He Loved Big Brother.

Alright, well, here we go. I can't think of how to break all of this stuff up, so I'm just going to try for one long post.

As soon as I walked in, I was handed two pieces of paper. One was being distributed by Sam and Dave DeVardi, and Student Council Executive President Bennett Stein and Will Leaf. This paper was titled "DON'T SACRIFICE PRIVACY FOR A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY." The second piece of paper was distributed by Pioneer Philosophy teacher James Robert (JR), and consisted of a statement that spoke out against the cameras.

The meeting consisted, mostly, of Mr. White and Officer Foster trying to speak, parents frequently interrupting them with questions or shouts of "Amen!", and Mrs. Macke occasionally getting so fed up that she had to stand up and tell everyone to calm the hell down. Todd Roberts, the Superintendent of the Ann Arbor Public Schools, was also in attendance, and answered a few questions during a Q&A session at the end of the meeting.

First, there was a powerpoint presentation from the administration. They reported that 500 students, or 17% of the student body, had signed a petition against the cameras. The petition was presented, now with more than 650 signatures (verified by student identification numbers), which is about 22%. I have no doubt that this petition will continue to gain signatures; if you have not signed yet, try to find it so that you can sign.

Mr. White outlined his plan for the cameras (though, by the end of the night, I couldn't find anyone who really knew what he thought the purpose was), and mentioned that "security cameras are only a small part" of the plan. He said that there were steps to his new plan:
-enforcing rules consistently among all staff members
-monitoring the physical environment of Pioneer
-educating the students and staff on how to maintain and avoid harm to property and self
-educating the students and staff on appropriate social behavior
-use technological resources to make the building secure, and to include computer-driven data and surveillance (kind of funny how he seemed to actively try to avoid using the word "camera.")
He also said that the security was important to "maintaining a well-kept physical plant." That's right, we're now a plant. Whether it's of the geranium variety or the Chernobyl variety, though, I'm almost afraid to ask. . .

Officer Foster also spoke at the meeting. He told us that Huron parents were campaigning for ten years before they got cameras this spring. Have we so quickly forgotten the lessons of Mr. Dr. Louis Young? We need to beat Huron at everything, up to and including blood drives! So, clearly, we must hold them off for at least eleven years.
Officer Foster gave some impressive statistics regarding theft. He told us that there had been 530+ thefts in the 2003-'04 school year (his first at the school), 600+ in '04-'05, 500 in '05-'06, and 580 in '06-'07. "From a police department standpoint," he said, "we have a problem.
However, there were a number of flaws in Foster's logic. He said that the most common items stolen were iPods, PSPs, cell phones and cash. Now, it seems like iPods and PSPs have already been banned from the school. Isn't that enough? The reason they were banned was that too many of them were being stolen. Doesn't this prove their point? I'd like to see statistics from this year, when these items are banned, before I decide whether this is a good idea or not (actually, I've already decided it's a bad idea. They need to wait for statistics from this year before attempting to base their reasoning in logic). Additionally, he told the attendees of the meeting that collecting specific statistics of when the items were stolen is virtually impossible, as most students only have a time frame for when they believe their property was stolen. Still, all you need to do is ask a student. I have never once heard of a student having an iPod snatched out of their hand in the hallways as if it's a crowded New York City subway. Most of the cases I hear about are the result of students leaving their backpacks alone in a classroom, or having stuff stolen out of a locker. Neither classrooms or locker rooms will be monitored. It was pointed out that a tape could show a student walking into a locker room without a backpack and walking back out with one. Here's the problem with that:
Most Common Items Stolen:
iPod-fits in a pocket
Cell Phone-fits in a pocket, assuming the model was manufactured after 1994
Sony PSP-fits in a large pocket
cash-fits in a pocket

So, as long as students are not trying to smuggle, say, a sink out of the locker room, they can easily get away with it. I don't have the figures on how many sinks were stolen last year, but I'll get on that right away.
Parents brought a few concerns up at this time, and Mr. White jumped in, yelling. "If you want to get into the numbers of what's stolen, I think that's a little unfair!" Sorry? Why is that unfair? You would think that that kind of figure would be quite important in a debate like this. Pioneer graduate Marguerite Finnegan ('07) challenged the administration on the theft point, saying that high school taught her to take care of her stuff-keep her iPod in her pocket, keep her backpack with her, that sort of thing. Well done. Honestly, if you haven't figured out how to take care of your $300 iPod that your rich daddy bought you for no apparent reason, you don't deserve to have one.

Officer Foster then spoke about the difficulties of having 10 community assistants cover around 400,000 square feet. He also spoke about the dangers of terrorism, saying we'd have to deal with the issue at some point. Honestly, it's pretty obvious cameras won't do anything to terrorists. Someone said that the cameras at Columbine provided valuable information, at which point the man next to me said, "what, 'they're dead'?" Officer Foster also mentioned that the cameras would provide 24 hours of security. I don't know about you, but that scares me. The cameras are always watching.

This part is important: Officer Foster told us that students were often reluctant to be witnesses against other students. At a later point in the meeting, a girl told Stein and Leaf that they might be intimidating and people might only say they opposed the cameras because they were not strong enough in their convictions; she compared this to the witness issue. More on this below.

Apparently there are 176 doors in this school of ours. I wonder. . .does that include the four livestock-herding doors in A-Hall? As far as I know, no reason has been given for these doors yet.

For the first time, I heard a staff member admit that community assistants are hall monitors: "In old school terms, they're called hall monitors."-Officer Foster, in response to a question about community assistants' qualifications

A week or so ago, a piece of paper was distributed to teachers telling them that cameras would be installed over winter break. The teachers were then asked: "Do you agree with this? If no, why not?" How many of you remember citizenship grades in middle school? 1s and 2s were good, 3s were average, and so on. I had a teacher who would let us assign ourselves citizenship grades. However, if you chose a 1 or a 2, you had to explain why. Needless to say, everyone got 3s. Why? Because we knew it didn't really matter, and had no effect on anything. Apparently, 17% of teachers responded that they did not agree. However, they were told, falsely, that cameras were being installed anyway; why would any of them take time out of their day to say they disagreed? Mr. White told us at the meeting that putting that false information on the survey was a mistake. Mr. Devarti was especially incensed at this, and informed Mr. White that a neutral agent would be willing to conduct a professional survey. Mr. White said that this would not be allowed to happen, and then, if he were to ask the teachers again, he would get the same response. How would he knows this? He asks them, apparently. In person. Remember the intimidation issue? What teacher is going to tell Mr. White he's wrong, to his face? Certainly, there are a few. But most would accept that the cameras were going to be installed no matter what, and just tell Mr. White what he wanted to hear.

Highlights from the session-ending Q&A session:
-Superintendent Todd Roberts assuring parents that schools can not install cameras on their own, though Mr. Roberts is apparently in agreement with Mr. White on this issue.
-The money that is being used to pay for the cameras could be used for any capital expenditure, according to Mr. Roberts.
-Mr. White said that "with cameras or without cameras, Michael White is going to monitor this building the best I can." Never mind the mixed third and first person; Surprisingly, I approve of much of what Mr. White has done so far. He has made Pioneer a safer school. So, why don't we let him try making the school better without cameras? I think he's done a pretty good job to this point.
-There have been just 5 assaults this year. I maintain that, if kids were afraid of getting caught by a camera, they'd just drag a kid into a bathroom and beat him up there.
-A community assistant will be taken out of the hallway to monitor the cameras; there will not be a new one hired.
-Mrs. Macke stated that, if we saw someone on a camera recording (if, say, someone stole something after school), it'd be hard to identify them. "Could we tell who someone is? Maybe, maybe not. Probably not."
-A parent asked if, for this reason, we had security teams working after school. The question was dodged, never to be answered.
-The screen used to monitor the cameras will have 32 images per screen. Thirty-two! It would be quite easy for a community assistant to miss a crime in progress, wouldn't it? And if they did, and failed to send other community assistants to the right place, we might never find out who it was, as Mrs. Macke so kindly told us.
-Marguerite Finnegan spoke up again, asking what it would take to change the minds of the administrators; i.e. number of signatures, etc. The answer did not bode well for Pioneer students opposed to the plan. We didn't seem to get a straight one, but it doesn't seem like the administrators want to be influenced. Looks like we have to work harder.
-Will Leaf finally got to speak near the end, and he wanted to clear up any confusion that may have resulted from the meeting. "You might have gotten the idea that the student body is conflicted on this issue–This is not the case. The student body is massively opposed." In regards to working towards the safety of students, "We are confident that we as a school can accomplish this without violating the privacy of students."
-Several individuals brought up the idea that the video tapes could be FOIAed-that is, obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request, as Pioneer is a public, state-affiliated school. This was not denied; there was not even a non-denial denial offered. Scary. This is the point at which Mr. Devarti brought up the case of the two girls kissing, as mentioned in a separate blog post below.
-One man spoke out in support of the cameras quite vigorously, implying that mere children could not be trusted with such decisions. I am 17 years old; sure, some kids will be mature before 18, some will be mature before. But I'm guessing the ones who take time out of a snow day to attend a PTSO meeting are the ones who are mature before. The man also got into a fairly entertaining verbal battle with Bennett Stein involving a toolbox-related analogy.
-Finally, an eighth-grader attended the meeting and said she was considering going to either Skyline or Community in order to avoid the cameras; many parents echoed this sentiment when speaking of their own children.

One of the big problems I have had with Mr. White this year, and adults in general, is a lack of trust in teenagers. Teenagers want to be trusted, and when we're not trusted, we fight back. In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty. Instead of getting privileges until we prove that we can not handle them, though, we had our privileges taken away at the beginning of the year, and are forced to find a way of showing our maturity before getting them back.

OFFICIAL EXECUTIVE EDIT:
"We're still trying to get statistics from Pioneer and Huron. One thing you didn't mention is that Dr. Roberts said that the decrease in incidents at Huron with surveillance cameras was nearly identical to the decrease at Pioneer without surveillance cameras.
Everyone, write to the school board. They want to hear from students.
Party on. "-Bennett Stein, via comment


That concludes the big ol' camera meeting post. I've finished all four pages of notes I took. Hope you read at least some of it and got some valuable information; we need more support for this. Sign the petition, show up to the school board meeting in January. Don't compromise!