Keep It in the Classroom

A recent controversy at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where a student recorded a lecturer lambasting the Republican Party, has led faculty to draft a policy regarding video recordings at the college. The new resolution—unanimously adopted by Whitewater’s Faculty Summit—institutes a university-wide ban on video recording. We respect the right of classroom professors to guarantee freedom of expression without fear of public redistribution, but feel that regulation is best left to individual professors, rather than school-wide policies.

Expanding on an existing policy that allows faculty members to forbid students the use of tape recorders by students, the new resolution now prohibits "the recording of class and other curricular activities without the express permission of the instructor and notification to all students in the class."

The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is not the only institution of higher education that has recently come under fire regarding the recording and redistribution of classroom speech by students. In December, officials at the University of Colorado at Boulder cited fears of such videotaping to justify their decision to discipline a sociology professor over a classroom skit on prostitution.

Freedom of expression in the classroom--both for students and for faculty—is crucial to learning. Especially in smaller seminar classes, safety from surreptitious recording can allow students to speak more freely about more controversial subjects and opinions. Professors in these seminar classes should feel comfortable sharing more in-depth thoughts without fear of their words being publicly broadcasted and taken out of context. Honest discussions in small group settings can only occur when students and professors can share ideas in an open environment free from the prospect of being held accountable in a public setting.

Yet because recording can aid students in the learning process, especially in large lecture classes, higher education institutions should not make the mistake of banning video recording altogether. While the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s fear of leaked recordings reflecting poorly on its institution is understandable, it is denying its students an additional avenue to learn. Recording of faculty speech can also, on rare occasions, help students hold their professors accountable for their lectures and give students credibility in their complaints.

Freedom to set their own recording policies would allow professors either to guarantee the privacy of unrecorded expression, or to allow students to derive the obvious benefits from recording. Faculty can better assess the needs of their individual classrooms, and should therefore be trusted to set policy for video recording in those classrooms.