Denny’s, the American diner chain, used to be open on Christmas Day. From its conception in 1953 until 1988, its doors remained open 24 hours a day, seven days a week — zero exceptions.

That is until 1988, when the company decided to close its restaurants for one day out of the year so that Denny’s employees could spend Christmas Day with their families instead of serving food to other families.

The only problem is that many of its restaurants had no locks. Some restaurants had locks, but the keys were long lost and forgotten about. Throughout the year in 1988, Denny’s spent time and money replacing or adding about 700 locks to restaurants around the country.

Now it’s 2017 and Seattle University doesn’t have locks in their classrooms.

Last week, Public Safety sent out an email to the university saying that they will be adding locks to classrooms over the next few months. Therefore, the locks might not even be fully added until 2018.

Again, Denny’s installed locks in 1988. Seattle U is adding them in 2018.

I think this is astounding to due the university’s location in the heart of Seattle.

Unlike Denny’s, there’s lots of times where classrooms may need to be locked. We have an open campus in downtown Seattle. Anyone can walk onto our campus and enter any building they would like to during the day.

In the email, Public Safety said that classrooms were “by design” left without locks, which is a failed design aspect. They cited classroom transitions as the main concern, but realistically that argument is pretty unfounded.

Seattle U has 10 minutes in between classes, and an average class size of 20.. In middle school, I had 5 minutes to go to my next class with a average class size of 30 students , and we made it on time every single day. And those doors were lockable.

Further, Public Safety is requesting for the doors to be unlocked except in cases of emergencies, so I’m really failing to see how this would impede the speed of transitions.

It really just sounds like Seattle U was cheap awhile back, and now that Americans are shooting up public places from coast to coast on a higher frequency than ever before, students might be a little concerned about having zero lockable classroom doors.

—Anna Kaplan, News Editor