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School
Drug Searches: An Education in Oppression
Published Saturday,
February 13, 1999
Recent headlines
from The Union are a frightening lesson in civics: NU to
bring in drug dogs and Drug dogs to sniff junior highs.
Add to that the related January 27th headline, Undercover NU cop
has no regrets.
Drug searches and underground cops in our schools are bad policy, with
the result that our children are growing up with no regard for their own
rights. We are preparing them to live in a dictatorship.
This is a difficult issue. On February 10th, even The Union was
divided, printing two contrasting editorials on the subject. For a moment
I thought Both Sides Now was running a few days early.
Certainly we want our schools to be drug-free, but what are the appropriate
steps to achieve that result? Let me suggest to you that dogs and
undercover police are appropriate only for police states.
To bring you up to date, on December 4th of last year, there were 10 drug-related
arrests at Nevada Union High School. This was due to the efforts
of a youngish looking narc who had been planted there. My understanding
from the mother of one busted student is that the kids were sold on the
idea he was a sad case from a troubled family, and they should try to
make friends with him. Just hearsay, but it seems plausible.
Some kids obviously got too friendly. In the end, ten little lawbreakers
were busted at an assembly and marched off. My gosh, the highest
level of public service must be putting a 16-year-old in the pokey.
Thus begins Drug Wars 1999 (watch for it in a school near
you). On January 21st, The Union reported that the NJUHSD
board, presumably on the recommendation of superintendent Joe Boeckx,
unanimously approved granting a contract to Interquest Detection Canines,
a rent-a-dog service from Texas, to conduct unannounced drug searches
at the high school.
Yes, Virginia, you can rent drug-sniffing dogs for your party or wedding
reception for only $300! At Interquest, their slogan is We
sniff em, you stiff em. This adds new meaning
to that old line, Why Timmy, I think Lassies trying to tell
us something.
By February 5th, the Lyman Gilmore and Seven Hills middle schools jumped
on the paddy wagon with a news story that they would be using Highway
Patrol dogs to enforce their zero-tolerance policy. Incidentally,
the disease of drug abuse at Gilmore amounts to two students in three
years.
This is intolerable. In the past, school boards and administrators
were fairly harmless, at the most producing hall passes, study halls,
and the occasional attempt to ban The Catcher in the Rye.
Now they have taken on the tasks of spying on students, putting them in
jail, marring their education, and communicating our disregard for their
minimal rights.
Protecting students by treating them like inmates, in the
name of a zero-tolerance numbers game, is ridiculous.
Also, dont you find it amazing that theres never enough money
for athletics or music, but the school can always scrape up some cash
to arrest your kids?
How do high school kids feel? They think the busts are OK because they
happened to somebody else. They think the smart kids (probably quite correctly)
wont get caught.
We are teaching the students the worst civics lesson possible, that if
youre innocent, you have nothing to fear. I think thats
what victims of the Inquisition thought. Even many Jews in Germany
were not worried when the Gestapo came for communists, homosexuals, and
gypsies. Then one day they come for you.
The students dont yet understand that in this country, you are supposed
to be arrested for probable cause. In America, we are not supposed
to entrap or go prospecting for criminals. Cops are not supposed
to profile people (like Arab-looking people in
airports or young black men in white neighborhoods). Theres
also no justification for random drug testing. Maybe its time
to learn about the Bill of Rights in the NUHS civics classes.
Civilized people dont spy on each other. Nor do they bring in animals
to do the work. Further, civilized people dont do this to
each others children. Every parent in these school districts
should be livid that their child is being molested by the school system.
Barry Schoenborn is a technical writer, and a ten-year resident of
Nevada County. You can write to him at barry@wvswrite.com. The opinions
of columnists are not necessarily those of The Union.
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