Camera installation and amnesty policy aims to address BSU demands

announced to students by email on Friday, April 7. As the policy currently reads, camera footage will only be reviewed in the instance that a student handbook violation or criminal act is reported. The policy also states that camera footage will not be regularly monitored. Disciplinary amnesty will extend to any students observed on camera to be committing a student handbook violation or misdemeanor if the action is unrelated to a report.

Yet, the College also included in the policy that actions captured on camera can later be investigated if it is learned that the footage is relevant to a report.

This written policy was a collaboration between Ben Newhouse, dean of students and associate vice president of student affairs, Campus Safety and the Student Government Association (SGA).

when everything was coming, or when it’d be done or even had input on the process behind the cameras.” Coffie wrote that amnesty was included in the BSU’s proposal to “ensure that perpetrators of anti-Black crimes receive consequences for their actions instead of being let off the hook, not for students to be surveilled 24/7.” Coffie also mentioned the overarching problem of Black students previously being surveilled on campus, which was an issue the BSU considered when demanding cameras.

The idea of self-governance and over-policing has been a concern of some students following the announcement of camera installation. According to the policy, students violating handbook policies in the view of cameras will be investigated if an individual were to report these actions.

Campus Safety is currently installing cameras along 8th and 10th Ave. where they cross the Grinnell

College campus. This action is in response to one of the demands from the Grinnell Black Student Union (BSU) after the series of racial harassments on campus in the fall semester.

Cameras with an amnesty policy were proposed by the BSU as an attempt to better ensure Black students’ safety.

The College updated the student handbook about reviewing camera footage and included an accompanying amnesty policy, which they

“The policy was crafted with representatives from each entity sitting in a shared office space,” Newhouse wrote in an email to the S&B. “Pretty early on, we had a shared vision as to what it needed to contain and the amnesty protections that SGA was advocating for.”

Evelynn Coffie `24, vice spokesperson and treasurer of BSU, wrote to the S&B in an email, “We [the BSU] weren’t really given updates about

As of now, the cameras will only preserve footage for a 14-day period due to cloud storage limits, according to Newhouse. An individual wishing to use footage in an investigation would need to report the incident within these 14 days to preserve the footage.

“It is important to remember that