CCTV in the common room

]*Disclaimer*
With regards to the things I said about the dealers in the last section, I do not buy into the stereotype I mentioned neither seriously advise people to start selling drugs as an alternative to a job, both are bad ideas to say the least, (I do have my own views on the positive effect of certain drugs in the right setting etc. but that’s a different conversation entirely).

Cameras in schools are fairly standard for security I think. You can see it is fairly reasonable from the perspective of the school. It might catch people smoking, fights and general breaking of rules. Although I could criticise this, I would largely not worry about this sort of thing. It’s to be expected, part and parcel perhaps. But recently, a rather extreme step has been taken in the sixth form block. CCTV in computer rooms. Yes you did hear me right. Its time to not party like its 1984. There are two either end of the common room as well.

Why? Because people were eating and drinking in the computer rooms and I assume the cameras in the common room are to spy on people that are not off doing work like they should be. They recently banned us going to the common room for periods of 1 and 2 to re enforce work ethic, although that just means we talk and fuck around in the computer room which is quite easy with an internal email system and the fact we do have access to youtube although they have disabled the soundcards on most of the computers. Also, lucky for me, libcom is not blocked (but I do tend to only look at it when I’m relatively sure none of my friends are looking to save the embarrassment of explaining what I’m doing and the perplexed facial expressions I would get in return, though most of my friends know about my politics by now).

Now whilst I am not sure if the cameras can be monitored in the sixth form office or in the site staff office where all the other cameras are monitored (whichever office, I’m not particularly worried about getting caught doing anything, I doubt they have the time to actually look half of the time), I don’t think that is the point. It’s an extremely un needed measure. There are other solutions to these problems, which let’s face it, are pretty minor in the wider scale of things. My initial response was a mixture of surprise and laughter with a slight undertone of “fucking hell, CCTV!”. There is no point in opposing it anyway to be honest, I’m only going to get the predictable “if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have got nothing to be afraid of” response, which I would then criticise and then get something along the lines of “what do you think this school is, fascist? You are looking way too deep into this”.

No one appears that bothered, and because I think they are not really going to monitor these cameras anyway, I’m not going to talk about how people need to ‘wake up’ or try to worry them more than is necessary. For the first day or so everyone was talking about it, some “fucking hell, CCTV”’s but mostly laughing at it, it mostly died down after those first couple of days. Again, I don’t really think either of these attitudes were the wrong response to have. The only genuinely worried reactions I heard was through overhearing two guys, one of which I know for sure is a dealer and the other one who might be but sure as hell smokes a fuck load, engaging in a conversation that was basically went along the lines of

“Shit man they got cameras in here now you know”
“Is it?”
“Yeah man”
“We got to start being careful”
“Yeah haha”

I was just laughing in my head at how accurate to what most people would think these guys are like were (black, low attendance, re taking the year etc) but hey, with the state of un employment and the recent confirmation of double dip recession, or as I prefer, depression (solidarity to comrade Joseph Kay, read Joesephs article here
)I’m not afraid to say it either! at least they have recognised selling drugs might be a more secure, viable, and maybe even higher paying occupation, which I’m sure their business and economics lessons don’t admit.

---