It is difficult to understand how security guards of a downtown shopping mall could beat to death a man they mistook for being a shoplifter. There could be no justification for it, even if it was true that the victim stole a few items. How could they have overreacted in such a violent way against an obviously unarmed civilian?
But this is not the first time that security guards ended up killing people for committing the most petty crimes. There was that case not long ago about a guard who shot to death a boy suspected of stealing pieces of scrap metal at a junkyard near the pier. Imagine if it was you or your kid who did that.
If our neighbor had guards when we were kids, it’s not unlikely that we could also have been shot like birds if they caught us stealing fruits from their yard, considering the rate by which we would annoy the owners by going back and breaking in every other day or so.
Security guards could also have fired at us when once we sneaked into a school and tried to vandalize its walls with graffiti. As soon as we noticed that the guards were running our way, we were quick to jump over the fence and flee.
While some security guards miscalculate situations by pulling the trigger rather too quickly, others are just as fast at misjudging people entering the gates. Mere gaze replaces metal detectors as it scans and singles out those who are “suspicious looking”. Because of their rugged looks and because they tend to carry big portfolio bags and strange objects (junk sculptures that could look like bombs) artists and art students are always easy targets. The routine by which they are singled out at the gates could be tantamount to harassment.
Despite the fact that I’ve been teaching at the same university for 16 years now, I continue to be subjected to the same inconvenience of impolite questioning and frisking as I walk through the campus gate while those faculty riding SUVs are often spared of the usual checks and are even greeted with hand salutes.
My mistake was my insistence on coming to school in simple jeans and shirts which make me look more like an overstaying student than faculty. And don’t even ask students about their experiences with the guards who are tasked to strictly check the height of their skirts, length of their hair or stubble on their chin.
Cases of abuse are few, of course, as most guards only strictly follow orders. And we don’t really blame them if they judge people at face value. It’s part of the standard operating procedure. Elsewhere, you call it discrimination when you don’t let people in with dyed hair, dreadlocks, tattoos, or fake breasts. But at the campus gates, it’s good security enforcement.
Priest administrators and religious education teachers proclaim the virtue of equal treatment and respect yet they see nothing wrong with the idea of requiring students and faculty to conform to uniform requirements of grooming that could get ridiculously superficial if not politically-incorrect.
Gestapo-like security routines is supposed to reflect rationality of university culture, but in fact, it could hint deep-seated biases. Beneath the veneer of law and order at the campus is the persistence of contempt for the “other”—those who don’t show our privileges or are too different from us. Because we cannot pronounce such irrational motives, we turn them into laws and let the guards enforce them in our behalf. Thus our claims of security may actually belie our very own insecurities.
Recently, our guest, a French artist who stayed in the university dormitory for a two-week residency, went jogging around the campus early in the morning on a Sunday. A security guard approached him and asked how he got inside the school grounds. The French artist showed him his note signed by the dorm supervisor proving that he is an official guest temporarily lodged there. Then the guard asked if he has a permit to jog and said that he is not supposed to do so without one.
Our French guest was shocked at this and asked us later if there was such policy in the university forbidding people to jog. I told him that I don’t know if there was any but I wouldn’t be surprised since it seems that nowadays you need to do some paper work for almost everything you want to do in the university.
When once I talked about Rabindranath Tagore’s preference for taking his students for a walk and teaching under the trees, my students complained that they were always barred by a security guard every time they tried to go for a walk to the mini forests in the campus. This was confirmed by a fellow faculty in another department, who said she experienced the same thing when she used to jog to the campus roads leading to the hills.
Cases of theft continue to happen inside the campus but it seems that those in charge with security see more danger in such things as hair length, mini-skirts, sandals, tattoos, and jogging without permit. I never imagined exercise could be a security problem. It gives new meaning to the phrase, “exercise your right”.