Emory University’s decision to require EmoryCards to enter all academic and office buildings probably appears to most students like a slight inconvenience. University students already need their cards to access many buildings on campus, particularly outside of workday hours, and to enter residence halls and libraries at all times, so most students and faculty are accustomed to carrying their cards with them. But the new policy, along with the Emory Police Department (EPD)’s related plan to increase its presence on campus, will have impacts far beyond personal inconvenience, such as violations of student privacy.
The increases in campus surveillance will not accomplish EPD’s ostensible purpose of fostering “safe spaces” because its response to the threat of violence is disingenuous, and because increases in law enforcement can create fear rather than safety. The permanent requirement of EmoryCards to access all buildings on Emory’s campus is too immense of a decision for administration to undertake unilaterally. If there are specific threats to Emory, then locking down buildings may indeed be justified, but only for the duration of that threat. Otherwise, by adopting the posture of constantly occupying a state of emergency and amping up security, EPD claims the ability to massively impact campus culture and shutter dialogue.
The language of EPD’s recent announcement is vague, and the security changes arrive at an odd time. The year 2025 was a record low for gun violence. In 2025, there were fewer mass shootings in the U.S. than in any year since 2020, and overall shooting deaths decreased by 14%. EPD’s decision could be based on a recent tragedy, the December 2025 shooting at Brown University (R.I.) that killed two students and injured nine others in an unsecured lecture hall. This was a tragedy, but it is unfortunately a hardly unique event. The 2023 Michigan State University shooting and the 2023 University of Nevada, Las Vegas shooting, two incidents where men unaffiliated with the universities entered and killed students and faculty, should have inspired the same response from the EPD years earlier. If the rationale for this decision is “recent tragedies at universities across the country,” as the email puts it, the decision should have come much sooner.
Conversely, if the rationale for increased security were Emory-specific threats, the decision might well be justified. EPD Chief Burt Buchtinec’s community email announcing the change makes an explicit reference to last year’s Aug. 8 shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where an anti-vaccine extremist killed a police officer, as a reason for the increased security. However, this is a flimsy rationale. For one, this attack was not directed at the University. Thus, while the CDC is absolutely justified in increasing security on its facility, Emory has less of a reason to do so. While the CDC’s proximity to Emory is somewhat worrying, if the CDC shooting were the reason for Emory’s increased security measures this semester, Emory should have already addressed these concerns in a way that responds to the nature of the attack itself: anti-vaccine and anti-CDC rhetoric. If Emory is susceptible to attacks on medical research, then the response should directly address that fact. It might call for measures such as increased security around buildings related to medical research, but not necessarily changes around the entire campus.
EPD has conflated national and local threats into a nebulous state of emergency to make a decision seem obvious when, in truth, it is controversial. An additional element unrelated to gun violence is likely mixed within this state of emergency: the April 2024 pro-Palestine protests. Although the community-wide email did not address these protests, many other universities have attempted to use similar unrest to increase student surveillance. EPD also increased surveillance in the wake of these protests, adding additional lighting and cameras. For many students, an attempted increase in surveillance will inevitably be seen as an attempt to curb dissent, particularly in relation to growing protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). With ICE’s hostility to protestors instigating violence across the nation, any such attempt today to increase surveillance is less believable than ever as a means of increasing safety.
Following EPD’s new security measures, it is unlikely that those who saw police violence against demonstrators in April 2024 will feel safer due to increased security on campus. It is unlikely that anyone who has seen the videos of an ICE agent shooting Renee Good or any of the many documents of the continued, systematic violence against demonstrators, immigrants and people of color in recent months will feel better with more police on campus. EPD is not ICE, of course, but the message underlying the announced increase in surveillance — that every person must keep their identification on them at all times — is undeniably similar to the logic of ICE.
At a time when ICE is ramping up efforts to track, arrest and deport people for reasons of so-called safety, this increase in demands for campus identification will feel eerily similar for many demonstrators, international students, and people of color at Emory. Emory’s increased security measures are an attempt to separate the university from the world and create an environment that is hostile to campus protests.
The restrictive lockdown of Emory spaces is much more spiritually aligned with ICE’s xenophobic logic than one that welcomes all people into the university. If one visits Emory’s website today, we see headlines that read “Expanding access to an Emory education” and “Community beyond the classroom.” Decisions to lock down Emory’s campus do precisely the opposite: They decrease access to Emory and remove classrooms from the wider community, going against Emory’s mission of expanding knowledge for all.
As security measures increase on campus, I hope Emory will do something to assuage the many concerns that arise from increased surveillance. These might include a commitment to students’ privacy and right to protest as well as safety. But given the sheer amount of security cameras and keycard checks Emory already has in place, such a commitment would only slightly allay the suffocating feeling that I get whenever I walk on this already hyper-surveilled campus. Whenever I pass one of those blue Emergency Call boxes, I am indeed reminded that we are living through a constant state of emergency. But, the police are not going to help us out of this one.
Contact Trey Longnecker at trey.longnecker@emory.edu
