Facial Recognition

Scan Your Face To Enter Your Dorm? University of Kentucky Installs Facial Recognition Tech Around Campus

The rationale for AI facial scanning—to prevent bad actors from following students into buildings—makes little sense.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown | 9.23.2026 11:34 AM

Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL Add Reason to Google

Media Contact & Reprint Requests

(Fatima Ruiz/Midjourney.)

Once upon a time, college students twisted keys into corresponding locks on residence hall doors to reach their dorm room. Then the process changed to plastic cards, swiped against an entryway box. Now, the latest frontier for college students trying to get to their dorms is AI-enabled facial recognition technology. Yikes!

The University of Kentucky is currently experimenting with this new setup. Facial scanners powered by artificial intelligence have been installed outside several residence halls on its Lexington campus.

You are reading Sex & Tech, from Elizabeth Nolan Brown. Get more of Elizabeth's sex, tech, bodily autonomy, law, and online culture coverage.

Instagram

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Email(Required)

SUBSCRIBE

The scan-your-face-for-admittance program is voluntary—for now.

But it portends a potentially unsettling direction for the University of Kentucky and U.S. colleges more broadly. Before long, students across the country may have to submit biometric data just to enter the buildings where they have been assigned to live.

Wait, but Why?

It's part of the inevitable and seemingly unending slog of privacy-invading protocols sold as solutions to problems that are minor or don't really exist.

What was wrong with key cards? The old technology seems perfectly sufficient. Sure, students might........

© Reason.com