OUR DRUG PROBLEM

My school's had a drug problem for as long as anyone can remember.
It's pretty much assumed that everyone drinks and smokes pot, and if
you don't, it's not because you've never had the opportunity.

And every once in awhile the drug dogs come around or the district
sends out a letter on how to recognize drug use in your kids. But
other than that, I don't see a lot of effort being made to rid Marcus
of its addictions, and it's kind of making me mad.

I've always liked the idea of personal choice. I like thinking that
people can choose to do drugs or to drink, because they're victimless
crimes -- in that the only victim is the criminal. But I always
thought that way about people actually old enough to make that choice
and to truly understand its effects. And I figure that if my school
and any other public school in America can strip us of their civil
rights at the school doors, they should damn well be able to protect
us, or at least look like they're trying.

That's the one thing that makes me so furious. They don't seem to try.
Sometimes a random search will be conducted, but if you go to the
counselors and tell them you saw a girl toking up in the hallway,
they'll want her full name and an eyewitness account or two before
they'll consider taking any action. And really, if my school wanted to
catch users, all they'd have to do is stake out the bathrooms for a
few days. But they don't.

We're not subtle. Subtlety is a learned skill, and we teens just
haven't had the time to learn it. No one over 18 would deal in a
cafeteria full of administrators or hide their drugs in the exposed
pipework of the bathrooms, but kids at my school have done and still
do these things on an extremely regular basis. My blondest, preppiest,
most innocent friends have guys come up to them and delicately ask,
"Hey, want some weed?" I get offered just about everything just about
every week, and I'm the last person on the planet anyone would think
would do drugs. But it's just such a common assumption at my school
that everyone smokes pot and drinks (at the very least) that no one
worries about being ratted out to the administration.

So how do so many slip under my school's radar? How is it that the
people who light up in bathrooms go undetected about 98 percent of the
time, while if I were to wear a tank top to school, I'd get popped
with an in-school suspension before I got through first period?

In my four years at Marcus, I've noticed that our punitive efforts
appear to be severely misplaced. I see my principal and assistant
principals prowling the halls during passing periods, searching out
dress code violators with a tenacity I would've expected more of
administrators searching out something that actually matters, like,
say, a raging drug problem.

Even on the days when we have mourned the passing of one of our peers
due to drug abuse, I'd bet my soul that kids got sent home or to
in-school suspension for showing off their shoulders and stomachs.

I love my school most of the time. It's a great school, and it's
prepared me well for college. My newspaper staff and gifted program
have given me opportunities I couldn't have dreamed of in my
birthplace, Huntington Beach. But as with anything I love, I can't in
good faith ignore the qualities I hate, especially the ones that carry
more students away every year.

I guess I just wish I could say my administrators felt the
same.

Charlotte Roork is a senior at Edward S. Marcus High School in Flower
Mound and a Student Voices volunteer columnist. To respond to this
column, send an e-mail to voices@ dallasnews.com.