The Importance of Security Surveillance Systems in Modern Classrooms

The year was 2001. The principal of a popular school rusticated a notorious group of students on disciplinary grounds for an entire semester. The news made the headlines the next day. The papers read that the school security surveillance system showed that a gang of 4 were found to be common in 3 major areas of crime that had recently taken place in the school premises. A student’s designer android cell phone in the shape of a Ferrari car was stolen. Right after that, in the same month, a staff member’s brand new lap top was stolen from the staff room when the staff member was at the washroom. The following month one of the students from the journalism department complained that his Nikkon camera was in his bag but was not to be found now. Each of these people had lodged a complaint with the local police apart from having informed the Head of the school. The principal of the school known for his stringent disciplinary measures personally visited the server room personally to review the shots captured by the hidden security surveillance system and was shocked to see the methodology, coordination and precision of timing the 4 students had in accomplishing an antisocial deed as this. The discipline officer was called in all urgency for a meeting and shown the clippings. The disciplinary officer called all the students involved with the incident into principal’s office. Knowing the implications of a disciplinary trial with their parents and lawyer present, the students were not only rusticated from school, but were barred from taking up any public exams for a year and put in a children’s prison for 1 month of educative rehabilitation. That was the price the children had to pay apart from the shame and scandal that they underwent on a personal level. The Closed Circuit TV System at St. Aloysius Senior Secondary School was an asset. It had served the purpose of being installed as an unbiased accountable platform. Infact the finance department sanctioned the amount with great difficulty because they felt that the school could do without one for some more time as it would crunch the financial budget of the year. The brighter side of it was the school proved itself in being a role model when it came to taking strict disciplinary action in the welfare of its reputation. School’s view it as a tool to monitor students with behavioral problems while school disciplinary committees view it to be a source of physical evidence when crimes do occur and assert that the installation of such cameras in specific places on the premises can curb crime. School administrators feel that the CCTV’s carry with them the following benefits which include: 1. These hidden cameras have the inbuilt capacity of monitoring a set area in all angles. 2. Providing the school officials with documentary proof on issues not otherwise available. 3. It helps in addressing behavioral problems 4. It helps in checking the crime rates in schools 5. The school security personnel can be kept busy with different jobs in other areas of the school out of the CCTV coverage area. Now, right from the school gates to the corridors, the staircases, and dark dingy corners in parking lots there are a pair of hidden eyes that that school has that silently monitors its employees and students 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.