I’ve never been much of a fan of the idea that schools need to have video surveilance systems installed. I feel that the benefits to security and safety are rather marginal, and the potential for abuse is too great.
As an example of the sort of abuse that can happen, allow me to share this news story. I, for one, do not believe that a heterosexual liason taking place in the school’s hall would have resulted in the administrator responsible, showing video of the kiss to either of the parents involved. As pointed out in the article, heterosexual couples kiss and hold hands in HS, fairly frequently.
I know that the schools have a responsibility to inform parents of unusual, or dangerous behavior. But, with the exception of the gender of the two people involved in this kiss, there’s nothing exceptional about it. The Dean of Students said he’d have done the same, for a heterosexual student couple whose parents had asked him to keep an eye out - but I don’t view the two scenarios as being equal.
(I’ll readily admit I may be mistaken about the benefits of security and safety - I have personal experience that leaves me with a gut feeling that teachers are among the last people one would want to trust for anything regarding the safety of unpopular students. I know this is an unjust judgement on my part, but it’s one based on the experience of half my school experience, and all my public school experience.)
I’m a little confused. How does anyone think that this is an invasion of privacy? Whether or not you think the school should have cameras, the kiss was done in public, so how can anyone possibly think that it was private? Furthermore, if the schools are going to have surveillance cameras then parents should have every right to view them.
Very few kids have to worry about being beaten, disowned, or institutionalized if their parents find out they were kissing a member of the opposite sex.
I see your point. Kissings are common in the school but supposedly they’re against the rules. Otherwise, why would they mention that they should be handled by warnings instead of showing parents the video. I’m a little curious about what led to the administration finding the kissing on the tape. Did someone witness it in the hall and then grab the tape or did someone go through the tape looking to see what this girl was up to?
I’m not so keen on the idea of filming students everywhere they go. It’s suppose to be a school not a prison. However, if they have serious problems with vandalism, assaults, etc., then I can understand why they have 'em installed.
I don’t think they abused the surveillance system in any way and I don’t think the students were protesting it’s existence.
They were more protesting the administrator and the parent for their non-tolerance of gays or lesbians and that’s the real problem.
This situation could have happened just as easily if the administrator had walked in on them in the hallway and called the parents immediately to tell them what she saw.
I think in more situations than less the cameras and tape can be used to determine the truth in matters (fights, thefts, vandalism) rather than relying on a he said / she said and unreliable eyewitness accounts from other students and teachers.
Well, it seems that the Dean of Students is friends with/goes to church with the second girls’ parents, and they’re Mormon. There’s a question of whether or not he showed it to church officials (!) but even if he didn’t, it seems pretty clear to me he showed the video of this girl kissing another girl to her parents because they were friendly and he shared their religious scruples about homosexuality. This is abuse of his position and school property (the cameras), IMHO.
I agree with what you wrote here, but I wanted to add that cameras aren’t really going to help that much in terms of evidence in fights, thefts and vandalism. Unless the cameras are well hidden, students will always try engage in these things out of range of any electronic surveillance system.
Then again, none of these things happened to the girls in question. I’m with MGibson, this can’t technically be considered an “invasion” of privacy, but it is certainly distasteful, both on the part of the principle AND the parents. They couln’t look worse than if they wore signs saying “We’re paranoid bigots.”
To address the point that MGibson brought up: I’m not all that exercised by the fact that the school, in this case, chose to act to inform parents of behavior that the school believed to be worthy of note. What does bother me is that the implication from the article is that in the whole time (eight years) that the security cameras have been in place there’s never been a case of parents being notified of kissing and hands holding in the halls when it involved heterosexual couples. And certainly never of showing the tape of the behavior to the parents.
You may choose to argue that it’s possible that there hadn’t been any heterosexual kissing in the halls during that time. I won’t believe that, but you can advance the arguement.
There doesn’t seem to have been any of the parental concerns that the Dean of Students would have required for him to provide similar service to the parents of a heterosexual couple.
So, we’ve got the Dean of Students using the security system for the purpose of selectively harassing homosexual couples in the school. There are too, the disturbing allegations of involving the Dean’s church in the matter.
If I honestly believed that the Dean of Students would have behaved in a similar manner for any random heterosexual couple whom he hadn’t been asked by the parents involved to monitor, then I wouldn’t be bothered. As it is, it sounds to me as though he was using the school’s security system to enforce his own private views of morality on the student population.
And, again, I’m prejudiced, myself: I know that it is rare to find educators who use their positions to indulge their prejudice, pettiness, or simple sadism. I know it’s rare, but having lived through just that situation, I do tend to think of it as a first possible explaination when I read of cases like this.
Although the school claims that they would show tape of the hetero students kissing to parents, they have no proof of it.
The thing is the school claims that the parents involved asked for it. How does that change the situation.
If the parents ask the school, we think my daughter is involved with “X”, but she denies it to us, can you help us prove it?" Is that OK? (no matter if “X” is a boy or a girl?)
But what if it was more like “You’re daughter is a lesbo.” “No way!”, “Yes way!” “Prove it to us!” “OK, here’s the tape.”
Did the parents initiate the request for the information?
Did the school volunteer the information?
Does that make a difference?
I’m consistently amazed at the number of people on the Dope who say “people who have nothing to hide should be okay with surveillance.” This is exactly why they’re wrong.
As Zebra notes, there is no evidence that the same thing ever happened with heterosexual students, which I can assure you has happened any number of times within the last twenty four hours. So they do indeed appear to be homophobic bigots.
The church connection between the Dean and the parents of the girl who was transferred seems too convenient. Maybe there’s nothing to it, but I kinda doubt it, based on personal experience as well simple knowledge of human nature.
I don’t think that this was an invasion of privacy due to the public locations of the cameras, but the standards for this situation certainly appear to be well above and beyond what they would be for any similar situation. The school will very probably need a good counselor before all is said and done.
Please explain. Did these girls have something to hide or did they not have something to hide. Or was it that they were hiding something that shouldn’t have needed to be hid but had to?
How can something that exposes the truth be bad? Or are you saying that in some circumstances the truth needs to be hid from certain individuals?
The girls had no more to hide than your average kissing adolescents do. An authority figure who was watching them decided he had a personal objection to what they were doing, and used the camera footage to persecute them.
Why are you posting under an alias instead of your real name?
Do you believe that it’s right and proper for homosexual teens to be required to hide thier liasons when it’s not a requirement for heterosexual teens? I don’t believe that it’s proper to have dual standards - that’s my problem with this. If the school had been shown to react in the same way to the security system showing evidence of liasons between heterosexual teens, then I wouldn’t be as annoyed. As it is, however…
Secondly, I’d like to point out that there’s a vast difference between “having something to hide” and “doing something immoral/illegal.”
One of the girls was pulled out of school by her parents. No, it’s certainly not the worst thing that could happen to her, in the circumstances, but I don’t envy her homelife right now. But my real issue here is what could have happened. Stories of parents beating their kids for being gay, or throwing them out into the street, or even killing them are all too common, and that the dean exposed these girls to that risk is inexcusable. His first duty is to protect the students, even from the student’s own family. By outing these students, he violated that duty, and the fact that nothing too terrible happened to them as a result does not mitigate that.
Now, I expect that there will be two objections to this post. The first, of course, is that if these girls didn’t want to be outed, they shouldn’t have been kissing in public in front of a video camera. And that’s a good point, but we’re talking about teenagers, here. Teenagers often do stupid things, because they’re still kids. Part of the whole point of sending them to school is to teach them not to do stupid things, but the other part is to help protect kids from the consequences of their bad decisions. The dean did not do that, here. He took an action that could only possibly have made things worse for these girls, if it changed things for them at all.
The other objection I expect is that parents have a right to know what their kids are up to. Well, sorry, but you don’t. Not if telling you puts the kid at more risk, and not telling you doesn’t put the kid at any risk at all. It’s not always cut and dried, of course - if you have an underage student sleeping with someone much older, for example - but in this case, when it’s two girls the same age, without even any evidence that they’re sexually involved, then there’s absolutely no excuse for outing them to their parents.
Of COURSE big brother is alive in High School. Big brother is EVERYWHERE. You can’t take a half-mile walk in a city without being on at least a dozen different cameras in a dozen different locations. Seems to me that these girls made a mistake that they’ve got to pay for. They’ve also got to learn that not everyone, although they should be, is accepting of a homosexual lifestyle, this includes their school administrators.
Miller, you couldn’t be MORE off base with this comment…
If a parent is responsible for what their child does, then they have EVERY RIGHT to know what those same kids are doing. You make wild-assed assumptions that outing these girls will get them beaten or worse. Granted, it happens, but it’s also possible that the girls will get counselling to explore and ultimately determine their sexuality. You just don’t know.
Was showing the video to the parents the right thing? I’d say yes, only because, as you said, they’re teenagers, they do stupid things, and perhaps this gives the parents a chance to intervene and educate their daughter. I’ll say that if they’re Mormons, it’s a whole 'nother ball of wax, but in any case, I think the video was proper, and I think there ought to be MORE surveillance in schools.
