Students who live on campus lost access to their residence halls Saturday morning when the GWorld system went down.

The GWorld card office is trying to determine the cause of the failure that left students propping open front doors and waiting for elevators, as card readers both inside and outside of most residence halls failed.

“We’re trying to figure out what happened,” said GWorld Program Manager Michele Neyers. “We made a lot of changes and additions over the summer and the system didn’t get its true test until the students arrived.”

“When I left (New Hall) at 10:30 a.m., I noticed students were waiting outside to enter,” senior Kristy Croushore said. “When I came home later on, someone had propped the front doors open but I still had to wait for an elevator to come down.”

Most residence halls were affected by the system’s glitch, but the Smith Center and other University buildings had no problems.

“Our only problem was that some of the new and returning students’ cards weren’t reading yet,” said Nhan Ho, a facilities manager in the Smith Center. “We sent those students to the GWorld office.”

Freshman Kim Comstock, a commuter student, said her card did not work at Gelman Library, but other students and faculty members entered without a problem.

Security is an issue when doors are propped open, but University Police Department Director Dolores Stafford said residence halls actually are more safe when the card readers fail because the doors remain locked.

Neyers said she hasn’t heard of any security-related problems resulting from the system failure.

Students should contact UPD when similar problems occur on weekends, Neyers said.

“UPD has a way of reaching us if there is a card reader problem,” she said. “Once we were made aware of the problem on Saturday, it was restored.”

“The front doors in Munson Hall wouldn’t open for me,” resident Jessica Hassett said. “I had no problem using the elevators.”

Hassett said she did not have a problems using her debit account in J Street Saturday.

Neyers said the GWorld staff will “take a breather” this week to determine how to prevent similar problems in the future.

“If it is something we can prevent, we have to try to,” she said. “We planned for some start-up glitches that come with any new system, and we’ve been taking notes.”