The De Anza College Physical Education and Athletics complex has been forced to lock all but two of its doors for at least a month after the county of Santa Clara found it violated state safety regulation.
In the meantime, even with the closures, the complex remains open. Signs outside the building direct students to use alternative entrances to the pool and the attached facilities. Students with disabilities are directed to call the Foothill-De Anza Police Department for help accessing the P.E. complex.
For public pools, “gates and doors shall be equipped with self-closing and self-latching devices. The self-latching device shall keep the gate or door securely closed,” according to the California Building Standards Code §3119 (B) 2.
“Our electronic system does not latch the gate, so we have to change the hardware to meet the requirement,” Interim Director of College Operations Manny DaSilva said.
DaSilva said these upgrades would take four to six weeks to complete.
“It (the new latches and hardware) has to be installed, then another contractor has to do the electronic lock,” DaSilva said.
The door closures primarily impact student athletes and students taking P.E. classes, who use the sports complex’s pool, lockers and training rooms.
Track and field runner Jonathan Velasquez, 19, kinesiology major, said that getting to and from the complex’s facilities “would just take so much time.”
“Doing sports, you have to be there at a certain time,” Velasquez said. “That (the bottleneck) would just make it even worse.”
Robert Peng, 18, computer science major and soccer player said that despite not using the P.E. facilities, the state violation is “not the best.”
“The pool is still open and all of that, just the access has changed,” DaSilva said.
