For ‘the protection of students’
North Carolina State University has set up surveillance cameras in fraternity and sorority houses that can monitor “student behavior in their personal living spaces,” Campus Reform reports, citing “multiple sources.”
The school is defending the practice as in keeping with its “security plan designed for the protection of students,” and claims they are only set up “at the entrances and exits” of all campus buildings:
However, in at least one fraternity, there are five cameras installed at various locations throughout the interior of the house, including three in a common area—a place where the fraternity brothers spend their leisure time and host guests, with one camera capturing a live feed of the fraternity’s bar area.
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That fraternity had asked the administration to “adjust the zoom of the cameras” so they wouldn’t capture the whole living space – but officials didn’t act for nearly a month, until they noticed “some cameras had been covered up,” according to email correspondence reviewed by Campus Reform.
A source “closely affiliated” with NCSU’s Sigma Phi Epsilon chapter said Joshua Welch, associate director for the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life (inset), asked for the name of a student shown on surveillance trying to cover the camera, “with the intention of reporting him to the school’s student conduct office.”
The fraternity in one of the surveilled houses, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, is listed as “suspended pending an investigation” on the school’s fraternity page.
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