Searches at School: No Reason Necessary

There is a contentious school issue being debated in Hawaii. The state is considering allowing searches of student lockers, without the need to establish just cause. The rationale from the Board of Education Chairwoman is as follows:

“”I think that if you are on a school campus, that it’s not really your own personal property,” said board Chairwoman Karen Knudsen. “But if the dog is specifically trained to be able to detect drugs, I don’t see that that should be a problem if you don’t have drugs.”"

The counter-argument is supplied by a lawyer with the ACLU:

“But Laurie Temple, a Hawaii ACLU attorney, said giving principals access to students’ lockers at any time without reason or cause is “unnecessary, potentially unconstitutional and opens the schools up to liability.”"

link: ACLU protests blanket student locker searches

It is disturbing what the unfettered search would teach the children. For one thing, there is absolutely no expectation of privacy. And underlying that, civil rights are theoretical constructs and certainly not practiced.

Ms Knudsen’s argument about not having drugs misses the point. One wonders what Ms Knudsen’s reaction would be if she were to be stopped by police periodically and had her vehicle searched. The roads are not her private property. By Ms Knudsen’s own premise, the no-cause search of her vehicle should not be a problem because she does not have drugs. On the other hand, she has no privacy either.

Justice Louis Brandeis made the point in 1928: “The makers of our constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness . . . They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - - the most comprehensive of the rights and the right most valued by civilized men”. It would seem that it would be in our collective best interests if school children learned that the constitution was indeed meaningful - and applied to all Americans.

Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster:  http://flyinghamster.com/

[tags]privacy, schools, no-cause searches, board of education, aclu, drugs, constitution[/tags]