The school year began with the addition of a surveillance system in the form of a $3 million network of software and cameras systematically and tactically placed throughout the school halls and pathways.


Cameras go largely unnoticed, hovering there above the throngs of unobservant passerby and students. Oftentimes, we discount the security that these devices bring to the school.


In reality, school resource officers spend countless hours poring over the now high definition footage of our everyday lives across the school in a bid to make the campus more secure.


The new update has broadened our security’s field of vision significantly said Resource Officer Don Davis. But whenever the topic is brought up amongst fellow students, there is a pall of uncertainty hanging on their voices.


Why so many cameras? Weren’t there enough already? It would appear that this is not the case according to our principal, Claude Smith who said this upgrade was needed  because the previous system had too many spots not covered.


Indeed, in the years prior to the update, the performing arts center, the hub of many artistic extracurriculars, had been otherwise free of surveillance. A healthy portion of our student populace makes its way through the performing arts center, with over two hundred people making up our band program alone, and still climbing. Combine that with our choir program, broadcast, journalism and a burgeoning drama department, then you have roughly a third of the school’s population trafficking their way through the unmonitored facility.

Now with the new system, the center’s hallways are positively teeming with the dome-shaped devices, ensuring that no illegal or harmful behavior is taking place. However, some students hold a cynical, somewhat critical view on our new system. One Davis Polston felt that the system wasn’t really needed. Yet another quipped somewhat humorously that “I honestly think that we could have spent all that money on better toilet paper.”

Some of the faculty seem to think otherwise.  The drama teacher is happy that there are more monitors in the PAC.

“Yes, it keeps me from having to constantly monitor areas such as the stairwells. Students are aware that their actions can be seen, and so they are more responsible for those actions,” Taylor said.


So it would seem that something as simple as a few dozen cameras has brought a touch of controversy to the high school. Like it or not, the surveillance system is here to stay, along with all of its benefits and detrimental tendencies.