Searching Students

I don't know if you read the Des Moines Register article about the incident in Atlantic last week (http://bit.ly/zpX8O), but I think it's a good time for everyone to reflect on student search in schools and take the time to ask about your own district's policy. Pop quiz: What's the difference between "Probable Cause" and "Reasonable Suspicion?"

The Fourth Amendment to the constitution protects citizens in this case: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

In New Jersey v. T.L.O. the Supreme Court set precedent (see http://bit.ly/5lb9T) for school searches and declared that school personnel, acting in the capacity of the school (sometimes that is the tricky part) only have to have reasonable suspicion to search a student (whereas a police office may have to have probable cause). Reasonable suspicion is more lenient than probable cause. Basically, it states that if any reasonable person would suspect something needed searched, then teachers can search it. Probable cause requires evidence and other stuff that I never want to have to worry about.

So, did faculty at Atlantic have reasonable suspicion to search girls? Probably. But, of course, a strip search is illegal.

I think a big mistake made in this case (at least what I gathered from the article in The Register) was that the guidance counselor went into the locker room to do the search alone. ALWAYS have a witness present that can verify events. In talking with my wife about the case, she made a good point that sometimes she says things to students and they happen to take it the wrong way. Who knows what was said in the Atlantic locker room? The faculty member could have said, "If we don't find the $100, we will have to strip search," thinking that the threat would produce the money. Kids could have taken that statement to mean they should start shedding their clothes. Who knows?

I don't know that I would have searched students. What was a student doing with $100 in the locker room? I think our school's policy with money and valuables is that students can leave it in the office where it will be stored in the safe until it is needed.