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 Jerry’s delivery, feel free. (What, did you really think I’d 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 doesn’t like new toys? Especially if you get to play commando!

“Fox Two, I have a bogey moving south on the fireroad with two dumplings, can you confirm, over.”
“Roger that Fox One, bogey confirmed moving along fireroad. Will engage with napkins, over.” 

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 Zhou’s 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 you’re moving at the speed of beer.

The guy didn’t 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 “sit down and try to learn.”

So far this year, the $10,000 investment in surveillance equipment has caught a relatively harmless senior prank and a couple of students — cough, cough — 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 don’t trust their students anymore, I suppose I understand why the administration wants to point all the cameras inwards. But, I don’t know, maybe — just maybe — 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 — 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. Zhou’s classes to the driveways.