Because Leiden University had to switch off its smart ‘classroom scanners’, a man now appears every hour with an iPad under his arm in the doorway of the lecture hall. His pen skips like a baton through all the students who attend my guest writing lecture. He counts them in a whisper.
Can’t that be automated, one of my students wondered. Irony, at least they’re starting to learn that. Because there are cameras. White two-eyed cabinets, hanging up during corona for the one and a half meter discipline, but then they turned out to be very handy for the real time keeping track of local occupancy. After revelations in university magazine mare and a wave of protests pulled the plugs.
Now there is a research report: the security of the cameras was not good, and an analysis should have been made of the impact and the privacy risks.
The university insists that the cameras only count heads. But an infrared sensor is sufficient for that. Why set up this system that cost tons of money, and especially gigakilos in mutual trust?
That’s how my thoughts go when I stroll through my hometown and student city. There is now a police camera on every square and in every shopping street. Because the third party of October is approaching, extra mobile watch eyes have even been installed here and there.
My impression: it leaves the people of Leiden cold. If they notice at all. Most are too busy divulging their private lives on TikTok and Instagram. Our urge for social connection is stronger than the concern for privacy.
Doesn’t something like that also apply to the university #cameragate? This week I gave a mini-practicum new journalism – observing in the margins of the news – and several students returned with the same detail. A blue column has been erected in the hall of the Lipsius building, the headquarters of the humanities, in which you can hang cards, similar to the advertisement boards of supermarkets. Students offer each other something nice here. Against the loneliness, against the pressure to perform. In addition to Facebook tile wisdom and cries of despair from room seekers, there are invitations to join a knitting club. This initiative is called ‘Acts of Kindness’.
No cameras but nice cards. Would they have understood at the university what is suddenly clear to me? The fault wasn’t so much those cameras, but that they were suddenly there. There they were, unannounced, without explanation, in the middle of the corona time, with a group that had been hit disproportionately hard, socially and emotionally: the cold eyes of surveillance.
‘Unsee Us’ was the rallying cry of the actions last December. Someone then held up a piece of cardboard: ‘We need care, not cameras.’ That’s how it is. They are against cameras because they want to feel seen.
Christian Weijts writes a column here every Friday.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of September 30, 2022