SCENT OF A JACKET

This week's suspension of an Orleans high school student because a police
dog detected a scent of marijuana on his ski jacket should be the final
proof Ottawa school boards need to end their policy of random drug searches
of students.

It's bad enough that the searches violate students' privacy rights, and
probably their constitutional rights, too. It's also unacceptable that they
teach students to fear how organs of the state can exercise their
authority, regardless of whether they have reasonable grounds to suspect
someone of wrongdoing. But to suspend a student when there is absolutely no
evidence, other than the "word" of a drug-sniffing dog, is as ludicrous as
it is offensive.

As the Citizen reported this week, 15-year-old Chris Laurin and his fellow
Grade 10 students at St. Matthew High School were subjected to a lockdown
Tuesday as police conducted an impromptu search for drugs and weapons. A
police dog zeroed in on Chris's ski jacket, which prompted further searches
of his clothing, lunch bag, school bag and locker. Even though these
searches found no drugs whatsoever, and even though no human could smell
marijuana on Chris's clothes, St. Matthew's principal suspended him for two
days and ordered him to see a drug counsellor.

The Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board says lockdowns are part of
Ontario's "safe schools" policy, designed to keep illegal substances and
weapons out of schools. (That's the same policy, you may recall, that
Ottawa's public school board used last year to suspend a seven-year-old
Grade 2 student for five days for bringing an African letter-opener to his
school for show-and-tell.)

We're all for safe schools, but there are better ways to achieve that goal
than by subjecting students to sweeping random police searches on the
off-chance that some illegal drugs might be found. It certainly won't make
schools safer to suspend a student when there is absolutely no physical
evidence that any transgression occurred.

Imagine if the powers-that-be could do that to someone other than a
student. The howls of outrage would be deafening if police could stop and
search people without any grounds to suspect them, and then detain or
charge them for drug possession even though no drugs were ever found. Why
should students be treated differently?

It's true that a 1998 Supreme Court decision said students have a lower
expectation of privacy while at school than at home, so some searches can
take place without a warrant. But that doesn't mean students lose all their
constitutional rights when they're inside their schools.

Allowing the police to act in a manner that is inconsistent with the values
and principles that underpin our society, and suspending students without
any evidence, sends the wrong message to young people about the country in
which they live.

That's not a lesson they should be learning, inside or outside the classroom.