Harvard photo controversy uncalled for

It’s early Thursday morning at Harvard University, and students are rushing to class. In one lecture hall, a group of students take their seats, prepared to learn without distraction. While sitting down for lecture, they proceed to participate in discussion, unaware of the cameras photographing them each minute for a study by the university’s Initiative for Learning and Teaching to analyze student attendance. Social media outlets have shed light on this recent Harvard’s controversial photo invasion.

During spring 2013, the university’s Innovation for Learning and Technology set up cameras in four lecture halls to monitor 2,000 Harvard students for research on class attendance. Through a computer algorithm, the photographs from the cameras extracted information that was given to the university to review the progression of student attendance throughout the semester. The controversy emerged after computer science professor Harry R. Lewis called the study into question during a faculty meeting in early November.

After the study was conducted, the university failed to disclose the details and information regarding the study to the students and faculty who were monitored in a  timely manner. Harvard claimed that the photographs taken from the cameras were solely studied for the purpose of tracking seats, rather than linking the information to individual students. This brings to light a controversial set of issues.

Though the university failed to disclose the study in a timely manner, it was not wrong to analyze student attendance to enhance the learning experience for students. In this case, informed consent is somewhat tricky to acquire.

Though the university followed protocol by asking the Institutional Review Board for permission to conduct the study, they did not inform the students and faculty involved because obtaining consent could potentially skew the results. If those involved in the study knew the university was testing for attendance, professors would enforce a stricter attendance policy to make their classes look larger, and students would be more likely to attend lectures to adhere to their professors’ stricter attendance policies. Thus, in order for the test to collect real results, it was important for the study to be kept a secret.

Additionally, informed consent in the classroom brings to question the withdrawal of personal privacy in public space. In this modern day and age, technological gadgets are often strategically placed in public space to monitor for the security and well being of citizens. While attending lecture in a public space, an individual cannot guarantee that his or her personal rights to privacy are not being infringed upon. Whether it be through a security camera at the university or through a classmate taking a Snapchat photo of another classmate without permission, informed consent seems impractical in a number of cases.

But many individuals who have been quick to criticize Harvard are explaining the controversy in terms of a breach in security rights and an invasion of privacy. Recently, an op-ed from the Boston Globe discussed how the main basis for the controversy was the time lapse between Harvard conducting the test and informing the students and faculty about the study. Yet, the vast amount of criticism on the issue from students, faculty members and onlookers did not stem from informed consent or an ineffective time response. None of the photos taken from the study could identify individual students, and the purpose of the study was not to target specific students attending class. The photographs taken were destroyed after researchers accumulated data for the study, and no harm or foul play was done to the students.

Similarly, other universities across the nation have been known to conduct studies without consent to monitor effectiveness of learning tools and patterns in attendance and participation. According to Rebecca Koenig and Steve Kolowich at the Chronicle of  Higher Education, institutions conduct formal studies to monitor such behavior.

“Universities that are not Harvard conduct much deeper surveillance on students who take their online and blended courses,” Koenig and Kolowich write. “Some institutions track how frequently individual students participate in class and how long they spend on readings and on homework problems, along with other metrics that far exceed the capabilities of a camera taking still pictures in a lecture hall. Even traditional universities collect and analyze lots of data on students, including when and where they log into campus networks or enter campus buildings.”

In this instance, the time lapse and uninformed consent does not bring enough controversy to the issue itself. Such backlash was warranted through a deep sense of mistrust for reasons of personal privacy, and this comes from a growing feeling of fear about infringements on personal space and personal privacy.

When individuals step out of their personal space into public space, many unknowingly step into a world where their rights to privacy are at risk. Technology has opened portals that allow for constant monitoring and control over the way in which individuals interact and live. The laws that mandate censorship and privacy can disintegrate with the loopholes that exist in technology. Thus, with the amount of technology that exists today, it is impossible to guard individual rights to privacy, free from infringement.

Though frustration regarding this incident stems from fear of censorship and privacy violation, the lack of evidence linking a probable infringement of rights in this case shouldn’t have prompted such harsh backlash from many who were used in the study.