TRUST IS FIRST CASUALTY IN THIS WAR

I was going to start the column as a rant. Drug-sniffing dogs in high
schools? Why not strip searches? Metal detectors? A Star Wars missile
defense?

I was going to ask those Monarch High parents who are circulating the
petitions to let in the dogs whether no-knock bedroom raids -- boys,
hide those Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues -- by the cops would be
good, too. And could Mike Lansing, just back from submarine duty at
Pearl Harbor, come along?

I was going to ask not just whether random visits by drug-sniffing
dogs would eliminate drugs on campus -- they wouldn't -- but what they
thought the message was to their kids: How do I know it wasn't you in
the bathroom dealing Ecstasy?

There are many questions to ask. Although a student's privacy may not
be constitutionally protected, do you think this is a good lesson for
your child's government class? Big Brother isn't watching this time;
he's sniffing. Should we really be going there?

And if not, where else should we go? The mall? The fast food emporium?
Eminem's tour bus?

But I'm not going to rant. And for two reasons.

One, the cops know better, and the Boulder Valley school system (an
8-year-old's science project absurdly trashed notwithstanding) knows
better. Petition all you want, but drug-sniffing dogs aren't headed
for Monarch.

Two, I understand why some parents -- although, I'm guessing, not all
that many -- are just confused enough to think this could be a good
idea.

They hear and read -- even in this space -- that kids who want drugs
can get them at the school. What they don't read and hear is that kids
who don't want drugs don't get them at the school. They also may have
missed the fact that Monarch is little different from any other high
school.

They see parents blamed for lack of oversight at parties at home. What
kind of oversight, parents ask themselves, do the kids have at school?
And will drug availability be part of the governor's school report
cards?

We all want to protect our kids. But there are costs
involved.

Look at the price paid for the drug war in general. The
Justice-for-Mena signs put up around Denver tell of one cost -- an
indefensible policy of no-knock raids where innocent people are
endangered even when the address is right. If these raids were held
anywhere other than in the poorer communities in town, they would have
been ended long ago.

The use of drug-sniffing dogs to invade lockers and patrol hallways
isn't going to produce a new Joe Bini as a household name. But the
message is not so different, and you don't need a diploma to
understand it.

A school is a community. It's a particularly fragile community in that
it is populated by young people who bruise easily. It is no simple
matter to determine just how authoritarian a school can be and still
provide a (small-l) liberal education. What's clear is that dogs don't
fit anywhere in that equation.

When Brittney Chambers died, many kids at Monarch thought they had
been unfairly targeted, feeling as if the media had made them guilty
by association.

Now, when they see petitions for drug dogs, some students must wonder
if their parents want to target them in the same way.

There is, after all, more than one way to lose your kid. Trust is
often the first casualty of this kind of war. When trust goes -- it
must be written somewhere -- the dogs do not help.