Your housing situation can be one of the most stressful aspects of the whole college experience. Especially if your roommates are writing nasty things about you on the Internet and your landlord has planted a hidden camera in your bedroom. Such was the situation for Chinemerem Eze, a Nigerian student at Brooklyn College, in December 2008, according to a lawsuit she’s filed in New York Supreme Court.
When a college student complains about secret surveillance — as Tyler Clementi did last year — I’ve said before that they should be offered other housing arrangements. Eze did get new digs, but they weren’t very attractive ones. When she went to the Brooklyn College Campus Security and Safety Office to complain about her suspicions, they offered her an involuntary two-week stay at a psychiatric hospital.
Eze says that when she talked to security officers about being defamed on the Internet and secretly filmed by her landlord in her off-campus apartment, they brought in a psychologist. After asking her a few questions, the psychologist called an ambulance and had her committed to Kings County Psychiatric Hospital. Her One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’s experience lasted two weeks.
When she flew the nest, she discovered that there was a hidden camera in her apartment. (On the defamation front, I see no nasty results in her Google search results.) She missed her final exams and was not able to complete them, and wound up losing a scholarship she’d received from the school, according to her attorney.
http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/01/12/brooklyn-college-student-committed-to-mental-institution-after-hidden-camera-complaint/