5. Surveillance or Law Enforcement


Surveillance technology has become so common in our everyday lives that we rarely bat an eye at another security camera watching us. Walking through Walmart, you see yourself caught on many different cameras. In the makeup aisles, there are video screens that say, “recording in progress.” At the self-checkout, these same screens are right in your face.  

In the Honors Hall dorm, there are a lot of video cameras around the building. When you walk into the lobby on first floor, there are at least 2 cameras that would catch you unlocking the door to walk in. There are 2-3 cameras in each floor’s ‘lobby,’ and 3 going down the hallways. There is one camera on the first floor in the stairwell, but as soon as you walk out of the stairwell, there is another camera.  

In the Agriculture building, there will be at least one camera you see as soon as you walk into any of the doors. However, there are no cameras pointed at the parking lot behind the building. I work in the greenhouse and head house that are behind the building, and there are no cameras in or pointing at either of those places, as far as I am aware.  

In most schools, surveillance at colleges are mainly limited to video surveillance, using cameras that are, for the most part, ignored by students and professors. In some colleges, a new type of surveillance is being added to the mix. They have started to use Bluetooth networks and wireless access points to see where students are going from their dorm to the classroom. According to The Washington Post, a company that uses Wi-Fi networks in schools to monitor movements said they "gather 6,000 location data points per student per day" (The Washington Post). 

One of the Introduction to Information Technologies classes at Syracuse University has started using this Bluetooth surveillance to monitor students. Seven small Bluetooth beacons were hidden around the lecture hall the class is in. Those beacons connect to an app called SpotterEDU, and it allows the professor to see when students are coming to class.  


SpotterEDU was founded by Rick Carter, a former college basketball coach, as a way to watch the athletes’ activities. School officials can send student schedules to the app, so the system can alert professors or academic advisers as soon as a student does not show up for class. Some professors use the attendance data in a point system for grading. The app has played around with ways to make the surveillance more game-like, by adding colorful Bitmojis or doing digital multi-way streaks, similar to Snapchat.  

The Bluetooth beacons that work alongside the app are roughly the size of a deck of cards and instructors are attaching them to walls and ceilings. Carter said to The Washington Post, “the less visible, the better.” He even said not to take pictures of the beacons so that students wouldn’t know what they looked like. According to The Washington Post, he also does not like when students say they are being “tracked.” He prefers the term “monitored.” (The Washington Post)



 Wes Grandstaff, a parent of one student who has used the app and benefitted, said the extra surveillance was worth it, and was quoted saying, “When you’re a college athlete, they basically own you, so it didn’t matter what he felt: You’re going to get watched and babysat whether you like it or not.” (The Washington Post) Grandstaff also wishes that schools would send the data to parents.  


According to Inside Higher Ed, UCLA considered incorporating facial recognition technology into their surveillance, but has since abandoned the idea. (Inside Higher Ed) UCLA said the technology would not be used all the time, but rather for instances where they need to locate someone they either know is a threat or will pose a threat to people on campus. One of the checks in the system is that a human would have to see the match to determine if it was accurate. Since then, Stanford University and the University of Southern California have debated about using the facial recognition surveillance as part of their food service or dorm security.  



 Americans have become accepting of the privacy breach of advancing technology because it doesn’t feel like a privacy breach, but “a trade-off of future worries for the immediacy of convenience, comfort, and ease.” (The Washington Post) While surveillance is an integrated part of society, there should be a limit to what we are comfortable with when it comes to video surveillance. The question for college students is whether the use of this technology to oversee college students is babying them in an environment meant to help them grow as adults. 

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