Big Brother is watching you. Or at least he will be soon if the Campus Council life-arrangers have their way. Claiming the moral authority to speak for, as one particularly self-righteous council member put it, "the interests of those in the minority" as well as, we are left to presume, the good of campus as a whole, this small collection of student bureaucrats almost succeeded last week in pulling another fast one on the student body. After discussing their so-called "safety plan" with a constituency only slightly narrower than their own minds, a number of legislators were prepared to pass a resolution calling for, among other things, the installation of video cameras at the entrance to every campus dorm and DukeCard readers for every bathroom. Yes, this is the same Campus Council that spearheaded the war on student smokers, culminating in the resolution to ban all smoking in the residence halls last year. What is surprising is not only the audacious willingness of Campus Council members to freely legislate gross violations of student privacy and sell out their peers to administrative nannying, but also the degree to which these so-called representatives carry out this dirty business divorced from any meaningful contact with the student body as a whole.
If it were not for the last minute intervention of non-council members at last week's meeting, this dubious resolution would have most certainly already passed. Those who discovered this camera scheme only hours before the meeting scheduled to approve it accused The Chronicle of dropping the ball in not reporting earlier on such a radical initiative. The real blame, however, lies with renegade council members who deliberately avoid the publicity that would expose their resolutions as the lunacy they are.
In the past, when confronted by the fact that the student body overwhelmingly opposes their meddling, Campus Council members have hidden behind an incoherent rhetoric of minority rights. Last year's smoking ban, for example, was justified because it protected the minority of students who were discomforted by other students smoking in the privacy of their own rooms. The rights of the minority of smokers on Duke's campus were conspicuously not protected. In truth, the Campus Council legislators that bring us such brilliant proposals as camera monitoring consistently serve a minority of but one, that is to say, their own inflated, self righteous selves.
Campus Council should be fighting for students, as was done in the off-campus DukeCard access initiative, not against students, as this camera scheme will inevitably turn out. Furthermore, when pontificating on measures as radical as an exorbitant electronic network that will monitor the most minute details of student life, council members ought present these ideas to the larger Duke community before presuming to tell us all what is in our best interest. "Sunlight," as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once quipped, "is the best disinfectant"- for bacteria as well as bad ideas.
What might have emerged if this proposal was subject to public debate are the many reason, beyond the obvious financial ones, for rejecting this Orwellian intrusion into residential life....
What the hell is that noise? I'm trying to write my overdue article at three in the morning after a fun Saturday night and the most obnoxious voice I have ever heard has taken up residence in my hallway. Great, it is getting closer; wait, this is interesting, "That is Bill English's room? I hate Bill English." Hmm. Another admirer. They usually don't come this close to where I sleep, though. "I haaate Bill English"-Real cute, take a number. You're somewhere behind Karla Holloway, half the administration, the entire faculty of the Women's Studies Program and a lot of other people who get paid too much for what they do. Rip, tear, tear. That sounds a lot like the on-call schedule I have posted on my door. That's unfortunate; some residents might need that information. "Bill English can die and go to hell." Eventually die, yes, but not the hell part, I hope. I'm sure she is just drunk and blowing off some steam. Ah good, some friends are taking her away, now to get back to why Campus Council is acting stupid and screwing over students.
Oh joy, here she comes again, and I think she just kicked my door. Time to see what this chick looks like; boy peepholes are great. Whoever said girls are cute when they are angry, though, couldn't be more wrong. Hmm look at this-she just spilled beer on my door. Wack! There goes the full can. By this point I have gathered from the friends who are trying to get her to stop what her first name is. This is still rather amusing, but I should get back to my column. Ha, she just told one of her friends that she is a women's studies major and that is why she hates me. Poor girl is probably oppressed. Too bad I don't know what that feels like. Now she is calling my name asking me to "come out here." Though nothing, and I mean nothing, would please me more than speaking my mind to this
b----, her being drunk and me being sober, I would probably be accused of sexual assault.
Guys try this-get liquored up and go over to the room of some random girl you don't like at 3 a.m., shout expletives at her and tell her she should die, vandalize her door, and tell her to come out and fight you. Keep pounding and throwing things at the door until your friends take you away. Then, tell me with a straight face that the powers that be at this University wouldn't destroy you.
Harassment, vandalism, noise violations, I really have no hard feelings, but now I don't have the space or time to explain what a bunch of liberal nincompoops these House Council people are. I can't relate their therapeutic desire to subject everything to administrative control to the similarly ridiculous attempts of politicians who want to "fingerprint" all the guns in America and justice department officials who want the unbridled power to wiretap phones. The campus resolution still might pass, and unconvinced of their errors these students may try something similarly awful in a position of real power some day. The moral of this story: hate-filled women's studies majors and unexamined Campus Council members are hazardous to my privacy. Someone should put a leash on both. I'm going to bed.
Bill English is a Trinity senior. His column appears every other Monday.
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