The Campus of aThousand Eyes
By Nate Chickering and The Proctor Press
“Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.” — George Orwell, 1984
The sun peeks over the horizon, as a flock of ducks swings low over
the pond, leaving a trail of ripples behind. A group of students sits calmly underneath a canopy of tightly packed hemlock trees. All is quiet and tranquil on an average Sunday in May, as a separate pair of students slowly stroll by Alice’s Garden on their way to the turf fields.
Unbeknownst to these students, something mysterious lurks amid the classrooms, the porches, and the azaleas blooming about campus. Small, hockey-puck-size plastic domes have mushroomed overnight from ceiling corners in the Farrell Field House and metastasized outward into the Dining Commons’ coat room, across campus to the Meeting House, and eventually into the heart of the school: the Maxwell-Savage Rotunda.
Why have they come? How did they get here? Who brought them? What significance, if any, do they have for the Proctor community?
Although cameras and surveillance do not seem to have immediate impacts, there are serious, unspoken side effects that come along with being constantly observed. Research psychologists today are confirming some of George Orwell’s fears about Big Brother.
According to Dr. Brock Chisholm, a board member of the UK Psychological Trauma Society, even though we may not pay much attention to security cameras,
“There’s the kind of background, everyday anxiety that builds up, we know it’s there, but we kind of ignore it and we don’t realize how on edge we were until it’s gone.”
At the closing of winter, they appeared — small eyes filling the top corners of hallways. Slowly, the CCTV cameras were installed one-by-one. Dark cold days flooded the thoughts and concerns of students wandering throughout campus, many of whom were taken aback when they finally spotted one. Graham Lewis, a four-year senior, talks about the first time he saw a camera, “I was walking through the hallway by Kelly’s and I was shocked to see one and literally hear nothing about it going up prior.”
Perfect timing and execution led to an irreversible change in school culture. They went up under the radar. Few noticed. Fewer contemplated the consequences. “They are easy to install,” reports first-year junior Quinn Broderick, who has installed the cameras in Tech Help. “It is easy,” he reiterates, “It takes an hour, max.”
Without notice, suddenly the entire Proctor community became surveilled. Why? Most students seem to think the obvious reason for the campus surveillance is rampant locker room theft. But, without a single theft major violation in the last five years and very little open conversation in assembly regarding theft, is surveilling the entire campus to stop a few kids from stealing a few wallets and Airpods in the locker rooms a likely motivation for spending tens of thousands of dollars to blanket the campus with CCTV cameras? In any event, the actions or potential actions of a few bad apples have given administrators the justification to watch nearly every movement of every individual on campus at all times. It’s creepy.
They didn’t ask for our opinion before they put them up,” says, three-year junior Geoffrey Herring, “and they aren’t going to care about any concerns we might have about them now.”
Likewise, Tim Bechtold, a three-year junior, says, “For simply monitoring student activity for a slight chance that you may catch someone stealing, it does not seem worth it.”
With retail costs up to $500 per camera (not including the price of the monitors or the space for storing footage) CCTV cameras, like the ones Proctor has installed, are state of the art. Proctor is not messing around with any old decoy or ancient camera systems.
With this said, opinions on the cameras are varied: although some students and faculty feel they are invasive, others believe them to be inevitable and helpful. “I haven’t really felt their presence,” Max Smith, a second-year sophomore, explains, “and it also forces kids to be more aware of what they are doing.” Alex Laracy, a first-year sophomore agrees, “They honestly don’t affect me, I don’t really notice them. I have only noticed the one right by the staircase near the trainer’s — that one is always looking at me.”
According to philosophy and AP Language teacher, Mark Tremblay, surveillance can create “space for people to feel safe and secure in their society, in their community. Because we know when someone does something wrong.” In a BBC article titled, “How Being Watched Changes You — Without You Knowing It, Jason Goldman describes how the mere presence of a mirror can have positive effects on people’s behavior. Goldman writes that scientists studying children on Halloween have found that “when faced with a reflection of their own faces, even masked by a Halloween costume, kids were more likely to behave.”
In fact, many students feel like the talk around stealing on campus has dissipated after the cameras became public knowledge. Does stealing still happen? Yes. But, have mass emails about stolen money, Airpods, and even bikes also decreased? Absolutely.
While opinions on the cameras are varied, the one common theme that has persisted in regards to security cameras is the school’s deafening silence about them. This lack of conversation has frustrated many, including English teacher, Peter Southworth.
After a number of the cameras were already installed, “James Cox informed [the faculty] that they were being put up,” explained Southworth. “It was a little, like… Uh, okay then. This is a little surprising.”
While he sees the benefits of installing security cameras, Tremblay also sees the importance of having open conversations about controversial topics, like surveillance on campus. “It’s an important question to ask: Is the safety and security that this is providing us worth whatever the feeling that these cameras are giving you? Part of this negotiation is just hearing people. Hearing from students? Hearing from faculty members? That’s an important thing.”
Often times, the shifts in school culture are subtle and brief; other times, the shifts are more impactful and noticeable. After 171 years without them, one day CCTV cameras arrived at Proctor without any letter of introduction, without an assembly announcement, without a single mass email explaining their purpose. No mention on the Proctor Buzz or in Mike’s Notes.
Ironically, the silent treatment given to the installation of these cameras may reveal more truth about the current state of unease felt about Proctor by so many upper-class students this year than all the collective video footage combined. “I think that the cameras are important in order to stop stealing,” remarks second-year senior, Conor Joslin, “but the cameras also seem to represent a changing culture at Proctor.” Without comment or explanation from the administration, Zack Steiner, a two-year junior, concludes, “I used to go to public school and it has started to feel like that. I feel like there is a lack of trust here on campus.”
Interestingly, the student body as a whole is probably more
complacent about the actual cameras than they should be according to researchers studying the effects of surveillance on individual well-being.
According to Chisholm, the clinical psychologist, individuals who are subject to surveillance-caused “background anxiety” are “going to have more relationship difficulties, more arguments, they’re going to be more hypervigilant, scanning for threats.” He explains,
“I actually think one of the main problems is that people don’t think about it enough and companies are able to get away with things that are ultimately harmful.”
As Chisholm predicts students I talked to felt it was no big deal for the school to put a few cameras around campus, like in front of locker rooms or above public storage spaces. However, now that the cameras have spread to Shirley Hall, Maxwell Savage, the Dining Hall, the Meeting House, the Farrell Field House, the Ice Rink, and even the Lovejoy Library, students are growing increasingly concerned.
Though they are not constantly watched, Proctor’s CCTV cameras have a constant live feed for administrators to access day or night. Supposedly, they are only checked when a complaint or a valid reason comes up for the footage to be reviewed, but as of now, we have no official word on what is happening with the footage or how the footage is being used.
Considering this, Steiner concludes, “If we feel that we are being watched, it takes away a safe learning environment and students may not feel as welcome in the buildings. This creates a lack of trust between students and administration.” Steiner’s observations line up with Goldman’s BBC article, in which he writes, “Humans, care a great deal about being watched. We change our behaviour and choices without even realising it.”
Why is this an issue? Because more likely than not, the installation of scores of CCTV cameras throughout campus unconsciously changes the behavior and increases the stress levels of every single person in our community. And it was done under the cloak of silence.
With the impending replacement of weekend cards with Boardingware — whose website boasts that it “keeps track of where your students have been, where they are now, and where they will be later” — the implementation of an electronic key system on all campus buildings, and now surveillance cameras, many students are beginning to feel like they are being slowly squeezed into an Orwellian nightmare.
One has to ask, What’s next? Might newer, more intrusive surveillance cameras be installed with microphones to monitor not only our whereabouts but also our private conversations?
While no one has mentioned it in assembly, rumor has it that the CCTV cameras in many of the buildings are already doing just that.
