Cameras In School

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UltraViolence83
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Cameras In School

Post by UltraViolence83 »

A friend just told me that my old high school now has cameras everywhere, and has an all-day cop there, too. What a waste of money...

How in the hell are cameras going to stop a school shooting? What is this teaching the kids? That having your every move recorded is acceptable?

I know I'm being needlessly paranoid, but using technology like this smacks of some kind of privacy violation, and literally sickens me because it conditions kids to accept it. :evil:

Then again, my school has always been conformist just for the sake of being conformist, so I'm not surprised. Fucking assholes.


So what do you guys think? I can understand if it's a big school with gangs and much violence, but not this.
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Post by Gandalf »

I think it's a little unnecessary, because generally someone doing a school shooting will be seen by many people, or so is my understanding. A few years back, a school somewhere in Australia put cameras in the bathrooms.
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Post by UltraViolence83 »

I just needed to cool down and vent that out. In all honesty I don't think it harolds the reckoning of "Big Brother," but such needless use of possibly privacy-invading technology, especially on a demographic that has little choice in the matter, is to me greatly upsetting.
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Post by UltraViolence83 »

Gandalf wrote:I think it's a little unnecessary, because generally someone doing a school shooting will be seen by many people, or so is my understanding.
My same beef with cameras supposed to weed out terrorists: How in the hell can a video recording of someone blowing themselves up help you in any way? If someone sees them coming, it's not like anything can be done about it.
A few years back, a school somewhere in Australia put cameras in the bathrooms.
Pure idiocy and paranoia on their part.
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Post by Sea Skimmer »

My school has cameras watching Five of the nine or ten entrances. Its fairly pointless and I think they only had them installed to watch out for vandals smashing the large amounts of glass present at them. Most of the anti shooting crap is just that. How the hell will locked doors stop an armed student from entering as normal and opening fire? Though I suppose its useful just for general security.
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Re: Cameras In School

Post by Graeme Dice »

UltraViolence83 wrote:A friend just told me that my old high school now has cameras everywhere, and has an all-day cop there, too. What a waste of money...

How in the hell are cameras going to stop a school shooting? What is this teaching the kids? That having your every move recorded is acceptable?
Or they could simply be there to cut down locker thefts, which is something they are very good at.
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Re: Cameras In School

Post by UltraViolence83 »

Graeme Dice wrote:Or they could simply be there to cut down locker thefts, which is something they are very good at.
Righto. That completely slipped my mind. I just keep thinking that they'd be used to get kids for obsenely minor violations, like public affection or passing notes.
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Post by Gandalf »

UltraViolence83 wrote:
A few years back, a school somewhere in Australia put cameras in the bathrooms.
Pure idiocy and paranoia on their part.
When a student complained and went to the TV networks, they basically ignored him because he was not an A student.
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Post by UltraViolence83 »

My old school has the "if we don't like it, we'll ban it next year" policy. My friend has a bikini girl tattooed on his leg, year after we got out they banned visible tattoos. It took them until like the mid-70s to let girls wear pants instead of skirts to school, as well.

Some time ago too many boys had ponytails. Banned that. Earrings on boys. Ban. Too many earrings on girls. Ban. Someone should tell them that "no long hair for boys" is SEXIST!

They even put-get this-fucking TIMERS on the vending machines in the cafeteria so kids can't get drinks before or after lunch. Now unless you're mildly retarted you can easily figure out the many ways around this.


I should add that my town has recently been given a large grant by the state, and if they don't find ways to spend it all, they don't get the money. This also includes funding pointless things, apparently. Well, we did get the new sidewalks...
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Post by Gandalf »

UV: Is this a non-government school you go to?
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"

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Post by UltraViolence83 »

Nope, it's totally public.

PS: I don't go there anymore. Class of '01.
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Post by HemlockGrey »

My school has cameras at all the entrances(but only there) and three full-time school cops, who's job is to basically patrol the halls, drink coffee, and give lengthy anti-drug lectures.
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Post by Darth Yoshi »

Huh. My school is open-campus, so cameras are rather pointless.
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Post by Gandalf »

Darth Yoshi wrote:Huh. My school is open-campus, so cameras are rather pointless.
Open- campus?
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"

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"I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin
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Post by StarshipTitanic »

I thought you mean disposable cameras, which are really popular for whatever reason at my school...
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Post by El Moose Monstero »

My old school has big automatic door systems installed, swipe cards and everything, but they never got turned on or used. Hah! We also had security cameras outside the girl's toilets in the second block, as that spot was always a congregation point for smokers. We always thought it was quite funny, kept trying to leave messages for the IT staff who's job it was to trail through it all...
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Post by Darth Yoshi »

Gandalf wrote:Open- campus?
You can be anywhere you want as long as you're in class on time. It helps that we don't use a period schedule. The Modular Schedule we use is a bit confusing to explain, but it gives me 2-3 hours of break each day, including lunch. And because different people have different breaks, there will always be someone who doesn't have class, making hall passes useless.
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Post by RedImperator »

Camera do two things well: they discourage people from doing illegal things and if somebody does do something illegal, you can go through the tape and find out who did it. They're not going to be used to nail people for minor things like PDAs, because who the hell wants to sit through seven hours of tape on fifteen, twenty, thirty different cameras each to nail two freshmen performing tonsil inspections on each other? But if somebody robs a locker or paints a swastika on the floor, they'll know who did it.
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Re: Cameras In School

Post by GrandMasterTerwynn »

UltraViolence83 wrote:A friend just told me that my old high school now has cameras everywhere, and has an all-day cop there, too. What a waste of money...

How in the hell are cameras going to stop a school shooting? What is this teaching the kids? That having your every move recorded is acceptable?

I know I'm being needlessly paranoid, but using technology like this smacks of some kind of privacy violation, and literally sickens me because it conditions kids to accept it. :evil:

Then again, my school has always been conformist just for the sake of being conformist, so I'm not surprised. Fucking assholes.


So what do you guys think? I can understand if it's a big school with gangs and much violence, but not this.
Technically, you're monitoring minors, who, as minors, have no legal right to privacy. The school (legally fulfilling the role as parents while the children are at school,) is obligated to monitor their behavior and prevent them from doing anything stupid.

And <Nationstates> Frankly, I don't see what all the fuss is about, when you're in public PEOPLE CAN SEE YOU! </Nationstates>

Honestly, it's just laziness on the part of a school to install security cameras. There's not a whole lot of school to watch over, so really, it's the damned teachers and administrators' jobs to watch.
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Re: Cameras In School

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UltraViolence83 wrote:A friend just told me that my old high school now has cameras everywhere, and has an all-day cop there, too. What a waste of money...
Not really. The cameras, as has been pointed out, serve a purpose.

And an all-day cop? My old school has one too. In fact, all the schools I know of in the Tampa Bay area have them. THey're SROs - School Resource Officers. Been there for as long as I was a part of the SDHC.
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Post by Rubberanvil »

I'm still waiting to how long it'll be before schools adopt mandatory strip and cavity searches on their students.
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Re: Cameras In School

Post by phongn »

RogueIce wrote:Not really. The cameras, as has been pointed out, serve a purpose.

And an all-day cop? My old school has one too. In fact, all the schools I know of in the Tampa Bay area have them. THey're SROs - School Resource Officers. Been there for as long as I was a part of the SDHC.
Every middle and high school has an SRO, and many schools have cameras. Mine did.
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Post by Exonerate »

My school actually has cameras in the hallways, but nobody really cares much. Its pretty much ignored. Its actually somewhat of a joke here, because there hasn't even been a serious fight in years... Worse thing this year was some 7th grader getting stuffed into a locker.

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Re: Cameras In School

Post by Mitth`raw`nuruodo »

RogueIce wrote:
UltraViolence83 wrote:A friend just told me that my old high school now has cameras everywhere, and has an all-day cop there, too. What a waste of money...
Not really. The cameras, as has been pointed out, serve a purpose.

And an all-day cop? My old school has one too. In fact, all the schools I know of in the Tampa Bay area have them. THey're SROs - School Resource Officers. Been there for as long as I was a part of the SDHC.
My school has a SRO, he's pretty cool, but also pretty useless. THe biggest crime he's caught/stopped so far (since I started at the school) is kids not wearing helmets (but he gets to scare the shit out of kids who start fights by handcuffing them... its great to see a real "tough guy" crying his eyes out cause he thinks he's going to jail). THere were a few people caught for drugs, but he didn't do that, kids reported it to the dean and he searched them, etc.

Oh, my school (middle school now, starting jr/sr high this year...seems I can't get away from it...go into 9th grade, school adds on a 9th grade... damnit) is probably gonna end up putting cameras in school just for the hell of it. They also are going to update the "security measures" (READ: a chainlink fence-covered door at some of the entrances)
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Post by UltraViolence83 »

Only the officer could stop a school shooting, which is why they're so paranoid in the first place. But then I'm sure the shooter would choose a place that's far enough away from him so he can blow all the bullies away...
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