Freedom, safety, and all that

[serinde]

Here am I, sitting on campus, as part of a five-hour expedition so I can give a half-hour orientation talk to the incoming freshmen. (Why do we have orientation in May for the incoming Fall students? I wish I knew.) And unlike the previous ones, it's running late, not early, heigh ho.

So I'm listening to the representative of Public Safety give his talk. And although I am sure part of what he's doing is trying to reassure the kiddies' parents that their darlings will be safe at loose in the city, I have a serious. fucking. problem with the start of his speech, which ran roughly thus:

"How many of you were asked for ID when you came in this morning?" (no hands go up.) "Not one of you, right? Yeah, it is kinda funny that, after 9/11, you can go into a building and no one asks you for IDs. Hunter is currently an open campus. But we're gonna fix that."

Feh.

Comments

[must-sew-faster.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but the Virginia Tech, CWRU, Louisiana Tech and Delaware State shootings were all committed by students. I bet they all had school ID's. Having ID won't keep crazies out. Every time there is a shooting or a scare, security goes bug-nuts everywhere, and after a few months, things calm back down again.
Maybe the security guy should push personal safety education for students for that matter.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

It must be admitted that one of the weirder problems we get is that homeless people occasionally wander in and do curious things in the school buildings, and that's one of the issues these measures are supposed to relieve. Also that it's a magnet area for snatch-n-grab thefts, and it's unclear how much of that is due to actual students and how many are walk-ins.

But framing it as a Thing for a Post-9/11 World made me want to hoist the Jolly Roger.