Watch it!

Be careful of public displays on the Quad; the university is going to be watching.

Plans to install a surveillance system at Syracuse University are under way, with the first group of cameras to be in place sometime next year, university officials said.

Officials developed a five- to 10-year plan during which SU will phase-in the system to offset costs and install the large volume of cameras.

"Especially after Virginia Tech, people are expecting universities with certain levels of protection running on campus," said Michael Kearns, the Department of Public Safety's manager of technology and security services. "A lot of these security initiatives were already under way, and Virginia Tech merely acted as a catalyst to speed up the process. It brought to the attention of the administration that we needed to get moving on this."

A university committee is beginning to plan where on campus the surveillance technology will be used, said Paul Gandel, who serves on the committee and is vice president for information technology.

The next step will be to bring in a consultant who will examine the logistics and offer suggestions. So far, eight or nine consultant companies have responded, Gandel said.

"It's moving along," said Drew Buske, DPS deputy chief.

The surveillance cameras will allow DPS to monitor public places such as residence halls, academic buildings, the Quad, parking structures and areas surrounding campus, Gandel said.

There are 11 priority locations, Kearns said. These include entrances and exits at the residence halls, garages and walkways.

Planners don't know how many cameras will be installed, but Kearns said it would depend on funding. He added that it would take more than 1,000 cameras to thoroughly cover the entire campus.

The exact number will be determined as the installation process continues, Gandel said.

"It'll really depend on, as we move forward in stages, to see how effective they are, how many cameras we need in various locations, so we haven't really come up with the final number," Gandel said. "It is dependent on how many cameras we eventually install, so it's hard for me to put a price tag. But the systems are not inexpensive."

Currently, there are more than 100 cameras running in a dozen or more locations across campus, such as at The Warehouse, computer labs and some residence halls. SU is trying to put together a comprehensive closed-circuit television network that will bring all video feed back to a central location, Kearns said.

The majority of the footage is recorded on VHS or DVD and is not actually monitored, Kearns said. The tapes are usually reviewed when something happens, such as during crime investigations.

But with the new surveillance system, computer software will monitor live video feed. There are two types of automatic software: video analytics and event-driven video, Kearns said.

Video analytics will detect movement such as if someone is lurking in a parking lot and pulling on car doors, Kearns said. The footage will then appear on the Public Safety dispatcher's screen. Event-driven video will record when someone swipes an ID card to enter the residence halls, when a motion detector is tripped, when a door is opened that shouldn't be or when an alarm goes off.

Kearns said he hopes the system will help to curb crimes on and around campus.

"Number one, you're going to get less crime to begin with if people know the area is monitored," he said. "You also end up with a higher solvability rate as a result of it. When a crime is committed - a burglary, a robbery, an assault - the solvability goes up tremendously if there's video equipment. So you're really providing the students a much safer educational environment."

In an effort to curtail student drinking and rowdiness, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has installed 450 surveillance cameras in the last five years, which has caused some students to criticize monitoring by the administration, according to an April 17 Boston Globe report.

Some SU students are also wary of the costs, effectiveness and privacy issues.

"I feel like by them putting in all these cameras among so many other things that they're wasting a lot of our student loans and tuition on something that's probably not going to work very well and that no one's actually going to use," said Gabe Kassel, a graduate advertising student.

"What happens in a lot of technology things is that they put them in place, and then no one uses it, no one's watching the cameras, they have them as a fail-safe," Kassel said. "I'm sure they're going to spend way too much money on it. The students probably aren't going to see any results."

Others are less skeptical.

"It's a good idea if you're talking about security on campus," said Mugambi Nthiga, another graduate advertising student. "It's more dangerous now than ever. There are all these alerts, people getting robbed and stuff."

But Nthiga emphasized that privacy is important to him and that he wouldn't want a camera following him wherever he went.

"With privacy, it really depends on if the cameras are there in public places that you know are public places," Kassel said.

SU officials stressed that privacy would be maintained even though students would be monitored. The cameras are designed so that they will only focus on outdoor areas and visible public spaces. They cannot be overridden to focus indoors, both Kearns and Gandel said.

"There'll be a very strict policy on why, how and when a video is used," Kearns said. He said certain types of technology can be used to prevent malicious activity of operators.

"For example, if you have a video camera on the exterior of a building that could theoretically be directed to the view inside of a residence hall, there's technology out there which would allow us to white out that portion of the view. So even if an operator was trying to be unethical and view inside a building, they would be unable to do that," Kearns said.

There will be strict monitoring on video operators, said Kearns, who believes a surveillance system is necessary for student safety.

"To be quite honest with you, the market is demanding it, especially after Virginia Tech," said Kearns, whose son is a high school senior and is applying to SU. "As a parent who is going to be sending his child off to college shortly, I would expect the same thing. What are you going to do to protect my child? It's absolutely reasonable to expect."