Residents of Roberts Hall recently noticed a brand-new security camera outside the dorm where there wasn’t one previously.
This was one of the few noticed around campus, as it stuck out on the back entrance of Roberts Hall and pointing towards the bike rack.
There is no visible camera by the front entrance of the building.
Carlos Cepeda, a first-year computer science major and lab support services worker, said, “My bosses installed the cameras. This is their job. They call lab support to do stuff like this.”
Cepeda appreciates the new camera outside of Roberts since he is a resident there, but would like to keep the cameras outside the building.
Barry Cobb, assistant director of security, said, “Most of these cameras that were put in were replacements for cameras we’ve had all along.”
Cobb explained that the hardware of the cameras degrades over time, requiring replacements of the cameras themselves every five or six years.
The IT department overhauled the system by replacing “about 35 to 40 cameras” with models from 2018 and 2019 that are all digital with no moving parts.
The computers in the security office were also upgraded to monitor the livestreams.
Cobb mentioned that the cameras are all over the place: in elevators, various floors in some of the dorms, watching bike racks and in parking lots.
“They are there,” Cobb said, “If you walk around, you’ll see them.” Cobb said there were no security incidents that pushed for the camera replacements, just a system that reached the end of its life-cycle.
Thomas Couperthwaite, manager of lab support service information technology, said the installations were mainly done this past November.
“That’s when we started the first few in the parking garage at Panther Dining,” Couperthwaite said.
Couperthwaite said that some cameras were installed as recently as two weeks ago and that there are a few weeks until all of the camera installations are complete.
Some installations were as recent as a few days ago, such as the cameras installed to the roof of Evans Library on April 5.
Couperthwaite said that the cameras vary in quality depending on where they are intended to be installed.
Lower hanging cameras have a smaller resolution compared to rooftop cameras that are up high.
Replacement cameras were easy to swap out with old ones, while new cameras had to have a new data feed set up so they could stream to the security office.
“It’s an ongoing thing,” Couperthwaite said. “Every year we are maintaining and adding more cameras.”
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