Civil Rights in the Classroom

"IT CAN HARDLY BE ARGUED...," the U.S. supreme court ruled in 1969, that "students shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate. "But before and since, an unholy alliance of school administrators, parents, and courts have done just that--often explicitly defending those infringement of students' constitutional rights. In schools in Broward county, Fla., administrators now greet students by painting "Lockers are subject to search" in the hallways. As the rising tide of cries for tighter discipline roll across the country, they often sweep student rights back past the proverbial schoolhouse gate.

It is surprising that the New Jersey Supreme Court found last year that school officials could only search student lockers with reasonable belief that such a search would provide evidence that the student engaged in activities that "materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others." More surprising still that the court found that "as the intrusiveness of the search intensifies, the standard of Fourth Amendment 'reasonableness' approaches probable cause." Translation to common language: The Fourth Amendment protection against arbitrary searches indeed extends beyond the schoolhouse gate; evidence obtained from such illegal searches cannot be entered in court. the court explicitly limited the intensity of its ruling by specifically exempting school officials from civil liability for damages from illegal searches conducted in good faith.

In light of current trends, though, it is less surprising that the United States Supreme Court will consider an appeal of New Jersey's ruling this term. The Supreme court could effectively negate the rights upheld by the New Jersey Court by setting a "good faith" exemption for all evidence illegally seized, or by setting the particular standards for "reasonableness" in school searches cases are reasonably low.

JEFFREY ENGERUD'S case, the basis for the New Jersey ruling, translates this abstract principle into an everyday applicable rule. Sometime in 1972, a vice principal Sommerville High School in New Jersey "heard" Jeff dealt in illegal drugs. One day a detective told this same vice-principal that an anonymous parent called police threatening to take matters into his own hands if Engerud kept pushing drugs on campus. With the rumor and an anonymous phone tip, administrators broke into Engerud's looker with a pass key, thoroughly searched it and indeed found a big of speed. Police arrested Engerud and charged him with possession with item to distribute.

On the surface. Sommerville High School shed a potentially dangerous and disruptive troublemaker. Along the way, it also trashed the Bill of Rights. It's easy to rationalize such travesties of justice by claiming officials only trampled the rights of high school students or criminal defendants, but that's very misleading. Jeffrey Engerud's civil rights exist independently of whether he's selling drugs or writing Shakespeare themes. As his particular case shows, the only difference between Jeffrey Engerud, student and citizen of the United States and Jeffrey Engerud, criminal defendent and drug dealer, are a couple of well-placed and well-spread rumors and one anonymous call to the cops.

Administrators typically rationalize such searches of public school students by invoking the legal doctrine of in loco parentis. In loco parentis is that nifty doctrine that lets school officials act as your own parents by, say, letting House Masters serve alcohol in the sherry hour, as your own parents presumably do in their own home. Administrators sharpen the double edge of this legal sword by claiming that acting in loco parentis--"in the place of your parents"--they can search students persons and lockers without constitutionally required warrants or probable cause.

In some cases, officials argue that in loco parentis responsibility for students in their care implies an equal responsibility to safeguard children by, say, keeping drugs off campus. But schools cannot be required to discharge this responsibility by overriding constitutional rights. Others argue that schools simply exercise parental discretion by searching students in their cause.

School officials also rationalize warrantless searches with the demands for discipline in the classroom. Certainly schools can't function well with satanic sacrifices in every hallway and a not in every classroom. But it's quite hard to see how the mere presence of a few reefers in a girl's purse or some speed in a a closed locker will prevent old Mr. Walker from waxing eloquent about "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

BUT THE REAL DANGER with the discipline rationals is that discipline will become the rights-buster that national security often is. If administrators must maintain some amorphous discipline or national security "posture" to prevent spaced out students from rioting or nuclear holocaust, then what right, what protections, exist? In this case, only a rumor and an anonymous phone call transformed a U.S. constitutional right into a Soviet style promise, redeemable only in a world of lofty words and glorifies lies.

In student locker search cases, the schools cases wobble on particularly shaky ground. As the New Jersey court noted, found. "For four years, a student's locker is his home away from home." The administrators in New Jersey may have had a good instinct as their illegally seized evidence shows, but students still retain their rights. Again, the court. "He [the administrator] had, at best, a good hunch. No doubt hunches would unearth more evidence of crime on the persons of students or citizens as a whole. But more is needed to sustain a search." In effect, searching a student's locker is the equivalent of searching his parents' home.

The dissenters in the New Jersey case argued that it is common knowledge among students that administrators could use a pass key to enter any locker, and this makes the lockers less protected. The idea that hotel managers could use pass keys does not mean they may let police ransack guests' rooms at will.

Taken to its logical extreme, this rationale would let police search any home anywhere because police could physically break down any door and most people realize this. In a bitter twist of irony, the majority of the New Jersey Court suggested that random locker searches would be legal if students knew that their lockers could be physically searched. Here, as with the supreme court's condonement of roadblocks searching every car on a given road, we have the new legal doctrine of equal injustice masquerading as equal protection.

THIS TERM, the United States Supreme court considers the New Jersey High Court's decision tossing out evidence from arbitrary school searches. Even if the court goes against the deafening cries for more school discipline, the real battle remains not in establishing the legal rights of students but their underlying moral and social claims as well.

By their hypocritical actions, American schools today could produce moral schizophrenics. Basic psychology theorizes that mothers make their children schizophrenic by tempting a hungry child with milk, bringing the child closer, and then yanking him or her away from the mother's breast. Today schools tempt students with tantalizing promises of America's wonderful civil liberties, point bright eyes towards the Constitution, and then say, "No, that's not for you."

If parental rights or disciplinary needs supercede the constitutional rights of American schoolchildren, then why not let petty authoritarian dictators paternally cattle prod their "child-like" political dissidents. That suck logic seens so natural rather than perversely twisted underlines a certain national moral psychosis. A student's right is a distinct set of projections, not just an abstract concept for memorization and regurgitation on the civics exam. If schools and the courts forget that, they can easily produce the most mathematical geniuses and moral fools--all with the discipline to make 1984 ring true.