As usual my mind works a bit differently, but my first thought was what if kids find out about it and slip something into the backpack of someone they hate.
More schools should be doing this sort of thing. Bunch of cesspools in need of major cleanup.
schools are not the federal government.
yet another person who screams “First/Second/Fourth Amendment!” without understanding how they actually apply.
Like I said above, my (and many others’) employers state that any vehicles on their property may be subject to search. You don’t like that? Then don’t be on their property.
This has all the strength of the “you don’t like something the government did? Then why don’t you move to Russia” argument.
Yes, dropping out of school is an option if you don’t agree with random searches without cause. Another option is trying to change the policy through education and expressing disagreement. I would choose the second option as a parent.
I guess I am a bit confused as to why so many find this so offensive.
Do you find sobriety check points to catch drunk drivers offensive?
Do you find the concept of “drug free zones” at schools offensive? Do you believe the presence of recreational drugs really enhances the educational process? If you think that making a school a drug free zone is OK, then why is it so offensive to either enforce such or demonstrate the effectiveness of such enforcement?
Yes, when I was a High School student, I would have viewed such policies as offensive. I also found the idea of “carding” someone to buy cigarettes to be idiotic, as the ridiculous imposition of the arbitrary age of 18 to buy alcohol; I mean, what’s the real difference between 16 and 18?
Somehow, I was able to survive my teenage years and grow to adulthood. Some of my friends did not. While I was much more “level-headed” than most of my peers in high school, I did some pretty stupid stuff. Yes, this was in the 1970’s and things are very different today, but it seems these differences make it more important for the schools to be able to make sure the school can provide a safe and sane learning environment.
Yes.
Yes.
N/A.
I think drug-free schools and drug-free youth are important. I also think privacy and civil liberties are important.
There are other and better ways to encourage drug-free youth, like education and watching for signs of drug use. But once you start baseless searches without cause, you teach the kids that privacy isn’t important and you demonstrate a lack of trust. Those are terrible lessons, and they are difficult to dispel once the kids learn them.
IMO, the few students you might catch with a search (and who probably would have been found out anyway through other means) are not worth the trade off in the lessons you taught to every other kid at school, including the “good” ones.
Great post. Because I would have. (graduated high school 1979. These search things never happened then.)
If I were to post all the shit I pulled as a kid you would:
- Call me a liar or at least say I was exaggerating. But I promise you I wouldn’t be.
And/or
2)Wonder how/why I became a law man 3 years after graduating high school.
I think schools should only do this if drug use has really gotten out of hand.
A few years after I graduated High School, they did this where I went. They never did it again. Too many teachers were caught with pot.
Maybe. But how do you know when it’s outofhand?
In the 70’s we all smoked a little grass now and then. There were only a few going overboard and becoming “burn outs” (as we called them then).
But kids (especially white, middle class kids) weren’t fucking around with heroin, Oxycontin, etc., etc… Here in southeastern Wisconsin kids are addicted and dropping dead from this shit. When I was a teen everyone knew not to fuck with narcotics like that. We considered those n****r drugs for the ghetto. Sorry, but that’s how it was thought back then.
And nobody was bringing guns/bombs to school except to do a speech on their hunting rifle. Which was acceptable then because kids weren’t gunning each other down.
Teen drug use rates are lower today than they were when you were in school, with the exception of marijuana.
Thank you for this excellent post. I agree completely.
I have little/no difficulty with any number of searches that are conducted FOR CAUSE. And I’d probably be pretty willing to accept an expansive definition of cause. But I abhor causeless searches just because they are permitted - whether of a car following a traffic stop, in a school, employment whizz quizzes…
In fact, if someone is not performing as they ought, or their performance changes, then I could support many efforts to identify WHATEVER might be causing that. If little Susie’s grades drop, maybe she is on drugs. Or maybe her parents are getting divorced, maybe she’s ill, or a thousand other possibilities that can’t be sniffed by a dog. Of course, that would involve actually trying to DO something to assist people who need assistance, rather than simply GIVING THE APPEARANCE of doing something that matters. :rolleyes:
So how did it go?
But the drugs kids are using are far more dangerous than what we had.
When I was in high school in the 70’s it was just pot and occasionally some uppers.
White middle class kids weren’t messing with fucking heroin, Oxy, etc… There weren’t news reports every day of kids dying from that shit, or committing robberies & burglaries to get money for it. Heroin use by kids is at an epidemic level.
The k-9 search turned up nothing. I also contacted the ACLU in Michigan. One of their attorneys is interested in researching this. She will let me know whether or not they will pursue this.
Interesting. Keep us posted.
Yes, it is because lockers are school property, and lockers can be opened by school authorities at any time for pretty much any reason. If you place your stuff in a school-provided locker, you accept that they can go through what you put in their locker. This isn’t spelled out very clearly to most kids, though.
That’s not the same thing at all as telling students that coats and purses and backpacks that are carried throughout the day will be checked. If it’s on your person, it shouldn’t be searchable without probable cause. I’ve told my kids that if the school wants them to turn out their pockets or empty her purse, they are to wait until I arrive. The school and I will converse. If it needs to be done, it can be done in front of me. So far, I’ve not gotten a call about being searched.
Good to know. I would love to know what the attorney decides. I wonder how many kids bothered sharing this with their parents.
Reasonable suspicion, not probable cause. They’re different, and reasonable suspicion is much easier to establish. As has been mentioned several times in this thread already, students have very little (if any) ‘expectation of privacy’ on school grounds.
The courts have ruled that drug dogs in schools are okay so long as they’re not actively sniffing students, and it doesn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary happened during this search. I will be quite surprised if the ACLU decides to move on this. They know how to pick their fights and they’re not going to go to court over a routine search that had a routine outcome.
This (poorly formatted) page goes over a number of cases involving drug K9s in schools.
The Michigan ACLU staff attorney contacted me and is going to send a letter to the principal of the school as well as the superintendent, asking that they stop any further K9 searches. The letter will cite a few different legal precidents that support stopping the searches.
I’m very happy with this. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve done my part. The administration now has to decide how to deal with all this.