Data Diary
Day 1: Cistern Yard- I observed Cistern Yard and noticed the placement of cameras here. Being an easily accessible place, it makes sense to have CCTV cameras here. Cameras and other surveillance measures located here and throughout the campus might make women feel safer because they might provide a greater degree of protection from assault. Cameras can help identify certain people suspected of being involved in a crime.
Day 2: Maybank Hall- CCTV cameras are located in this space to prevent crimes or to identify people that are entering the buildings. I imagine this is meant to prevent people from carrying weapons inside of the building. This place feels most safe during the day when there are a lot people in this area.
Day 3: McConnell Hall- Cameras are placed outside of and inside of McConnell Hall. The purpose of these cameras is likely to identify people who are committing a crime. This coupled with the secure entrance of the residence hall provide general security. I feel most safe here because my room is located in this building. The RAs are almost always here. At night, public safety is here, which is very helpful. The requirement of an ID to enter the building is something that gives me reassurance that I will be safe. I think that I may have previously seen a camera in the hallway of the second floor here. This place feels very secure.
Day 4: CVS- Cameras are placed here to prevent people from engaging in a variety of crimes such as theft or at least identify someone who has done something. The cameras provide some reassurance. For me, the most reassuring part of this place is not only staff, but many customers as well.
Day 5: Harbor Walk East- Outside of the building are cameras to monitor who is entering the building and to prevent people from carrying weapons inside. I walked to harbor walk during my Freshman year, and despite the fact that it was far away from the main camus, it always felt like it was a safe place to be due to its location. It might be uncomfortable at night, but it is better than nothing.
Day 6: Harbor Walk West- Outside of the building are cameras to again monitor who is entering the building and to prevent people from carrying weapons inside of the building. These cameras should be reassuring to anyone who has to walk in or out of this place. Like Harbor Walk East, it might be uncomfortable for some people to be here during the night, but it is quite secure.
Day 7: Addlestone Library- Cameras placed in Addlestone Library provide security for the building. Addlestone might be one of the best protected parts of campus because it has people actively monitoring the space. Addlestone might be more intrusive than the others, but it feels very secure.
Maybank CCTV Camera:
Gregory Fields
Dr. Koellner
LTGR-250-01
10 December 2018
(In)Visibility as a Form of Protest
CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) is a form of television technology that is “usually used in surveillance systems” (Damjanovsk XIII). Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 “video security has taken on the lead role in protecting personnel and assets” (Kruegle 1). There has been an increase in the need for the “importance of reliable communications and remote visualization of images via remote video cameras” (Kruegle 1). Today, CCTV cameras can be found in many public places. Larger buildings tend to have CCTV cameras. I used Google Maps to find the CCTV cameras around campus. By using CCTV, I was able to observe public places in a way that I was never able to before. Of all of the locations that I monitored, I observed Maybank Hall the most. I also monitored Cistern Yard, Harbor Walk East, Harbor Walk West, CVS, Addlestone Library, and McConnell Residence Hall. Maybank Hall is where I spend most of my time on campus other than McConnell Residence Hall. I pass this area every day, at least once or twice a day depending on which classes I have. I noticed that both Maybank Hall and McConnell Residence Hall have CCTV cameras.
During the experiment, I noticed that almost all of the areas that I wanted to look at were accessible. I could look around public spaces and view the outside of buildings, and I could also look inside of them as well. Trying to figure how to get an inside view was harder, but it is possible. This limitation was probably due to the fact that certain cameras were placed outside, while other cameras were placed inside of the buildings. Regardless of the issues that I had with Google Maps, it works well for this assignment. I was able to spot a few locations where CCTV cameras are located. Those locations were Cistern Yard, Maybank Hall, Addlestone Library, McConnell Residence Hall, Harbor Walk East, Harbor Walk West, and CVS. For me, I didn’t hope to gain much from this experiment, nonetheless I have learned a lot from using Google Maps. This learning experience has taught me how navigate College of Charleston and parts of the city better, but also that cameras are present in most public buildings.
Despite all of its benefits and capabilities, I have found that Google Maps is limited in some ways. This tool restricts me, and it was complicated to figure out at times. The view that I was using to navigate the streets and to locate the CCTV cameras was limited. As a result, I originally was not able confirm whether or not there were cameras inside of the buildings until later when I became more experienced in using Google Maps. The quality of the pictures decreased significantly, as I tried to zoom in on a particular part of the building. I wish that the quality would improve so that I would be able to look closely at specific details of the buildings. Furthermore, I found that there were certain areas where CCTV cameras appeared to be missing. Most small buildings seem to lack CCTV cameras, at least on the outside. This might be because they either lack the money to install cameras or they have some type of security system. Either way, I would argue that these areas need to be better protected in the form of CCTV cameras. The larger buildings on Campus seem to be better protected than the smaller buildings, especially ones that are not a part of College of Charleston. I suppose that the benefit to having fewer cameras is that they aren’t really intrusive. The discrete nature of cameras and surveillance on the campus of College of Charleston is very different from the easy to spot cameras in Ulrich Peltzer’s Part of the Solution. In the story, the monitors are described as being “suspended at a slight angle in a metal frame that occupies the whole wall above the console right up to the ceiling” (Peltzer 4) The cameras on College of Charleston buildings monitor the areas that need monitoring the most, which tend to be areas that are visited the most by people. I don’t think that smaller buildings not having CCTV cameras is necessarily a bad thing. I believe that if too many buildings had cameras, it would appear to some as being too overbearing. The overbearing nature of surveillance is depicted in Juli Zeh’s The Method where a fictional society theoretically is based off of preserving the health of everyone. Mia Holl, like many others, has “exercise requirements” to preserve her health. She also has to worry about “the slightest increase in stomach acid” being detected by “the sensor in her toilet” (Zeh 27-28). These things that Mia and other characters in The Method have to be concerned with are a result of there being too much surveillance within their society. The possibility of surveillance being too intense or being used negatively, is when it is used to target people for their ethnicity or religion. It is worth noting that “technological surveillance, such as CCTV, airport screening and computerized databases, does disproportionately affect South Asians and other non-white persons” (Finn 424). Fortunately, these occurrences only happen occasionally, however it represents a larger issue with how surveillance is conducted within our society. While the presence of cameras on campus isn’t overbearing, it could theoretically become that way.
Regardless of whether they are intrusive or not, the main purpose of these cameras are to provide security for the public. Gender can also play a major role in how people perceive CCTV. For women, CCTV cameras are “seemingly important for increasing women’s security in potentially dangerous public spaces” (Van Der Meulen and Heynen 9). CCTV’s protective qualities ensure that certain areas will be protected. In these circumstances, surveillance is not part of a negative or anxious experience, but a reassuring one. Personally, I noticed that I felt more comfortable in areas where there are more cameras, where public safety is present, and where there are generally more people. I would argue for this purpose that having more security is a better decision because it ensures that people will remain safe regardless of whether it is intrusive or not.
For me, this project was quite interesting. I found it to be very informative. Our group looked at some of the main locations on campus such as Maybank Hall and Cistern Yard. We found that there were cameras all over campus. It was truly strange because these cameras aren’t really noticeable. I have walked to and from buildings such as Maybank Hall and Cistern Yard without noticing that CCTV cameras were there. I have noticed that surveillance is much more present in our everyday lives than I previously thought. People are always being watched by others. Maybe its their friends, their family, their co-workers, or the government, but people are always watching each other. The surveillance can be intrusive sometimes, but it is a tradeoff for one’s safety. I found this project to be very enlightening about the scope of surveillance that exists within our society today.
Works Cited
Damjanovski, Vlado. CCTV : Networking and Digital Technology. Vol. 2nd ed, Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005. EBSCOhost, nuncio.cofc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=189619&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Finn, Rachel L. “Surveillant Staring: Race and the Everyday Surveillance of South Asian Women after 9/11.” Surveillance & Society, vol. 8, no. 4, July 2011, pp. 413–426. EBSCOhost, nuncio.cofc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=i3h&AN=87753216&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Kruegle, Herman. CCTV Surveillance : Video Practices and Technology. Vol. 2nd ed, Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007. EBSCOhost, nuncio.cofc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=185799&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Peltzer, Ulrich. Part of the Solution. Translated by Martin Chalmers. Seagull Books, London, New York, Calcutta. 2007.
Van der Meulen, Emily, and Robert Heynen. Expanding the Gaze : Gender and the Politics of Surveillance. University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2016. EBSCOhost, nuncio.cofc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1222012&site=eds-live&scope=site.
Zeh, Juli. The Method. Translated by Sally Ann Spencer. Harvill Secker, London. 2012.