My stepdaughter is a freshman at college. She just told us that the school has a policy of calling fire drills, then inspecting student’s rooms while they’re waiting outside. If there’s any contraband (drugs or alcohol) in plain sight, you get written up for it. They say they don’t open drawers or closets or anything, you can only get in trouble for what is in plain sight.
I have a huge problem with this. If the fire alarm goes off, I want people to have exactly one goal - to get out of the building as quickly and safely as possible. I think it’s a terrible idea to condition the students to feel the need to do a survey of the room to make sure they won’t get in trouble for what they happen to have left out the night before. I know it’s a very small chance that a 30 second delay will result in a tragedy, but it’s non-zero. And I’m very philosophically opposed to the idea of using what’s supposed to be a device to improve student safety as an excuse to search their rooms. Note these are all legal adults, even if they’re in college provided housing.
Is this some “Christian” liberal arts school? Do they really have the right to search a student’s private room without a warrant or even probable cause?
And if your daughter’s being repressed in this way, what’s happening elsewhere on campus?
My first reaction was the same as yours. I suppose it’s their college and they can make the rules, but I would certainly not attend such a school.
Upon reflection, I gather they’re doing a sweep to make sure everyone is out. In that case, what do we want them to do if they see a kilo of cocaine on the desk? Or a dead body? If the school has a no alcohol and drug policy for its dorms, I’d prefer they look the other way during a fire drill, but it’s not as reprehensible as it first appeared to me.
My college never had fire drills. If they did, I’m sure they wouldn’t care what they saw in the room. (They told the local police to stay off campus and not worry about the pot plants in the dorm windows) (at my first dorm meeting, the college president came by to meet us. Someone passed him a joint, he passed it on without partaking)
Nope, it’s a normal northeastern liberal arts college, founded before 1850, but absolutely no religious affiliation. Supposedly they’re searching the dorm rooms for fire hazards - like wall hangings and toasters and such, but her roommate got written up for having a few nips of Fireball on her desk.
She does believe they don’t open drawers, since people do keep booze out of sight and haven’t gotten in trouble over it.
This strikes me as an excellent point, and someone should bring it to the attention of whomever is in charge of this policy.
Also a reasonable point.
Another point is that we only have @muldoonthief’s stepdaughter’s word for exactly what the policy is and how it’s implemented. Perhaps someone once got in trouble when campus security noticed a bottle of vodka sitting out during a fire drill, and this somehow turned into “the school has a policy of calling fire drills, then inspecting student’s rooms while they’re waiting outside” in students’ minds. (ETA: written before reading @muldoonthief’s most recent reply)
If the goal is to simply clear the rooms of stragglers or check for fire hazards, that task should be left to a person that has that skill; not to someone with policing powers and responsibility to report unrelated infractions.
This might be a situation where the college would have liability if their employees knew about illegal activity and did nothing about it. If they see alcohol in an under-21 dorm room, they could be held legally liable if the student later died later from an alcohol issue. If they didn’t know about the alcohol, then they wouldn’t be liable. So they may be enacting this policy as a way to telling the students to keep stuff out of view so the college doesn’t have to deal with it. I suppose the same issue could be true for cleaning and maintenance crews. If a service employee went in the room to fix something and saw evidence of illegal activity, they might be required to report it to avoid legal liability.
If her account of the situation is accurate, it would not be unreasonable for her to consider going to a more educational college, rather than one preparing her to accept living in a police state.
Yes; if students have specifically been told “they don’t open drawers or closets or anything, you can only get in trouble for what is in plain sight,” this could be a plausible reason why.
If that’s the case, they should inspect the rooms for fire hazards, not take the time during a fire alarm to do so. And I agree that the current policy is incentivizing students to hang back to hide their stash rather than promptly evacuating. You should call the housing office to let them know of your concerns.
Searching rooms for fire hazards during a fire drill is ridiculous. Checking rooms to ensure all the students have left is not at all ridiculous.
I’d like to know more about what it means to get “written up”. Is this the sort of thing that gets you kicked out of school, or is it simply a CYA from the school to say “we did tell this student that drinking was prohibited in dorms”
If it’s CYA, this is a tempest in a teapot. You got your contraband taken away and that’s basically it. Keep your illegal stuff hidden, and toss it in a closet if there’s a fire alarm.
As I understand it, getting caught with alcohol in your room gets you 1 point. You have to get 3 points for there to be consequences, though I don’t know what those are (I’ll try to find out). Points reset at the end of the semester (or possibly at the end of year, I’ll find that out too).
And this school is hardly puritanical. She’s been to parties, on and off campus, where beer & liquor were freely available, and there are at least 2 bars near campus happy to serve underage students.
It sounds fairly normal to me, based on my college experience. The RAs will likely try to look the other way if they see something, but it was normal to not actually have contraband out where they would see it. And then checking to see everyone is out for a fire drill is a time where they’d see it.
I remember being told this by the RAs themselves, saying they’d have to report it if they saw it, and implicitly telling us how to hide it without saying so directly.
I tend to be kind of a privacy nut, so I’d have quite a bit of difficulty with such a practice. A school would have to be pretty incredible in some respect to outweigh this intrusion. And I would feel this way whether or not I/my kids possessed/used any booze/drugs.
I presume students have limited privacy expectation in their dorms, and I could imagine a quick door check to ensure rooms were empty, but this seems more than is necessary. I guess you could talk w/ your kid about ensuring that they kept any contraband in drawers/closets.etc. Maybe even take a photo when leaving for fire drill. But what an ugly environment, to have to feel you were always subject to such intrusions.
What do you and your kid think about this? What kind of lesson is this offering her to make use of in the rest of her life? I guess living under the microscope might make you really appreciate privacy when you got it. But I couldn’t imagine paying to be in such an environment.
Don’t remember a single fire drill in my 2 years in dorms at a state school in late 70s. Of course, we made no effort to hide pot or booze, partaking openly in the floor lounges, and having keg/everclear parties in the dorm’s main lunges.