By Adam Sieff
Because of a split second lapse in judgment, a yen to play basketball and a couple of security cameras in the Hamilton Gymnasium shed, a colleague and I will be eating lunch on campus for the next eight weeks.
Now I have sixth free everyday but Tuesday, so if you want to pitch in and help reduce the cost of Jerryâs delivery, feel free. (What, did you really think Iâd eat campus food five days a week?)
Regardless, I think the security cameras are a great idea. Really I do. Maybe they seem to defy the principle of a Community of Trust, but hey, who doesnât like new toys? Especially if you get to play commando!
âFox Two, I have a bogey moving south on the fireroad with two dumplings, can you confirm, over.â
âRoger that Fox One, bogey confirmed moving along fireroad. Will engage with napkins, over.âÂ
Nevertheless, with all that expensive junk, how the heck does a delusional homeless man walk up Coldwater, onto the quad, up the stairs to Seaver and then into Dr. Qinru Zhouâs Chinese class before Security realizes and does something about it?
It takes at least 10 minutes for someone to walk as far as he did, and probably 15 if youâre moving at the speed of beer.
The guy didnât have a knife on him, but the next time this happens, students might not be so fortunate to have such a silky-smooth talker like Zhou to placate the man by inviting him to âsit down and try to learn.â
So far this year, the $10,000 investment in surveillance equipment has caught a relatively harmless senior prank and a couple of students â cough, cough â who should have known better than to open a gym bag to borrow a basketball in Hamilton Gymnasium.
Meanwhile, there have been two separate instances of theft from student cars parked along Coldwater as well as this most recent invasion-by-hobo.
Now, since they donât trust their students anymore, I suppose I understand why the administration wants to point all the cameras inwards. But, I donât know, maybe â just maybe â it MIGHT be a good idea to put the cameras where the CRIMES are.
Those cameras in the Hamilton Gymnasium equipment shed are there because of a prior theft which took place this past summer, so I suppose they have already proven effective â well, sort of. But seriously, we should try to catch some real criminals and put some cameras alongside Coldwater and at various points of entry onto campus.
That is, of course, unless we already have cameras there. In which case we might need to move Dr. Zhouâs classes to the driveways.