SEPARATING EDUCATION FROM INVESTIGATION AT HHS

Hingham - Hingham High School and the Hingham Police Department are
two institutions with very different stated purposes. The goal of the
High School is to educate and enlighten the young minds of our town.
The goal of the Police Department is to find and arrest criminals.
These two goals could not be more disparate. So then why, however,
are the Hingham High School administration and the Police Department
becoming so cozy with one another in recent years? If a student at
HHS is arrested, or even picked up for any reason by the Hingham
Police, the school is normally notified. In this manner, many
students each year receive serious punishments from the school
administration, without doing a single thing at the school itself.

The Police Department is only allowed to give information about
students to the school if the safety or educational environment of
HHS could be harmed, according the Code of Conduct. It appears
however that this phraseology is often abused by both the school and
police, with the two trading information often. It is ludicrous that
good, hardworking students are punished academically for making
mistakes far outside the confines of the classroom.

Students who have done nothing at school can find themselves
suspended from school extra-curricular activities and sports teams
for two weeks or more, and are forced to suffer a public ridicule for
what was otherwise a private legal issue. The pressure of getting
into a good college is stressful enough for young students, and such
suspensions only put an unnecessary black mark on the futures of
these individuals.

The school doesn't just receive information from the HPD, however;
the exchange is quite even, and the administration invites police
over to the school whenever possible. HHS never fails to treat school
dances like expected street riots (if they allow them to be held at
all), insuring that students' wonderful memories of school dances are
always shared in their minds with the image of a line of police
hovering near the wall.

The Hingham High School administration has asserted its right to
breathalyze every student wishing to come into a school dance, and
has responded to criticisms by saying that students are taking place
in an optional, extra-curricular event. The same exact justification
could be made for mandatory drug testing for any student on a
sporting team (a radical measure that has never been considered by the town).

Yet the HHS administration has felt comfortable going ahead with
breathalyzation at dances, which is just as invasive and over the
line as drug testing. Police officers have been invited to the school
on a number of occasions to do run surprise searches on the student
body, sometimes using drug-tracking dogs. Many times the actions of
the HHS administration have bordered violation of the 4th amendment,
which guarantees protection from unwarranted search and seizure for
every man, woman and child born in the United States.

The citizens of Hingham need, for the sake of their own children, to
demand that the Hingham High School administration stop presuming
every student is a probable criminal. No student wakes up in the
morning and makes the long, tired walk to school with the goal of
breaking the law; they come to school to learn, and broaden their
horizons. The school's current policies have gone over the line, and
are actively interfering with the education and futures of its
students. It may be politically safe for the administration, but is
far from what is in the best interest Hingham's children.