The Memphis Police Department alerted Hutchison and MUS of a bank robbery at the Wells Fargo on Poplar Avenue that had taken place around 12:00 PM on Wednesday, September 27th. MUS as a precautionary measure decided to have a complete lockdown for the safety of their students. Hutchison, on the other hand, managed to avoid a complete lockdown due to our new security director and gate.

In a statement regarding the event Dr. Ring, head of Hutchison said “By closing all gates and having all guards (and other key personnel) alert and patrolling, we were able to be secure without causing alarm among the girls.” The new gate and the expertise of the security team allowed the school to carry on as normal and not have the school day interrupted.

Over the summer and first quarter of the 2023-2024 school year, Hutchison built a brand new gate for the entrance off of Ridgeway Road. Part of a plan to completely revamp the school security system for the new threats that schools in Memphis face. The new gate now sits closer to Ridgeway and has had a new guards house built. As well as barrier gate arms that light up green when open and red when closed.

“We had been talking about it for a little while, and then as Memphis crime rates rose it became incredibly important that every person on campus, student, faculty, staff, and parents, etc felt that we were doing everything in our power to make this the safest place possible” said Dr. Ring in a interview about the new gate. “And when we thought about the environment here, we don’t want to lose the girl’s freedom of walking from building to building so we want to control who is on our campus at all times.”

With the new gate comes a new security system. Part of the security system will include RFID readers which is a wireless system. These will read barcodes with sensors that are in the stickers that students and families traditionally get for vehicles.

“Those sensors will be picked up by the far outside lane.” continued Dr. Ring, “It will pick up the sensor of your car, the gate will open automatically and it will log that the car is on campus so we will know who is here and exactly whose car it is.”

All parents and students who drive will have to register their car to the code. If the driver doesn’t have that sticker then they will have to come to the inside lane and talk to the security guard. The barcode sticker will be sent home with the students and then the user will have to go into MyHutchison to fill out a form. After the form is filled out by the user, the school will activate the barcode.

When asked about if the new gate and security system will raise enrollment rates, Dr. Ring said this, “I do, I think every parent wants their child feels much more comfortable dropping off a student to a closed campus and so we do certainly hope it will be a attracter to anybody looking at our school.”