Nearly two years after the Yale College Council first proposed the measure, the administration has begun to install locks on bedroom doors in residential colleges.

In an effort to increase security within the colleges, Yale Facilities installed locks on nearly 389 doors in Berkeley College, Silliman College and Arnold Hall this summer. Individual door locks were also included in the Calhoun College renovation.

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Each lock costs between $120 and $180, and the locks purchased this summer cost a total of around $56,000, Norman Brody, the associate director of locks facilities, said.

A series of petty thefts in 2007 prompted the YCC to pass a resolution calling for the installation of locks on individual bedroom doors within suites, in addition to the locks already present on suite doors. In March 2008, the administration approved the resolution but difficulty securing the funding, as well as logistical issues with fire codes and coordinating with residential college masters’ offices, led to over a year of delay.

All newly renovated colleges will have individual locks, Council of Masters Chair Jonathan Holloway said. In addition, facilities plans to install locks in Branford and Jonathan Edwards colleges next summer when students are out of the rooms. Beyond this, the administration does not know the order in which locks will be added to colleges, though locks have been approved for all 12.

“It was a lot of hardware,” Brody said. “Master keying is kind of a hard exercise.”

The five colleges whose installations are currently unscheduled are Davenport, Pierson, Timothy Dwight, Trumbull and Saybrook.