WaPo: Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines

Thanks to the SpotterEDU app, colleges are able to track the locations of their students, whether they’re at the gym, in the library, or attending class. The system can even be used to flag students who spend too much time in a particular location (or avoiding one).

Though reactions from students have been decidedly mixed, more and more colleges are implementing SpotterEDU across campus.

This level of monitoring makes me deeply uncomfortable. My students are adults, and they’re free to show up to class or stay home.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/24/colleges-are-turning-students-phones-into-surveillance-machines-tracking-locations-hundreds-thousands/

Creepy, and totally unsurprising.

I think the intentions are good but wayyyy too big brother-ish. Let’s treat college students like the adults they are. This does reflect the current trend to privacy invasion throughout society.

per an article in the Carolina newspaper the app is only being used for Athletes, to ensure that they attend class.

https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2019/09/student-athlete-tracking

It was unclear to me (possibly due to my poor attention span) what the story with its usage at Syracuse is (required? for who?). Using it as a glorified attendance taker isn’t really a problem for me (assuming it actually works), but not spending enough time at the cafeteria? Really?

I sense a new opportunity for the entrepreneuring student. I’ll take your phone to a class I’m already attending (or one too large for the professor to notice) for a small fee.

This is too 1984-ish to me. Scary! The potential abuses far outweigh the advantages. And 18-year-olds should learn to get themselves to class!

DS goes to a residential boarding school and they have an app to check in and off campus. The app has a function so they can be tracked and we have told DS to ensure it is always turned on.

We also all use Life360 and have found it useful. I guess if my life were very interesting and/or I had some secrets I might find it annoying.

It sets a dangerous precedent. Like the story about boiling a frog.
We actually traded privacy for convenience years ago, when we started using credit/ debit cards instead of cash, cell phones and electronic car passes.

Big difference, IMO, between 13-18 year old boarding school students and young adults in college.

I see how the safety factor of the app could be useful and reassuring in the case of minors away from home at boarding school. But it becomes way too “police-state” for my tastes when adults are surveilled in this manner by a university.

If parents of individual college students want to do it, I think it’s a little over-the-top, but at least it’s a famiy decision. The implications for the future are frightening if adults start getting used to the idea that any kind of organizational/governing body has the right to track the private lives of adults. That’s North Korea, folks…

Classes in my son’s major have grading components for attendance, appearance and professionalism. He doesn’t need an app to motivate him. As a parent I would discourage my children from attending any university seeking to electronically control/track them.

What major?

@ucbalumnus Intelligence Analysis - National Security Concentration

At the school my son attends and at many others where we live, class participation is facilitated by the use of “iClicker” devices. Class participation doesn’t amount to much in the final grading scheme (usually 2% or so, it’s more of a way for the university to try and make large first year lectures less impersonal) but I have heard stories of students taking turns managing the clickers for a bunch of classmates so they can take turns skipping lecture. Personally I think attendance requirements for a course you are voluntarily paying money for are ridiculous. These are adults. If “they” want to pay for a class and not attend that’s on them. For a university to track the whereabouts of students seems far too much like treating them like children to me.

^My classes have an attendance component. But I am not teaching in a huge lecture hall. My lessons are participatory–discussion, in-class exercises, workshopping, group work, peer revision, etc. etc. Think of it like a lab.

But I don’t need an app to tell me who’s missing; I know my students and keep track every day.

Everything about that is creepy and dangerous, from the idea of “fun” surveillance, to the segregating and labeling “group” behavior.

Wow.

Editing to add: and then the experience of the Temple student trying to get it to work? They don’t believe her over the app. Their are student assistants to see after class for glitch fixing. Forget learning; it’s all about appearance. The farther I get, the more horrifying this is.

Yikes yikes yikes–I probably never followed “day-to-day campus rhythms” and now I would have had to fear a knock on the door to find out why I wasn’t more “normal”? This is horrifying.

My understanding is that this was started for college athletes.

While I agree this is very 1984…I’m going to spin this - college sports is a big business and coaches and universities spend a ton of extra resources on academic supports for their big revenue teams to keep students off of academic probation. If you are the coach of a highly ranked college D1 team, and you have multiple stars who are struggling academically, and you find out that they are blowing off classes, maybe you would look favorably on this app.

Re: #18

Hasn’t extra academic supervision of athletes been fairly common historically? (e.g. mandatory supervised study halls for athletes)