Ladies room too? :eyebrow:

As long as it's not pointed in the stalls, yes. Washing one's hands is not usually considered a bastion of privacy. It's not like we stand there scratching our asses and adjusting our bras in front of the mirror or anything. :)

I think the point was that this was all in SECRET. Making clandestine recordings of a person who is not aware that they are being photographed, or taping a conversation by telephone without notifying the other party is illegal. So unless a school administrator is working for Homeland Security (in which case, it seems that all bets are off), he does not have the right to appropriate the taxpayer's money to monitor minor children in a public area, without the approval of the School Board, parents, police department, or any other group who could identify and approve the "need" for this surveilance. And if the principal was REALLY not aware that it was being done, an investigation of some sort definitely needs to be made.

I'm with Clodfobble in agreeing that a camera in the toilets does not necessarily mean someone is getting off on videos of pupils.

And I think a 5 day suspension is reasonable for removing school property - the boy needs to learn that just because he doesn't agree with something, it doesn't give him the right to remove it. IMO the correct action would have been to go home, speak to his parents about it and allow them to take or suggest further action. In this case I'm sure they would have suggested some of the radical ideas on the previous page (i.e. remove & dismantle, remove & cry "pervert") but surely 8th graders - 12 years old, right? - not only need guidance when dealing with the adult world, they need to know they still need guidance.

Maybe it hits a different nerve if you have children...?

Security cameras are installed primarily to deter crime. Gathering evidence is only a secondary role they play. A hidden camera does nothing to deter crime. If a criminal isn't aware of its presence, that criminal won't modify his behaviour when around the camera.

This hidden camera smells very fishy to me.

If you want to put cameras in a public bathroom, you should put them in plain sight, and also put up signs informing the patrons that they are being filmed. If you want to make sure nobody tampers with the plain sight cameras, you can also put in hidden cameras pointing at the regular cameras. They are cool if they are hidden then, because the patron already knows they are being filmed.

In Ponca City school history, there has been one suicide (by gunshot) by a 15 yr old boy in a grade school restroom (he went to his sister's school to do it), and one incident of a couple of 17 yr olds caught having sex in a girl's restroom at the high school. I'll always remember that phone call......the boy involved was my son.
(The girl was in an in-school detention class with him that day, lived in a foster home, and was being moved the next day. Apparently she wanted a goodbye present from my son....she said let's go and he went. He still doesn't know her name but insists she had a condom.)
Cameras probably wouldn't have prevented the suicide, or the sex , although the sex act may have been walked in on a little sooner. I don't agree with the idea. I know I wouldn't have appreciated it in school.

Especially if it were one of the schools with no doors on the stalls.

'cause kids have no expectation of privacy, y'see.

Unless the parents of those kids gave informed consent, I don't think the school has any right to do anything like that. Schools as a whole are terrified of lawsuits. Someone just needs to contact the ACLU and get a lawsuit going, and things will be solved in short order.

I live in Ga, and this is the first I have heard of it ( I was vacationing and all). While in high school, two of my teachers, three years apart, were caught having sex with students. You would think that if the schools were to install cameras, they might would want to focus on the classrooms along with the bathrooms. The only criminal thing that went on in our bathrooms was sex. The drug dealing went on in the parking lot, :angel: which was camera monitered but never caught anybody.

then the cameras are useless IMO.

***NEWS FLASH***

MAYBE THE STAFF OUTA GET OFF THEIR ASSES & GO TO WORK!

When I was in school there were teachers everywhere. Couldn't get away w/ shit.