Georgia 8th grader suspended for taking camera out of restroom ceiling
 

Georgia 8th grader suspended for taking camera out of restroom ceiling

(Monticello, GA-AP) December 1, 2005 - An eighth grade student at Jasper County Middle School in middle Georgia has been suspended for five days for removing a camera from the ceiling in the boys' restroom ceiling.

Cindy Champion is the boy's mother, she says she thinks her son, Mack, did the right thing. She's upset his permanent school record will show that he stole school property.

The restroom is shared by Jasper County Middle and High School students. The high school principal put the camera there, apparently to monitor students' behavior.

Mack Champion says he saw the camera in a hole cut in the ceiling tiles and felt students' privacy was being violated by the camera and took it down.

His mother says the middle school principal and teachers were not aware of the camera. She says she told the high school principal he should come up with another way to monitor restroom behavior but that he said he will continue using a camera.

A district attorney says such cameras in public restrooms are legal because schools have leeway on privacy issues.

http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4187719

He will continue to use something he wasn't aware of?

WTF?

;)

Walk in under an umbrella and destroy the damn thing.......as many times as necessary.

middle school.... high school...ok.
maybe they had the camera there to try and find a writer.

hell, is it just me?

If I were that kid's parent, I'd tell him he did the right thing but to be more careful next time. Putting cameras in the restroom is nuts - just plain nuts.

I especially liked the "...this will go on your [Grand Canyon Echo] P E R M A N E N T R E C O R D [/Echo]. So flippin' what. I'd petition for a search warrant of the principal's residence for evidence of tapes from the camera that he was unaware of but will continue to use just to get it in the public record.

BTW, Radar, how's the Congressional thing going? Is it possible to mount a campaign for public office without going on the corporate dole?

don't steal the cam just uninstall it , take it into the school office , drop it on the counter and say ," I found some PERVERTS secert video cam in the bathroom celing " announce it on the local news , I wounder how much contrversy would be raised over THAT !!!
, hell i bet the boys and GIRLS could sue for invaation of privosey ( spellin ) or get them under some of the voyeur laws that have been passed ,

Prinsiple is getting off on the videos of UNDERAGE , kids comeing and going in the bath room , i WOUNDER what all he sees ??????

I know kids are getting killed in school restrooms but this is just beyond weird! Like zippyt says, WHO keeps these tapes or monitors the activity? :eyebrow: If the purpose is to PREVENT assaults, drug deals, or sexual activity, just TELL the kids there are cameras and have them prominently positioned. Then anybody who is up to dubious behavior will avoid the place and nobody's privacy or civil rights will be violated.

Sometimes I think that our schools are run by people who are so twisted that they are the ones who need psychological counseling rather than the kids.

The dude's a pervert, bottom line (and he does like those little boys' bottoms!) If I were a parent, I'd be screaming holy, bloody hell in 16 different languages. How dare this pedophile so flagrantly engage in his nasty activities?

If the principle is that worried about what may happen at his school, put in one of those security metal detector thingies and make the kids march through it. That ought to use up the better part of homeroom every morning which is always a boring non-entity of a class, anyhow. Assign male teachers to pee-pee duty and let them lean against the wall in the restroom during class breaks and lunch hours if the principle is so concerned.

Better yet, have a video cam installed in the restroom he uses and have the boys from the 10th grade shop class monitor it. That should be good for a few laughs!

Hell, if I were the kid who took the video cam out, I'd headline it on any future resume's or job applications. "Showed courage of conviction by removing pedophile's video cam." Damn straight I want that on my record!

Are kids getting killed in bathrooms? It is more likely he's a control freak,(insert anti-gov prop here) not a perv. As Algore once said, "It's time for him to go."

Yes, they are. There have been at least two high-profile cases I remember this year. The restroom is also the school ambush place of choice for gang members :neutral:

Is that a CA thing, bathroom murders? :confused:

Actually, I don't remember if either of these was in CA. Maybe I should google it. I do remember that the latest kid's mom was going to sue the school district (of course).

http://archives.thedaily.washington....irestoryO.html
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-dher...,2696043.story
http://www.svrc.net/ShootingsMap.htm#Memphis
http://www.schoolsecurity.org/trends...ence04-05.html

Santee, CA
Miami, FL
Memphis, TN
Highland Falls, NY

It's not just "smoking in the boy's room" that they want to prevent anymore, nowdays it's drug deals, bullying, and sexual encounters which school administrators are obsessed with stopping. What ever happened to those Hall Monitors who had that job when I was in the public school system? And it should be more than clear that the hallways are the best place to get killed in today's schools anyway, so where are the cameras there?

Am I the only one who doesn't see anything wrong with this? You can be absolutely sure that the camera didn't point into the stalls or get any footage that could be close to construed as pornographic. This story would be all about that if it did. Many public restrooms also have cameras in them for security reasons. The kid wasn't necessarily wrong in taking it down, although I think he was wrong to steal it. He should have simply disabled it or returned it to the school office if he wanted to make a statement. But in the end, that's all it gets to be, is a statement, and maybe a public relations nightmare. The school has every legal right to put the camera there as long as it's not pointed at the stalls or urinals.

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.