With an addition of 49 new cameras installed around campus many students are saying they feel invaded. To me, the addition doesn’t feel any more invasive. This is a government building, trusted with keeping children safe, of course they needed more cameras.
Before adding 50 cameras on our campus we only had 32. If you think about how big and open West is, 32 wasn’t enough especially with how easy it is to just waltz right onto our school.
The only intention with installing these cameras is our safety, it’s not like there is a camera in each of our classrooms, only where they need to be. What about what happens in our stairway, and all the things that could happen that no one knows of because there’s no cameras to confirm or deny anything. The blindspots on our campus are actually dangerous to our students. If you were in charge of keeping 2257 students safe wouldn’t you want some commonly passed areas watched to make sure your students are safe? I wouldn’t know why you don’t want to make sure they are not doing anything that could hurt them or anyone else.
If anything I feel a bit safer knowing that there are a bit of extra eyes around so I know that if something does go wrong and someone does come on to our campus, we can see them sooner. Or if two students get into a fight you have more than just eyewitnesses and people involved to tell you what happened.
No one should be worried about the cameras unless they are doing anything that you wouldn’t want to get caught doing. So my advice is to not do those “extracurriculars” at school. Sure you are around a bunch of friends and smoking behind the 1000 might sound really fun, but it lacks a lot of common sense and you will not have fun in ISS. This is a school, not a hotbox. All you have to do is act mostly decent for seven hours out of your day, and the cameras aren’t a problem. At most if you are behaving the only thing you’ll have to worry about is being watched walking out of breath to your next class. Everyone can hear your heavy breathing anyways, what matters if you’re on camera.
So all in all, the cameras are not a problem. This is a school and being in charge of over 2000 students is a huge responsibility. A little bit of surveillance won’t hurt you, if anything it could help you.