A junior high school in northern California pins radio identification tags on its students. New Jersey high school students must hand over a urine sample before trying out for band or earning parking privileges. While not as intrusive as other states, schools in Connecticut are part of the trend to use ever more aggressive techniques to keep track of where students are, what they bring to school and what they put in their bodies.
West Haven High School is contemplating its own ID tag system. Police in Shelton and Oxford use a drug-sniffing dog to ferret out drugs and paraphernalia among students' possessions. And a bill is pending in the state Legislature that could lead to mandatory steroid testing for high school athletes.
It's all done in the name of safety. But privacy rights advocates say schools are attacking constitutional freedoms without a proper airing in the public square.
"We see a very real problem in our students and young people," said Roger Vann, director of the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union. "It's a demographic that's more and more under attack. They're a vulnerable population."
Since the war on drugs was declared in the 1980s, many schools have become part of the battlefield.
With the goal of making their classrooms and hallways safer, school administrators across the country declared zero-tolerance policies that have resulted in automatic suspensions and expulsions for students caught with illegal drugs. Principals have authorized random searches of lockers and cars parked on the school grounds. And students who want to play sports or participate in extracurricular activities must submit to drug tests.
According to a 2003 study by the University of Michigan's Journal of the School of Health, 19 percent of the schools engage in some form of drug testing. Wrong message?
While the courts have backed up schools on locker searches and drug testing, privacy advocates worry that an overzealous pursuit of a handful of offenders is sending a message that runs counter to lessons taught in civics classes. Their greater fear is that schools are teaching a generation of Americans to accept greater limitations on their privacy and freedom. "When dogs walk through the school, it creates a presumption that everyone is guilty, everyone is a suspect," said Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, which advocates for drug-policy reform. "Is the lesson that they get [that] privacy doesn't mean anything? This carries over to medical records and financial rights of privacy. It is a deconditioning of students," he said.
A University of Connecticut survey earlier this year confirmed the fears of Vann, Sterling and others. A significant number of high school students demonstrated a limited understanding of the Bill of Rights. Many said that our country's founding principles went too far. Providing a safe environment, however, is the top priority for many school officials. "I take great umbrage at people that don't want their kid's locker searched," Shelton High School Headmaster Don Ramia said. "If your kid's clean, you should welcome that." A 14-year administrator and part-time supernumerary officer with the Shelton Police Department, Ramia said his school's discipline policy has evolved for the better. What used to require a cumbersome evaluation process before he could suspend a student is now streamlined. Students face immediate consequences when found with drugs, including suspension, arrest and mandatory appointments with drug-treatment counselors.
Ramia and administrators throughout the region insist their focus is on individual students who need an intervention. But in strengthening their relationships with the police, Shelton and other schools have also crossed into the territory of broad searches that treat all students as suspects.
Several weeks ago, Oxford administrators invited State Police to bring in a dog for a sweep of Great Oak Middle School after students were found with drug paraphernalia. No drugs were found.
Shelton High School administrators met with a similar result several years ago when police dogs sniffed the lockers there. So, Ramia said, the school's administration changed its approach to allow the dogs to roam the parking lot. And earlier this year, a police dog sniffed bags of students embarking on a ski trip.
"It's my job as an administrator to suspend kids using drugs. It gets them out of the population," Ramia said. From his Washington, D.C., office, Students for a Sensible Drug Policy Director Tom Angel advocates less punitive discipline policies. Pointing to statistics showing a rise in drug use among teenagers over the last two decades, he calls the war on drugs a failure.
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