Monday, April 6, students of the College of William and Mary voted to approve a referendum calling on the College to cancel its contract with ZeroEyes, a surveillance company that specializes in AI-enabled firearm detection.
The ZeroEyes referendum follows students’ approval of two earlier referendums on Flock AI-powered surveillance cameras, as well as another calling on the College to establish a “Firewall For Freedom” to protect the rights of students against the Trump administration.
Of the 1,256 students who voted, 89.6% voted in favor of the College canceling its contract with ZeroEyes, while 9% voted against the referendum and 1.4% abstained. The overall turnout for the election was 1,256 votes, lower than the recent Student Assembly spring election, which recorded 1,667 votes. It was also below the two earlier referendums, in which 1,670 students voted.
The ZeroEyes referendum was placed on a ballot separate from the spring 2026 SA general election, after the senate passed a bill that placed the referendum at a later date.
“ZeroEyes has not released data about the accuracy of their system and cannot detect concealed weapons,” the referendum explanation read. “The current contract grants this private vendor the ‘perpetual and irrevocable license’ to use collected imagery for its own business operations.”
The College pays an annual fee of $82,600 to embed the ZeroEyes software into up to 400 cameras around campus.
Students have raised privacy concerns regarding ZeroEyes and the ability of its firearm detection software to collect and store images of students’ faces, whether or not it detects a real weapon. When speaking to the SA Senate, Associate Vice President of Public Safety Cliff Everton ’96 said that the software, under certain circumstances, could record personally identifiable student information.
