

Regina H. Higgins, a card swiper in Winthrop House, said nobody had told her the date of the switch but that she thinks essentially everything “will be the same.”

The new ID cards have two stripes, an antenna, and an embedded chip inside.

“They have all the best card technology in them,” Martin said.

Students will ruin the chip if they punch a hole in their card to attach it to a key chain.

Bonnie Kimball, a swiper in Leverett House, said that she has been telling students about this chip and so far hasn’t noticed any holes in cards.