In an editorial published in the The Chronicle of Higher Education a little more than a week ago, California State University – Channel Islands Police Lieutenant Michael Morris called for a new policy in the California State education system that would allow university officials to monitor students’ online lives through the institution’s computer servers.
“This information, which may reside in the university’s IT system, would allow the campus to strategize a swift and effective intervention, and take steps to prevent violent behavior from ever occurring,” he wrote.
Morris’s position stems from recent occurrences of campus violence across the United States, notably the tragic murder of 32 people at Virginia Tech by a disturbed student. He believes that if schools could change their policies to allow officials to monitor students online, they would be better equipped to prevent the endangerment of students.
While his premise and overall goal are reasonable, his proposed methods are questionable at best, and a gross violation of privacy at worst. It would not be a far stretch to monitor online activity on university computers because those are the property of the institution, but to keep tabs on students’ personal computers would be a violation of privacy.
While we, as students, may use the university network and servers for our personal use, we still pay for that service in our tuition. We do not pay for the university to play Big Brother and keep tabs on every click on our laptops. Our enrollment at an institution of higher learning should not negate our rights to privacy.
Moreover, there are other methods of investigating potential safety threats on campus. There are alert systems in place for that specific reason. According to The Huffington Post, schools have implemented “threat assessment” teams whose sole purpose is identifying troubled or disturbed individuals on campus.
While instances of campus violence are tragic, the bottom line is that not all of them can be prevented. This is not to say that the university should not do all it can to protect the students, but it should not go so far as to violate their rights to privacy in the name of safety.
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