TAMU Law and security partner featured in Security Magazine

Posted by Texas A&M School of Law on Dec 2, 2020 11:53:54 AM

SEC1220-Cover-Feat-slide1_900px.jpegMatt Pellegrino, Facilities Manager, Texas A&M University School of Law (left) and Eric Baze, Security Account Manager, Allied Universal Security Services (right)

The following excerpt appears in the December 2020 issue of Security Magazine and is republished with permission. Read the full article here.

In normal times, Texas A&M University School of Law in downtown Fort Worth, which offers Master of Laws (LL.M.) and Master of Jurisprudence (M.Jur.) degrees in addition to the standard J.D., is buzzing with activity. Located about 200 miles away from the University’s main campus in a stand-alone building, the law school hired Allied Universal a year ago to patrol its indoor facilities and outdoor parking lots.

In Allied Universal’s first weeks on the job, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and Texas Supreme Court made separate appearances at the school to hear cases. “It required a higher level of security to make sure everything went smoothly,” says Matt Pellegrino, Facilities Manager with the law school.

Given the downtown location and proximity to highways and public transportation, you never know who’s going to walk in the door, Pellegrino says, nor do you know who’s going to meander onto surface parking lots in an area with a sizable homeless population. “[Allied Universal is] managing the parking lots but also being the eyes and ears inside the building,” he says.

The level of activity in and around the building has dropped somewhat since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, although the school reopened this fall after closing in the spring. Allied Universal has needed to add a fourth guard to the mix, because, in order to socially distance classes adequately, Texas A&M has rented conference room space in a nearby hotel, Pellegrino says.

“Prior to spring break, we were very, very busy with different events, and a lot of different people coming in,” he says. “Then the pandemic came in and put the brakes on everything.” This fall, “Large classes are over at the hotel. It’s not quite as busy over here at times, as it would be in a normal semester.”

The law school has made a number of changes to access amid COVID-19, including closing off access doors to the main building to channel everyone through the front entrance; made hallways and stairwells directional; limited elevators to two people; and also made masks mandatory. Pellegrino notes that the guarding staff is responsible for politely but firmly enforcing all of those new changes.

Continue reading the full article here.

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Topics: Texas A&M University School of Law, tamu law, faculty and staff, Texas A&M Law, allied universal, security magazine

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About Texas A&M School of Law

Texas A&M School of Law is an American Bar Association-accredited institution located in downtown Fort Worth. Since integrating with Texas A&M University in 2013, the law school has sustained a remarkable upward trajectory — dramatically increasing entering class credentials; improving U.S. News and World Report rankings; hiring more than 30 new faculty members; and adding more than 10 clinics and six global field study destinations. In the past several years the law school has greatly expanded its academic programs to serve the needs of non-lawyer professionals in a variety of complex and highly regulated industries such as cybersecurity, energy and natural resources, finance, and healthcare.

For more information, visit law.tamu.edu.

About Texas A&M University

Texas A&M, established in 1876 as the first public university in Texas, is one of the nation’s largest universities with more than 66,000 students and more than 440,000 living alumni residing in over 150 countries around the world. A tier-one university, Texas A&M holds the rare triple land-, sea- and space-grant designation. Research conducted at Texas A&M represented annual expenditures of more than $905.4 million in fiscal year 2017. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation and world.

About Research at Texas A&M University

As one of the world's leading research institutions, Texas A&M is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery, including that of science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M represented annual expenditures of more than $905.4 million in fiscal year 2017. Texas A&M ranked in the top 20 of the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development survey (2016), based on expenditures of more than $892.7 million in fiscal year 2016. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation and world.

To learn more, visit http://research.tamu.edu.