By David Copeland
Staff Writer
This new policy allows drug- sniffing dogs to not only search hallways, lockers and parking lots, but also classrooms. The new policy compensates for a loophole in the old policy that did not allow drug dogs to search students backpacks by removing this limitation completely.
Under the new policy, a classroom is picked at random, at which point a drug dog, an administrator and a dog handler will enter the room and search for contraband.
The administrator will instruct all of the students to leave their backpacks in the room and vacate the classroom while the dog sniffs for illegal substances.
The introduction of these animals into a classroom environment is far too aggressive to be implemented.
The American Civil Liberties Union has criticized random drug dog searches, claiming that drug-sniffing dogs are better suited to crime scenes and that bringing them into schools creates an atmosphere in which students feel like suspects.
In the Supreme Court case New Jersey v. T.L.O. (1985), the court ruled that privacy may be obstructed to create a safe learning environment.
The court determined that when assessing a search or seizure in the school setting, it would balance whether the search was justified when it was started, and whether the search was reasonable in its scope. According to the court, school officials need “reasonable suspicion” to search students.
If someone makes an effort to hide something, or to make it private in any way, then interfering is considered “an unlawful search.”
However, a dog sniffing backpacks is legally not considered a search because there is no breach of container, like a backpack.
Although this new policy does not violate the Constitution, it is unjustified. According to the California Department of Education, the number of students disciplined at Mira Costa for drug-related offences has not varied greatly over the past five years. If anything, the numbers have decreased from a high of 43 students in 2004-2005 to just 18 last year.
It is unwarranted for the school board to institute a classroom drug dog search simply because other schools are also implementing the measure, especially when the number of students disciplined for drug-related offenses has decreased over the past five years.
Obviously, this situation calls for a balance of safety and privacy, but the search of students’ backpacks is too extreme.
Not all Mira Costa students are criminals, and they should not be treated as such. Mira Costa is an educational institution and should not treat its students like convicts.
Additionally, students would be greatly distracted from the classroom environment by being treated as suspects. If the searches truly are random, then classes could easily be searched during tests or presentations, greatly disrupting the school’s learning environment.
Even though technically the searches are constitutional, they signal a blatant loss of trust between school officials and the student body.
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