The biggest show around

“Security theater,” a term coined by author Bruce Schneier, is used to describe security measures and formal policies created to give an impression of safety while doing little or nothing to actually guarantee safety. We should be familiar with this intentional false impression of security, particularly in the framework of our post-9/11 existence. Anyone who has flown in the past seven years has seen this, with measures such as the banning of liquids over a set amount, which seem far more successful at frustrating than protecting the flyer. By these standards, Columbia has been developing a most elaborate and grand security show—the biggest one around. It’s a show we’re audience to each day and just like that ban on liquids, it’s often more annoying than practical.

Before I launch into my criticisms of the current security measures, or at least those most obvious to students, it is worth noting that we have a relatively safe campus, particularly for one in an urban center (although NYC is an extremely safe city for its size). Some of this is thanks to the public safety department.

Personally, I feel safe, but am I actually? Are any of us continually safe on campus? In order to answer this, I went around campus to see how the policies, as presented at orientation and made available on the department’s Web site, practically play out.

The non-residential, non-library buildings were apparently the most unsafe buildings. Whether it’s Hamilton, Lewisohn, or Kent, there is virtually nothing one can do to be denied entry into these places. We do it every day, opening the doors and wandering the buildings to find our classes without so much as the need to swipe a card at the door or towards a guard. Sure, it might be difficult to enter these buildings without an ID card at irregular hours, but if someone wanted to enter a building to do harm, he or she would probably not be trying for late at night anyway. With many of these academic buildings, there is not even the full effort of theatrical performance to veil the true danger. One can plainly see that getting in is as easy as pulling open the front door.

Schermerhorn is a perfect example of a building protected by “security theater” measures, which in their inconsistencies are not only useless and frustrating, but inconvenient as well. I tested the 119th Street entrance to Schermerhorn, which along with both 116th Street campus entrances, is listed as ‘patrolled’ by the public safety department’s policy report. When testing this multiple times in the past few days, I found this to be true. Just like the College Walk entrances, when the door was open, there was a guard to be found in the booth. But what good does this do? This is theater at its best. I was not stopped once, under multiple guards, to show ID. Some people voluntarily flashed theirs, but none was required. At times, I went with or without a backpack, which could have obvious implications for the safety of others when one considers what a stranger or troubled student could carry into such an unprotected building.

The guard system at the main campus entrances makes little sense for many reasons. What would one need to do in order to be stopped by one of them? Look like a killer? Anyone could carry a dangerous weapon onto College Walk, and the guards would be none the wiser. There may not be a practical way for them to check for this at such posts, but at least we could recognize this for the futile show of safety that it is.

There are many symbols of security on campus, and some are good and practical measures. For example, we have a blue light system, which shows where one can find an emergency callbox to connect one directly to campus security for immediate assistance. There is also the Safe Haven system, under which anyone can enter participating stores marked with red lion logos and receive safe haven from any unsafe situation. Both of these can clearly be useful, but only as reactionary systems. They do nothing towards prevention, but rather attempt to reclaim the supposedly compromised safety of a student.

While it may be the nature of humankind to react, it is simply not an option to wait for a tragedy to reform our security system. The show on campus is not only frustrating, but pathetic in many ways, and offensive in its purposeful and false implications of safety. As long as a book on a shelf in Butler is more secure than a student learning in Hamilton, we have major work to do.

The author is a student at Columbia and JTS.