Your policy already requires this. We provide the method.
Most campus drone policies require that flights be evaluated for impact on safety, privacy and civil liberties before approval. Almost none of them say how, and the office that owns the requirement is rarely equipped to do it.
We do that evaluation properly, and leave you with a record that shows it was done.
Who flies over a campus
Campus police. Facilities and roof inspection. Athletics and marketing. Construction contractors. Research groups with their own aircraft and their own funding.
They answer to different offices, hold different levels of training, and fly over the same residence halls and the same neighboring streets. The only thing they reliably share is your institution’s name on the complaint.
An assessment covers the airspace and the boundary, not one department’s aircraft, which is usually the first useful thing anyone has said about the problem.
What we get asked
- Our policy already requires a privacy review. Isn’t that handled?
- It is required. In our experience it is rarely performed with any method, because no method is in common use. The review usually amounts to reading the flight request and deciding it seems fine. That is not something you want to describe under oath.
- We only fly over our own land.
- So does every aircraft we assess. The boundary limits where the aircraft is, not where the camera points. Campuses are usually surrounded by housing, which is the case where the gap matters most.
- Does this cover contractor and research flights too?
- Yes, and those are often the harder cases. A roofing contractor’s drone and a graduate student’s sensor platform fly under your approval and your reputation, usually with less oversight than your own police unit.
- What about student privacy specifically?
- That is the part institutions tend to under-weight. A system that can be pointed at a dorm window or loitered over a group of students is a welfare problem created by the thing meant to solve one. Bounding the capability is the most direct answer to it.
- Do we have to change platforms or vendors?
- No. The assessment works with the aircraft you already own. We do not sell hardware and have no vendor relationships.
Faith campuses
A sanctuary, a parochial school, a hall and a parking lot are often one property under one set of trustees, with a drone flown by a volunteer, a contractor, or the security firm the congregation retains.
The sensitivity is higher here, not lower. Congregants have specific and well-founded concerns about being watched at worship, and in some communities those concerns are about far more than privacy. A property that abuts housing on three sides and fills with people twice a week is the case where an answer needs to be geometric rather than reassuring.
The assessment is the same work. What changes is who is in the room when you present it, and how much it matters that the document says what it means.
K–12 districts
If your district already operates a drone, or a partner agency flies one over your campuses, the same assessment applies and the board meeting is the same meeting.
If you are still considering a program, an assessment has nothing to measure yet. Come back when you have an aircraft, or bring us in while you are writing the requirement. That is the cheaper moment to get it right.
Request a briefing
Tell us who flies over your campus, what your policy requires, and whether anyone has had to answer for it yet.