Having cameras and microphones in the Jessop West building seminar rooms and offices seems to be crossing the line of keeping an eye on students for their own safety and becoming downright intrusive.
Being able to see if someone has become physically aggressive using CCTV is a sensible precaution; spending three years over-analysing books would certainly leave me inclined towards violence.
But microphones? Really? Perhaps the University has a security team on standby: “All units respond to a stern talking-to occurring on a third floor seminar room.”
Every time surveillance equip-ment appears in a new place there is a great outcry about Big Brother, the nanny state and any other phrases from the Big Book of Generic Leftie Outbursts.
I should know about this; I’ve written a fair few pieces decrying the moral principle of CCTV, but there seems to be a practical reason for opposing the microphones in the Jessop building.
Many of the staff are unhappy with the teaching spaces, the lack of storage and the fact that the building seems to be a triumph of aesthetics over functionality.
Should the University decide to tune into who’s saying what in Jessop West, they could quickly find out who doesn’t think that the corridors are as wide as a motorway, or who reckons the seminar rooms make the Black Hole of Calcutta look like an aircraft hangar.
Another issue with the sizes of the place is the fact tall students can’t fit in the lifts. Students who eat themselves into states of monstrous girth can fit down the corridors, but anyone unfortunate to grow over the wrong side of 6’ 6″ has to take the stairs.
Then again I feel sorry for whoever listens in to the conversations in Jessop West. Seminars are in essence a forum for the wholly ill-informed and over-opinionated to shout down the placid opinions of people who’ve done the reading.
Some poor sap who had ambitions of being James Bond, or a streetwise private sleuth, finds himself listening to someone who’s voicing their opinions on the underlying themes of
Catch-22 having quickly read the Wikipedia entry on it 10 minutes before running out the door to arrive late for their seminar.Guardian readers taking a meaningless postmodernist stance on Holocaust literature they will have probably taken the decision to burst their own ear drums.
By the time they’ve waded through the first 20 hours of overly avid
Or the University could go the whole hog and add speakers to the cameras and microphones.
If we really are going to have Big Brother watching us we should be able to hear what he thinks. Seminars could be enlightened with the views of frustrated Yorkshire security men booming out of speakers.
Of course the cameras and microphones could be turned to the English Department’s advantage.
For Shakespeare modules students could spring into full blown thespian dialogues, with their ability to do justice to the Bard’s works being recorded and reviewed as part of the marking process.
The accusations of plagiarism could be replaced by more interesting cheating enquiries – have males students been stuffing the front of their tights with socks before performing the Scottish play?
All joking aside, listening in to the conversations in offices, where students can be discussing personal issues with tutors, is incredibly unethical.
The University should stop wasting money on needless surveillance equipment in overpriced and poorly designed buildings.
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