What, if anything, did visit by drugsniffing dogs prove? Let's see if we
have this straight: Durfee High School in Fall River has a drug problem
serious enough to warrant the use of drugsniffing dogs in a schoolwide
sweep. But the results of the sweep zero drugs found indicate that
Durfee doesn't have such a serious drug problem after all, school officials
say. It also means this: Durfee High students have enough sense not to
keep drugs in their (government owned and therefore not private) lockers
when they know that there's a good chance that the city will invite
drugsniffing police dogs into the building. And since common sense and
experience tell us that a certain number of students, undetermined as it
is, use illicit drugs, the fact that the dogs came up empty is proof that
those certain students are adept as they need to be under the circumstances
at keeping their behavior a secret from these particular authorities.

Even if we assume that the lack of drugs in the students' lockers indicates
that the student body is taking the antidrug message to heart, the use of
the dogs sends other messages. It means that despite the accolades heaped
on the students by city school officials, the students still are not to be
trusted as long as they are within the confines of a cityowned school
building. Surveillance measures that most adults would find intolerable in
their work places will be a routine, in order to render the schools safe
places to be. However, the students themselves will not be trusted to keep
drugs out of school, not really, no matter how glowing the praise from
their school officials.

It is hard to imagine what the authorities will make of the results of the
dogs' visit on Tuesday. Was the sweep a success or a failure? Did it
detect no drugs because there were none to detect, or did it simply fail to
look in the right places in the right way? In either case, why would the
sweep ever be repeated in the future? To send a message? What message?

The students at Durfee and at other high schools in Somerset, Wareham,
Dartmouth and elsewhere where drugsniffing dogs are used are just shy of
entering their adulthood, in which they will be set free in the world to
make adult decisions for themselves. They will carry the rationalizations
for the drug sweeps with them into their adult lives, when they will vote
and perhaps even make official policy decisions themselves. They will take
to heart the lessons taught them in their high schools about surveillance,
privacy, freedom and personal responsibility. And if they ever hear
Benjamin Franklin's words, "They that can give up essential liberty to
obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety," they can always
answer that Ben Franklin didn't have to deal with a drug problem. There are
always exceptions to the rule, aren't there?