Iowa is the latest state to consider the role of the student ID card for voter identification at the polls. Specifically, Iowa’s two major state institutions, Iowa State University and the University of Iowa, are taking different stances on the matter.

Students at the University of Wisconsin Madison are appealing to state lawmakers to make the university’s student ID card, the Wiscard, a valid form of identification at the voting booth. A student group has highlighted the lack of a cardholder signature, and a five year card expiration period as being key barriers to the campus card being valid for Wisconsin state voting.

Manhattan College is enacting more stringent access control policies around residence hall entry. Beginning this semester, the college will enforce mandatory 24-hour sign-in for anyone wanting to enter a residence hall that is not their own.

The University of Notre Dame is changing its access control policies around the use of student Irish1Cards at campus residence halls. The change will now only permit students to access their own residence hall with a student ID card, replacing a previous policy that enabled students to access all campus residence halls via the Irish1Card.

Ohio State University will no longer charge its students a fee when using campus laundry facilities. The move to a free model is set to take effect for all on-campus students starting with this fall semester, and was inspired in part by policies in place at other institutions.

Tyler Hansen, VP of Sales and Business Development at Luxer One discusses the company’s smart locker solutions for higher education. With a host of locker solutions tailored specifically to the college campus, Luxer One is deploying smart lockers for package pick up and return, for use in campus mailrooms, and fully featured self-contained smart locker rooms for unattended environments.

King’s College London, located in the center of the capital, has revamped its campus security and access control measures. Comprising the college’s access control system are solutions from Gallagher, along with integrations with other security components including Assa Abloy’s Aperio technology for security at individual doors.

Pennsylvania’s Bloomsburg University has long been using its leftover dining funds to stock the shelves of the local food pantry, and donates more than a ton of food and thousands of dollars in meal-plan funds each year. And a more unique use of the donations, is in the Bloomsburg Food Cup­board’s bagging of breakfast, lunch and snacks for elementary students from under privileged families to take home each weekend.

A law passed in North Carolina this week could carve an easier path for student IDs to be used for voter identification in the state. The new iteration of a law initially passed late in 2018 removes some of the problematic language of the initial law, and is the latest development in a back and forth debate between lawmakers and university administrators in the state.

Food insecurity is a growing issue for students across the country, leading to meal-donation programs popping up on campuses across the country. But the University of California, Merced’s iCare meal donation program has set the bar particularly high both in terms of the service it provides and how the system has been implemented.