Satire. This column is parody and is not a news report.
By Lyle Pennacott
AMHERST — The University at Buffalo has indefinitely paused its plan to test 20 license-plate cameras, and it has done what any careful institution would do next. It has enrolled the cameras in a seminar.
The seminar, organized by the entirely fictional Office of Proper Socialization, began immediately after the university paused the Flock Safety pilot and handed the next step to its University Police Advisory Committee. That real committee has met twice. Its most recent meeting was in early September.
Module 1: What is a community, and have you met it?
Each camera has been issued a name tag, a syllabus and a seat in a windowless conference room in a building the Office of Proper Socialization declined to identify, citing the need for additional conversation about identifying it.
The syllabus is three pages long and consists mostly of the word “input,” arranged in different fonts.
“The cameras can read a plate at the entrance to campus in a fraction of a second,” said Marjorie Klotz, the made-up deputy coordinator for the imaginary Office of Proper Socialization. “What they cannot yet do is mingle. That is a different skill.”
Ms. Klotz said the cameras have been instructed not to record anything until they have completed Module 1, “What Is a Community, and Have You Met It?” Module 2 is titled “Listening, as Distinct From Scanning.” Module 3 is a group project on whether the group should form a subcommittee.
The university’s real reason for the pause is more straightforward. In a notice published Thursday, President Caroline Attardo Genco said the campus needed more conversation before a decision. In meetings with faculty and student leaders, she put it more plainly, according to recordings obtained by The Spectrum and reported by the Chronicle. “There’s no question it was planned,” she said. “And it wasn’t socialized like it should have been with the community.”
The Office of Proper Socialization has laminated that sentence and taped it to the conference-room door.
The committee will develop a framework
The next step, the university said, belongs to that committee. After gathering feedback, it “will develop a framework to advise senior leadership” on the technology, the data it would collect, and whether to move ahead with the pilot.
Some members of the real committee have said the assignment was news to them.
In the fictional version of events, this has not slowed the seminar. The cameras have been told that the committee’s third meeting will be scheduled after the framework is developed, and that the framework will be developed after the third meeting.
“We are comfortable with that timeline,” Ms. Klotz said. “Indefinite is a very flexible semester.”
A second fictional official, Bernard Pulaski, the imaginary recording secretary for the equally imaginary Subcommittee on Whether to Meet, said he has prepared two agendas. Agenda A is “Call to Order.” Agenda B is “Do We Have a Quorum, and Is a Quorum Something We Should Study First?”
He said he would circulate both agendas once the committee decides which agenda-circulation process to use.
A 60-day trial, pending further conversation
University Police had planned a free 60-day trial of the cameras at campus entrances this spring, a tool the department said would help investigate vehicle-related crimes. The plan drew a petition with more than 940 signatures, a Faculty Senate resolution and a town hall that did not go as police had hoped.
Ms. Klotz described the cameras as “eager to learn, if a little quiet.”
She said several of them appeared to ask, by blinking status lights she conceded she may have been reading too much into, whether they should introduce themselves to one another first.
“We told them that would require a working group,” she said.
Elsewhere in the region, Lockport’s Common Council voted to remove the city’s Flock cameras. The Office of Proper Socialization drafted a condolence mixer invitation and then paused it, pending input.
As of press time, the seminar was still on Module 1, and the cameras were facing one another in a circle, which Ms. Klotz said was an improvement on facing a roadway.
The committee that is supposed to decide what happens next has not announced its third meeting. The Office of Proper Socialization said that is fine. The cameras have a lot of reading to do.
This column is satire. The Office of Proper Socialization, Marjorie Klotz, Bernard Pulaski, the Subcommittee on Whether to Meet, the seminar, the name tags and the speaking cameras are fictional. The pause of UB’s Flock camera pilot, President Genco’s comments as reported by The Spectrum, the advisory committee’s two meetings and the planned 20-camera trial are real; read the Buffalo Chronicle’s news report for the facts.
Featured image: the Academic Spine on the University at Buffalo’s North Campus in Amherst, by Andre Carrotflower via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Leave a Reply