Despite a complaint by the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, there has been a pronounced lack of public disapproval after a recent drug search at Rogers High School in Newport, suggesting that such drug searches may quietly become more common in Rhode Island schools.

On November 26, school officials and Newport police organized an unannounced dog-led search of students' lockers and backpacks, prompting ACLU executive director Steve Brown to raise objections about violations of students' rights to privacy. Brown also cites indications that school officials offered Rogers High School as a training ground for drug-searching police dog units, a charge
denied by Assistant School Superintendent John Power.

"It was basically about safety," says Power. "We're looking to make sure that parents know that when they send kids to school that it is a safe place." While the school district employs neither metal detectors nor daily bag searches, he believes the November search "sent a message to the students and also to the community that we're going to be vigilant [about maintaining a safe environment]."

Although drugs or explosives were not found during the November search or another scouring performed last year outside of school hours, the district plans to use dogs to conduct random searches in the future. Power describes the general feedback from students and parents as "very positive." Asked about the civil rights concerns raised by the ACLU, he says, "People can say what they think kids feel about the process, but I can tell you what they actually said . . . They were not negative about it." Similarly, the Rhode Island ACLU hasn't received any complaints about the November 26 search.

The nation's war on terror has raised a host of concerns among civil libertarians and other Americans. Brown feels it "certainly intensified the loss of civil liberties generally upon the public, but in terms of students, I think Columbine remains the major impetus for a lot of crackdowns. We've had a number of these Columbine-type incidents in the past few years." As the Phoenix reported a few years back, schools remain far safer for students than other settings, even with the relatively recent phenomenon of school shootings (see "Don't believe the hype," News, December 16, 1999).

The ostensible motivation behind random drug searches -- safety, or at least the perception of safety -- seeks to justify inherent violations of privacy, and the notion is supported by at least a few high school students in Providence (who spoke before a recent shooting at Mount Hope High School). "I think they should do it to all high schools," says Hawa Kromah, a senior at Hope High School, who believes drug searches would contribute to a safer environment, but remains concerned about profiling.

Kromah says searches like the kind in Newport haven't occurred in Providence. But given the unruffled response to dogs sniffing around school hallways in Newport, the door seems open for more acts of what Steve Brown characterizes as a "slap in the face of good kids."

Issue Date: February 7 - 13, 2003