A resident assistant has resigned from his position because he believes the Office of Housing and Dining Services has not dealt with the issue of a resident assistant in Taylor Hall videotaping residents on his floor.

James Paton, a RA in Stevenson Hall, said he was really upset when he first heard the story of the Taylor RA setting up a video camera to record, through a peephole in his residence hall room, someone tearing signs off the bathroom door across the hallway.

“Housing has not addressed the issue at all, and by them not addressing the issue, they’re tacitly condoning the behavior,” Paton said. “By not doing anything, they’re saying it’s OK.”

Housing wants to create a big family with everybody, Paton said, but not taking action with the incident goes against creating that family atmosphere.

Jody Stone, assistant director of housing, said housing has addressed the situation, but he could not say what housing has done or when they did it because it was a personnel matter.

“We’ve addressed the situation and dealt with it appropriately,” Stone said. Paton said he wrote a letter to the office asking for action to be taken and for housing to address the issue. He set a date of one week to hear back from housing, but said he never heard anything from anyone at housing and no action was taken.

“I was really disturbed by that,” Paton said.

Stone said the housing staff did receive the letter and responded to Paton Thursday, the day Paton requested a response.

“We responded to his letter and told him it was a personnel matter,” Stone said.

He said the office appreciated Paton’s concerns, but couldn’t discuss the issue.

In the letter, Paton did not threaten to resign if nothing was done because he did not want the letter viewed as a threat; however, after he heard nothing from housing, he turned in his resignation and moved out.

He said he has no animosity toward his boss, Carl Aldrich, the resident director at Stevenson. Paton said he tried to make the transition as easy as possible by tying up loose ends: he changed the bulletin boards and has no more duty nights left for the semester.

“Unfortunately, there is some work the (other) RAs will have to pick up,” Paton said.

Aldrich had no comment on Paton leaving and he said he did not feel comfortable commenting on the issue of videotaping residents.

Robert Dunlap, the RA for the fifth floor north of Taylor Hall, used his personal video camera in an attempt to catch the vandal tearing down signs informing residents that females aren’t allowed in the bathroom. It’s unclear if the vandal was caught as a result.

Stone said when housing first heard of the incident, it immediately asked him to take the camera down, and Dunlap did.

Stone said whether cameras should be allowed in residence halls depends on the situation. Some universities have cameras while others do not.

Sometimes universities allow cameras to protect against vandalism because the cameras help individuals save money, whereas without the camera, the whole floor would have had to pay a floor fine, he said.

Paton is against videotaping residents in the residence halls. He said the halls are where people live and the residents should have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” where they live, which includes a living environment free of being videotaped.

Some people argue that the hallways in residence halls are seen as public property, so it is OK to have video cameras there. Paton disagrees.

“Look at the big picture,” he said. “You have to go through the hallway to get to your room.”

Currently, Eastern has no policy saying residents cannot be videotaped in the residence halls. Paton said he was not saying that housing should discipline Dunlap by firing him; he just wanted housing to address the issue. In the future, he would like to see a policy in place specifying that residents will not be videotaped.

One of the problems he had with videotaping in the residence halls was that residents weren’t notified that they were being videotaped. In places such as grocery stores and other places with security cameras, Paton said signs are posted, letting the customers know they may be on tape.

“If they were to do videotaping in halls … there should at least be signs or the camera should be in plain view,” Paton said.

He does not see the need for cameras, however. He said if violent crimes, like rapes or beatings, were occurring, people would might be more willing to give up their privacy to catch the criminal. For a common and inexpensive crime like tearing down a sign, a camera is not needed to monitor the area, he said. He too has had people on his floor tear down signs.

“It’s something you expect to happen,” Paton said. “Just put another sign up.”

Lou Hencken, vice president for student affairs and Joe Barron, university council, did not return phone calls made to their offices Monday.