Ach, Bielefeld Universitätsicherheit

As some of you may know, universities in Germany were until very recently completely free. Nowadays most of the states in Germany charge 500 euro per semester from Students, which is not that much, but it's not peanuts either.

The state of Nordrhein-Westfalen, where Bielefeld lies, were clever. They decided that they would leave the decision of whether to charge students money for tuition to the universities.
Of course the students have organized and protested. At the big meeting where the university managers had to decide on whether to demand the money, the students tunred on the fire alarm as an act of protest.

Later, I hear, some of the students fought with the security guards because they wouldn't let any students near the part of the building where the meeting was held. And here comes the funny part.
One of the students grabbed a master-key off one of the guards - a key that can open any door at the university. The university kept it quite for 3 days, and afterwards they made it public that a master-key was stolen. This key is worth about 1 million euro, and can open about 10,000 doors! Now it will take the university a long time to replace All the locks in all the rooms at the university...

In the computer world this is called a Single Point of Failure. Why on earth do security guards in the university walk around with million euro keys?!? Why is this key not in a safe somewhere? Why is there even a key that can open every door? Why not have seperate keys for every floor? The mind boggles..

The bottom line, we're not supposed to leave our precious belongings in our offices for now, cause a master key was stolen. Although, the guy who grabbed it probably isn't a thief.
The university is starting the lock change with the most important 500 doors on campus... it's probably going to take them months.. the absurd is that they probably will just make another master-key for the new locks.

So that's the story about the security in Bielefeld.

Watch out for the Videos from Berlin (and the love parade) soon.