"For the last year, Gunther Than has been getting about two calls a week from school administrators who want to install security cameras in their high schools.

It doesn't matter whether the school system is rich or poor. Than's company has installed cameras at inner-city high schools in Baltimore and in wealthy Fairfax High School here.

'It depends on the political arena you're in,' said Than, president of View Systems Inc., a security firm in Englewood, Colo., that provides high-tech cameras to casinos and other businesses. 'In Baltimore they were very safetyminded. In Fairfax, it was a longer process. The PTA and the school boards were a little more conscious of possible lawsuits' over privacy issues.

Administrators who have installed the cameras say they help catch vandals and provide a deterrent against violent behavior. Others are less enamored of the concept and warn that cameras create a Big Brother atmosphere.

Indeed, the cameras have been a touchy issue at Fairfax High. School officials refused to discuss the cameras, which were installed this year.

Allen Griffith, president of the Fairfax City School Board, said he understands the concerns about privacy, but said the benefits outweigh any possible loss of privacy.

He said students have very little expectation of privacy in the common areas where the cameras have been placed.

'Even in the old days when kids would fight, they can't keep it a secret for very long because everybody sees it,' he said.

Primarily, the school wants to keep tabs on strangers who may enter the building, Griffith said.

'Our situation is somewhat unique. There are a dozen doors to get into the place. It's a big campus in an urbanizing area,' he said. 'There aren't any rampant, roving mobs of students. It's a nice, pleasant, middle-class high school. But you do have strangers entering the building from time to time.'

Than said his company has made an effort to market itself to schools in the last 18 months in the wake of the Columbine tragedy.

High schools' interest in security cameras, has increased 'logarithmically' in the last year or two, Than said. 'We're getting calls from all over. We can't keep up.'

Security cameras are certainly in vogue, said Bill Bond, the principal-in-residence for security issues for the National Association of School Principals.

Bond is also the principal at Heath High School in West Paducah, Ky., the site of the 1997 prayer circle shootings that left three girls dead. But he has not installed cameras at his school.

'My feeling is that they have some benefit. ... They also have a negative connotation that people are spying on you,' Bond said, 'How students feel about their security is probably the most important factor.'

From a practical standpoint, Bond said cameras are most useful if schools have an isolated section of their building where it's difficult to keep watch.

'If you can get human supervision, that's much better,' he said.

Some advocacy groups say cameras raise questions of privacy. John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group in Charlottesville, said any security benefits are minimal at best and overshadowed by the atmosphere of paranoia they create.

'Do we want another Columbine? No. But do we want to turn our kids into paranoid, underground freaks?' Whitehead said. 'If you film kids, they'll hide, I think it's dangerous stuff,'

Often, school officials say the cameras are more helpful with property crimes than personal crimes like fights or other types of violence.

Leonard Hamm, chief of the Baltimore City schools' police force, said he has been pleased with the cameras since they were first installed two years ago.

'They help with personal safety, but I really want them for break-ins. I don't think anybody considered how great they are for property crimes,' he said,

Numerous burglars and vandals have been caught because of the cameras, he said,

At Fairfax High, the school board has yet to receive a report on the cameras' effectiveness. Fairfax County, which jointly operates Fairfax High along with Fairfax City, will be watching closely. The county may expand the use of cameras to its 23 high schools, said Robert Frye, county school board chairman, although he said it's likely the county would not want cameras indoors.

'We would be watching to see whether the number of student discipline incidents went down,' Frye said, 'Did it make the school a better place, a safer place?'

Students at Fairfax offered a mixed assessment.

'I think it's a violation of everybody's privacy,' said senior Abby Cutlip, noting that a television inside the school displays the view from each of the cameras at regular intervals.

'It doesn't bother me, They're not in the bathroom or anything,' said senior Aaron Tenenbaum. 'I'm sure they have a purpose in doing it, but I'm not sure they work'" (The Daily Progress, December 17, 2000).