The College of Communication employee accused of improperly planting a video camera in an editing suite is challenging his discharge, said COM Dean Tom Fiedler.
The employee, formerly an engineer for the Film and Television department, will rely on union representation to make the case that he was wrongly dismissed, Fiedler said.
The engineer was accused by the school of planting a video camera in the master control room of the BUTV10 studio. The engineer told COM he had planted the video after finding evidence that students had broken rules by eating and drinking in the room, Fiedler said, who added that the engineer told COM he was the only employee with knowledge of the camera.
In an April 8 Daily Free Press article, Fiedler stopped short of calling the incident spying, saying that the employee was punished for failing to adhere to the security policies adopted by the school after the arrival of Fiedler as dean.
“Since I arrived, I have asked that there be a policy put into place to make sure that what we are doing is appropriately monitored by people who are trained to do this, and also so that nothing we would do would infringe on someone’s expectation of privacy,” Fiedler said.
He said this incident was a violation of that policy.
No other rooms in COM had been improperly videotaped, Fiedler said. However, COM does have surveillance cameras near the doors of the building, which are overseen by the BU Police Department, Fiedler added.
A staff member notified the dean’s office of the improper surveillance about a month ago, and an investigation followed, Fiedler said.
The school reportedly interviewed multiple people involved with the incident, including the former engineer. During this time, the engineer was suspended, Fiedler said.
Three weeks ago, this review reached its conclusion and the engineer “was escorted from the building and his office was cleared out,” Fiedler said.
Staff writer Josh Cain contributed to the reporting of this article.
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