On March 2, I attended the most recent WSA meeting, during which there was a discussion of Wesleyan’s camera surveillance policy, which is currently being written in the Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC). I believe it will go to the Student Life Committee (SLC) on Thursday and be voted on after Spring Break.
While most of the discussion centered on the specific language of the policy, there was no real discussion over whether such a policy should exist.
Here’s my understanding of the policy: Primarily, the goal is to deter crime by causing fear in potential criminals using signs and cameras to indicate that they are under surveillance. Secondarily, the cameras will be used to prosecute criminals after a crime occurs. The video footage will not be viewed live but only after a crime has occurred, and tapes will be destroyed after thirty days. Footage will not be used to penalize an underage student carrying a forty into High Rise but it will be used to identify “suspicious people” lurking around High Rise after a theft has occurred.
I’m grateful for the provisions that seek to limit the abuse of the power of surveillance, but the policy as a whole deserves questioning. Even assuming that the cameras will deter crime, why has it been proposed that a camera be installed in the science center lobby? The rationale behind this is that any space open 24 hours a day should be under surveillance. Why? To deter the crime that doesn’t happen? To the best of my knowledge, the science center lobby is not a “dangerous” place on campus. If we get to the point where cameras are actually being installed on campus, I hope they will be justified with publicly available documentation of crime that has occurred there and subsequent studies of whether or not the camera has caused crime to go down, but I hope we don’t even get that far.
Let me get deeper into the issue. What does it mean when I write in the previous paragraph “dangerous place on campus?” Other proposed locations for cameras are the Public Safety building, Vine Street parking lot, and the High Rise and Low Rise area “ the edges of campus. Even my previous argument that a science center camera is ridiculous, as opposed to other locations, falls in the dominant way of thinking that justifies surveillance along the border of campus.
As someone said to me, it’s really easy to see this policy as targeted at keeping Middletown residents off campus. I’m told that signs stating “THIS AREA IS UNDER VIDEO SURVEILLANCE” are meant to deter petty theft, but I wonder what else they deter, purposefully or not. Perhaps any sense of welcome or openness? As a major institution in this city, we have an obligation to the public, but rather than doing things to open up the campus we’re becoming increasingly paranoid of the safety and security of the Wesleyan community and property. Last semester at talk in High Rise Professor Mandi Isaacs Jackson referenced a study of “conceptual maps” of young people in the area around Yale, and some of them were under the impression that it was illegal for them to walk through the campus! Do we want to head in this direction? Instead, why not make the library more accessible? Or Freeman? Why not build an outdoor basketball court that can be shared by Wesleyan and non-Wesleyan people alike?
Aside from this message of separation implied by this new camera policy, what will be the real effects in terms of deterring crime? If people want to steal something they can easily cover their face. At a campus where racial profiling is not uncommon, will video footage of supposed “criminals” really increase the safety of the community? If this institution cares about the safety of its students, how about dealing more seriously with the realities of sexual assault on campus?
This new camera policy follows the worldwide trend of increasing privatization, partition, and paranoia. We are losing the commons ” public spaces where we can interact with each other as individuals without some higher power looming over our head. I realize that we do live on a private campus, but the university’s actions determine to what degree it functions as a private or public space. Twenty-four hour surveillance taints public spaces, invades our personal privacy, and only opens the door for more surveillance.
At the WSA meeting, after asking how much this surveillance policy would cost, I learned that the money would come from the university’s central budget, but no one could tell me how much money would be required (which I believe must be included in Dave Meyer’s original proposal). I find it sad that NY Times readership program faces so many threatened funding cuts, yet the people with the power to approve campus surveillance are not even working with an estimate of its financial cost.
While most of the concern over this new policy appears to be whether students will get in trouble for carrying a beer, I’m afraid other, more serious concerns are being forgotten, or not even acknowledged. I hope everyone seriously considers the consequences of such a policy and that the university heads in a new direction in regards to creating a safe campus. The Ride is a great service for people who don’t feel comfortable walking home at night. Surveillance cameras? Not so much.
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