Professor's Perspective: Collateral Damage Part 1–University must discuss new security measures

In previous articles, members of the Faculty Organization for
Human Rights have expressed their concerns about collateral damage
caused by the current administration’s focus on war as the
answer to terrorism. We are not only concerned about Iraqi
civilians, but about civilian rights at home. Today, I focus on
Homeland Security and its collateral damage on campus.

Our campus is being secured. Whether it will lead to a more
secure campus remains an open question.

On April 16, 2003, Chancellor Carnesale notified the campus
community that “future circumstances may require that staff
and faculty provide positive identification and confirmation of
their UCLA affiliation in order to obtain and maintain access to
university buildings and services. Therefore, effective June 1,
2003, all faculty and staff will be required to obtain a UCLA Bruin
Card and to carry it with them when on university
property.”

Specific and apparently systematic measures are being taken in
response to vaguely articulated concerns, and the justification
given is that they are “not unlike such requirements at other
colleges and universities nationwide.”

Left out is any suggestion of how the immediate requirement for
us to carry a Bruin Card and the impending requirement to show it
to gain access to buildings and services is intended to make anyone
any safer. From what threats and how will these measures protect
us? How was this decision arrived at, and in consultation with
whom?

Perhaps the manner in which an expanded ID system leads to
enhanced security on campus is self-evident, and I am stupidly
missing the obvious. But I find that each possibility for how such
a system might increase security seems tenuous at best, and
disturbingly intrusive at worst.

For example, one use of such a system might be to allow
computerized analysis of patterns of activity or access. Such
systems are currently being developed under the TIA program
(originally Total Information Awareness, now Terrorism Information
Awareness) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA). TIA intends to create a system for mining data from
massive databases compiled from all manner of communications,
transactions and records of U.S. citizens and others.

Whatever the reasons for establishing on-campus ID and access
systems, it would be very useful to have an explicit rationale to
consider.

Professor Neil Postman of NYU has shown that the education we
receive includes both explicit and implicit components. The
explicit component is the subject matter of our particular courses.
The implicit component includes the social and institutional
relationships that are the daily experience of each person.

The implicit component has to do with who determines what to do,
how to do it, when to do it, under what conditions, what
constitutes success, what will be allowed, what will not be
allowed, and how differences of opinion about these issues will be
resolved. In short, what we learn is our institutional role. This
is what our university teaches every day. And the implicit
component is a major factor in how we learn about our relationship
to the larger society.

Given this implicit education, two questions arise in the
context of the changes coming in the name of
“security.” First, will these changes alter the
experience of being part of the campus community, and, if so, how?
Second, what social relationships are “taught” via the
creation of these security measures? Related to this second
question is whether the conduct of the university in establishing
security measures promotes our role as meaningful participants in a
democratic society.

The answer to the first question seems clear. Increased security
measures and the requirement to show ID to access buildings and
services should increase the sense of distinction between who
belongs and who does not. It will first increase the awareness of
being monitored, and then lead, through monotonous familiarity, to
habituation to such monitoring. In addition, it may heighten the
sense that we live under threat and that outsiders, in particular,
constitute a threat.

The second question is partly answered above. The social roles
of the authorized and unauthorized will be highlighted.

But, more importantly, what does this teach us about our role in
the decisions that affect our daily experience in society? The
lesson may be appropriate to the world we live in: administrations
will make such decisions and will inform us of their
implementation.

This is not dissimilar to what occurred in the passage of the
little debated “Patriot” Act, signed into law by
President Bush on October 26, 2001.

Given that further legislation is coming that will continue to
expand the surveillance and detention powers of the government
(e.g. the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, a.k.a. Patriot
Act II), it seems a good time to consider what our experience
within the campus community will teach us about our role in the
larger community.

It is my hope that members of our community will develop an
interest in becoming active partners with the administration in
discussing security measures, evaluating how they will affect us,
and examining the ways in which they are intended to make us more
secure.

Dr. David Adelson is associate member of CURE ““ the
Center for Ulcer Research and Education.