Cameras at Pioneer High School would promote fear, anxiety
Every day in high school civics classes, students learn the significance and meaning of the Bill of Rights. From memorizing their order to understanding their implications, the importance of these amendments are constantly stressed.
Yet beginning in the next few months, the Bill of Rights curriculum at Pioneer High School will take a dramatic turn as Ann Arbor Public Schools begins a proposed plan to install about 55 security cameras within and around Pioneer High School. In just a few short months, students will leave the civics lessons behind in their classrooms, and in the halls they will be discouraged to exercise their right to privacy and their freedom of speech and association.
The video cameras and the ideas they promote are extremely detrimental to the school's learning environment as well as to the whole community and its future. While Pioneer students may continue to excel inside of the classroom, these lessons will be overshadowed by what is taught by camera-laden hallways.
Furthermore, surveillance cameras create an environment that discourages learning and promotes fear and distrust. Recently, the Pioneer administration implemented new programs to promote respect and responsibility in the student body. These programs emphasize punishments for individual students' negative actions. Revoking all students' privacy and sending the message of absolute distrust is antithetical to not only these specific goals but also to the common scholastic goals of education and development.
Video cameras would create fear and anxiety amongst students and teachers who are falsely told they are in immediate danger. In order to create an environment conducive to learning, the school must be structured to empower the students. The students must believe that their actions not only have been acknowledged, but also matter and are important. As students begin to make every decision based on being watched, they no longer grow as individuals but solely as what the cameras want them to be.
Every action any student, teacher or administrator makes in the hallways or parking lots at Pioneer will now be open to the public forum. As the school will store the video for 30 days after it is taken, the public information will be subject to the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA). Under this law, anybody will be able to obtain the video footage taken within the school. The video records can easily be used, not for safety, but for personal application. Whether posting high school hand-holding on YouTube and MySpace or monitoring the daily habits of an enemy from a home computer, everything in the school will be subject to the dangers of the Internet.
If these cameras are installed, the hallways at Stadium and Main will teach students to accept governmental surveillance. One of Pioneer's most important functions as a school is to teach students to be active citizens. Especially in a time when privacy rights are frequently threatened, students must be encouraged to work to preserve the liberties they are entitled to, not just to accept what is given to them. No matter what one's political beliefs, the importance of civic duty must be amplified for students, not muted.
One important aspect of each citizen's civic duty is discussion of government and public actions. The Ann Arbor Public Schools district is prepared to spend $75,000 on installation alone, not taking into account the recurring upkeep expenses of the cameras. This money has been earmarked before presenting any plans to the public for their implementation. Neither the school board nor the Pioneer administration has presented any evidence that this invasive and expensive program will reduce crime. Columbine High School and Virginia Tech University both had surveillance cameras in place when violence erupted on school grounds, and neither system prevented the resulting tragedies.
Many other offenses are committed in bathrooms and locker rooms, which cannot and should not be monitored by cameras. The $75,000 should not be used to cripple student growth and individuality, but could be used to promote safety in more effective ways such as increasing the adult presence in the school. While a camera has only one function, a hall monitor can function as a powerful crime deterrent as well as a positive influence and support.
The Pioneer Student Council has passed a resolution pressing school administration to avoid installation of any surveillance cameras within Pioneer. The resolution also states that any decisions concerning surveillance within our school result from extensive dialogues with students, teachers and parents. Pioneer High School is a crucial community resource; any decisions that may negatively affect its ability to mature future citizens should be publicly scrutinized. Because a community forum to discuss the installation of surveillance cameras at Pioneer High has yet to be organized by the school's administration, any plans to install surveillance cameras within Pioneer must be strongly opposed.
About the writer: Bennett Stein, an Ann Arbor resident, is president of the Pioneer High School Executive Student Council.
4 comments:
its true, if you can't trust, you can't be trusted
well said.
When is there going to be another post?
keep up the surveillance issue posts. important stuff.
community meetings on Pioneer surveillance plan-Monday, December 17, 7 pm in the Pioneer Little Theater. Be there.
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