Security cameras are always watching

Setodzi Avoke
Staff Writer

The Department of Public Safety maintains a camera surveillance system and is in the process of installing Alertus emergency beacons across campus.

Director of Public Safety, Fred Aliberti oversees campus security, often times personally monitoring the footage that enters his office.

“We’ve got a few hundred cameras around campus,” said Aliberti.

“I’ve been very happy here [given] that college administration has been supportive in maintaining and [supplying] us with new cameras, almost on a yearly basis,” said Aliberti.

In the event of an incident, many of the cameras installed are capable of recalling days of footage. For data storage reasons, a rolling feed, where new footage is taken in as older footage is deleted, demands that students and faculty are prompt when requesting help.

Maintaining coverage of campus security has a cost attached. The initial cost of installation is up into the thousands, while the price of maintaining a system once it’s in place is far smaller. It is, however, representative of some cost attached to keeping the campus secure.

The mix of older and newer cameras can be expected to tilt toward newer, if campus administration maintains its support for updating security systems, which will become possible as the newer technology becomes cheaper.

Modern IP address systems which are in use alongside older analog models, stand to offer higher resolution recording resulting in clearer images and built-in encryption.

The Alertus system, which is not yet fully functional, is expected to offer Hudson Valley a campus-wide alert system that is cheaper than older public address speaker systems while running at one-sixth the wattage of a fluorescent bulb, offers multi-channel redundancy and more.

Aliberti said, “At this time there’s a secondary hardware installation going on. [We’re] putting speakers in strategic areas of the campus that will be part of the Alertus system.”