The department of campus safety and security has many late hour shifts, but they can only catch so many situations on campus. The director of campus safety Morrison Fraser wants to see security cameras installed throughout campus to help out campus security solve some crimes committed and to try to deter crime from taking place in the first place.
Fraser has worked as the director of campus safety at Blackburn College since 2015 and has advocated for security cameras since then. On two separate occasions, he has received quotes for the costs of installing 16 security cameras on campus, but “both times the appropriate committees [did] not see [cameras] as a priority.” Fraser said that all other college campuses he’s been to already have security cameras installed. He said, “From my perspective, you open up Security Magazine and there’s security, the very next page is security and surveillance systems. All these articles talk about upgrading your system because they’re all assuming that everybody has [security cameras].”
Even though Blackburn is a small campus, it still has crime. “Before the semester I started here, there were three TVs stolen from different parlors and the gym. The semester I got here, there were cars broken into, and then the gym was broken into and a bunch of athletic gear was stolen along with construction gear. When you get enough of that stuff, that’s all stuff cameras could possibly catch,” Fraser said. If they are installed, however, the cameras will not be monitored 24 hours a day. Instead, Fraser stated that a policy will be implemented “where myself, Jason Cloninger and the vice president would have authority to go in and view them” if there was a reported incident.
Vice President for Administration and Finance Steve Morris said in an email, “As part of our budgeting process for capital repairs and improvements this academic year, we received a request from the Safety and Security office to purchase 16 cameras and a recording system at a cost of $46,000. Both our Facilities Committee and Budget Committee reviewed this request last year during the budgeting process, along with other capital requests from across campus, and this project did not make the approved list of capital projects we budgeted for this year.”
There may be a change in the upcoming 2018-19 financial year. According to Morris, “Both of our committees involved in the capital budgeting process and our executive team are aware of this request, and it will be considered during our capital request budgeting process for next year. Our development team is also aware of this need in the event we have donors who would be willing to make a donation to help cover the cost. Our grant writer submitted a funding proposal for this camera system to a grantmaking body and while that proposal was not funded, they are continuing to look for other corporations and foundations that may be interested in this as a grant request.”
Fraser hopes that cameras are installed in the 2018-19 fiscal year. “My priority is this,” he said, expressing his hope that security cameras will help student feel safer on campus. “They [security cameras] have two things: first off, cameras can help solve who did something and they can make students realize that cameras are in the area to stop them from committing a crime.”