A Story In Which Cameras Were Used in a Rather Questionable Manner

Late in the Fall quarter, a good friend of mine, for purposes of storytelling, “Average Joe”, was written up for possession of alcohol.  He had, hidden in his room, bottles of hard alcohol, much like many other underage students at Santa Clara and at colleges around the nation.

Now, while I am not condoning underage drinking, I would like to call into question the methods that Campus Safety used in implicating of Mr. Joe.

Here is the story:

One Friday night, Joe was sitting in his room, free of the influence of any beverages, when he got a knock on the door.  It was a friend from his high school.  Standing behind him were his friends who had with them bags that made really loud clinky noises. Joe’s friend asked to come on in with his friends, Joe of course allowed them into the room, where they stayed and chatted.

After a few minutes the friends decided to leave with their backpacks, shortly thereafter followed by Joe’s friend who went down the hall to the room that his friends had just gone into.  Unfortunately for everyone, Joe’s friend was followed down the hall by a Campus Safety officer (who, by the way, had sprinted up the stairs with his bike in pursuit of the group, no small feat).

The room that everyone had gone into was promptly opened up, and everyone was written up and given high-risk violations.  However, Joe was greeted by a knock on his door about 15 minutes later by the same Campus Safety officer, who introduced himself with, “So, where’s the alcohol?”

Joe was very rather confused, seeing as he hadn’t been drinking, or acting criminally, this kind of introduction was one that was rather unexpected.  The officer had apparently seen Joe’s friends, on camera, loading up bags with bottles of beer, go into Swig Hall, and enter Joe’s room.  Assuming that Joe had gotten alcohol from them, he wasn’t all too surprised to find, hidden under his bed, a bottle of Southern Comfort and some Rum.

Now, while Joe had been illegally keeping alcohol in his room, he had fallen victim to a rather unfortunate coincidence.  Now, while he was in the wrong, a case like this just goes to show how easy it is to misconstrue things.

In Joe’s hearing, he was shown footage, and was questioned about it, and even asked to identify other people in the video.  Legally, Campus Safety has every right to go into anyone’s room they want and search it, however, there are some ethical issues that can be brought up if their power starts to be abused.

In all of the stories that I have heard, it seems to be that there really aren’t cases where Campus Safety overstepped their boundaries. While it might make the story a little bit more interesting if there were rampant cases of police abuse going on on-campus, it is a very refreshing to know that they seem to be doing a pretty good job.