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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Schools or Jails |
Current rating: 0 |
by Oread Daily
(No verified email address) |
07 Feb 2002
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Hard to tell |
SCHOOLS OR JAILS
I know things have changed a great deal since I was in high school. I’m aware of school shootings and all that. However, schools today are increasingly looking like prisons and kids are being stripped of pretty much all their rights. At Fremont High School in East Oakland, California a new state-of-the-art surveillance system is being installed which school officials say will reduce crime and truancy. However, some students and others contend the powerful security cameras and two-way microphones in school hallways violate students' privacy rights. Fremont's 32 security cameras allow administrators and school security guards to keep an eye on almost every corner of the East Oakland campus, at the corner of High Street and Foothill Boulevard. Some cameras are capable of zooming in to identify students -- or even read the name on a bag of potato chips -- up to two blocks away, and film 24 hours a day. The school is also installing 10 two-way microphones on campus so administrators and security officers in the control room can speak to and listen to students. "I don't believe it's a violation of privacy. ... The cameras are just an extension of our eyes," Assistant Vice Principal Ben Schmookler said (I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have looking out for my rights then a vice-principal). "I think (the cameras) are good because at least they keep the campus safe. It doesn't bother me," sophomore Darnell Lee said. Many other students disagree. "It feels like we're in jail here," junior Michael Smith said. "They might as well just put us in orange jump suits with numbers on them." Junior Jadel McField said Fremont students need new books more than security cameras. The local ACLU says students are being sent the message that they cannot be trusted and that the right to privacy is frivolous.
This is hardly a local issue. School administrators around the country have spent thousands installing metal detectors, surveillance cameras and door locks, hiring extra security guards, conducting personal searches and keeping student "profile" records. In one Michigan town, for example, the Sheriff’s Department can now watch students in school from their patrol cars. Is it any wonder then that at a roundtable forum sponsored by the National Association of Attorneys General in October of 2000, students voiced their concerns to a panel of school administrators and top law enforcement officials. "When I get up to go to school in the morning," said one student, "I don't want to feel like I'm going to a correctional facility."
John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group in Charlottesville, said any security benefits are minimal at best and overshadowed by the atmosphere of paranoia they create. "Do we want another Columbine? No. But do we want to turn our kids into paranoid, underground freaks?" Whitehead said. 'If you film kids, they'll hide, I think it's dangerous stuff."
The Boulder Valley School District in Colorado has recently spent up to $840,000 for new security cameras in schools. The cameras are part of a school district security upgrade package that could cost up to $1.5 million. The New York-based Sentry Technology Corporation has reported that 5 to 10 percent of its $30 million in annual sales of closed-circuit TVs comes from schools.
While generalized suspicionless surveillance is problematic, the enhanced ability of cameras to zoom, pan, and magnify raise special privacy concerns. For example, zooming in to see what books a student is carrying or similar use of cameras should be considered an obvious violation of a whole variety of rights.
And yet what do these cameras actually accomplish. While surveillance cameras may reduce the incidence of minor crimes, like graffiti and vandalism, if their goal is to deter violent attacks, there is no evidence that they are a solution. Impulsive or alienated children often act without considering future consequences or the presence of cameras, and determined violators simply move out of camera range. At Columbine video cameras were in place. They provided the media and the police with a post massacre replay view that meant nothing.
Sources: Detroit News, Oakland Tribune, GRIPP, ACLU/Boulder, National ACLU, Daily Camera, Daily Progress, Wiretap
The Oread Daily provides daily (Monday-Friday) progressive, left, anti-racist, anarchist, commie, activist, environmental, Marxist, revolutionary, etc. news and information from around the US and around the world. The Oread Daily was a mimeographed sheet that came out first in the summer of 1970 in Lawrence, Kansas. It was irreverent, radical, spicy, revolutionary et. al. Now, three decades later it returns. To view the entire Oread Daily, please visit: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OreadDaily |
