SAFETY OVER RIGHTS: SCHOOLS HAVE FREE HAND IN DRUG SWEEPS

Courts have routinely upheld the sort of drug sweeps that occurred Monday
at Oconee County High School, tacitly acknowledging that in some respects,
students check their Fourth Amendment rights at the door in the interest of
public safety. ''The (U.S.) Supreme Court has been pretty supportive of
school authorities in conducting these kinds of searches,'' said Sam Davis,
dean of the University of Mississippi School of Law and an expert on
constitutional issues surrounding school searches. ''They've given school
officials a pretty wide latitude in ensuring there is a safe environment
conducive to learning.'' On Monday, two agents with RAID Corps, a
Spartanburg, S.C.-based private security firm, swept through the school
with drug dogs searching for indications of drugs or guns around lockers
and parked cars. The school's doors were locked to prevent anyone from
leaving, though administrators and faculty were posted at exits in case of
an emergency. ''If you don't do it all the way, you really jeopardize the
security of the operation,'' said Oconee County Schools Superintendent
Shannon Adams. Adams said he will propose to the school board that it
reserve funds in the next year's budget for regular spot checks. ''I
believe it's a deterrent to students bringing drugs and other contraband on
campus,'' Adams said. ''We're not naive enough to pretend it's not there,
but this is more of a preventative measure.'' Adams said two days after the
search, in which two teens were charged with misdemeanor possession of
marijuana, his office hasn't heard a single complaint from parents. ''We
really had not anticipated any negative reaction,'' Adams said. ''By and
large parents appreciate the school system's efforts to make schools
safe.'' In fact, few legal challenges have arisen from school drug
searches, Davis said. ''It may be that in many cases parents don't seek to
challenge it; that they support it. Maybe their lawyers do some research
and conclude it would be pointless to challenge it.'' In the late 1960s,
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. De Moines School System that
students could exercise their First Amendment right to free speech by
wearing black armbands protesting the Vietnam War. At the time,
conservatives worried that the decision would lead to chaos in the schools,
with increased court interference in their operation and students in effect
running the schools. ''I think what you're seeing now is the pendulum
swinging back in the other direction,'' Davis said. ''The court over the
last 15 to 20 years has really gone with preserving the government's
interests over the individual's. There's really no question that students
have less constitutional rights in a public school setting than they do
outside.'' Generally, the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable
search and seizure guarantees that searches of a person's belongings should
not be done without a warrant issued after proof of probable cause is given.

In schools, however, the administrators may unilaterally conduct searches
without a warrant.

The Supreme Court, in a New Jersey case decided in the 1990s, ruled that
school officials don't need a warrant or probable cause, but merely a
''reasonable suspicion.'' The court reserved judgment, however, on the
involvement of police in school searches. Jay Russell, founder of RAID
Corps, said using private firms allows school systems to avoid some of the
prickly issues that surround law enforcement searches. ''A lot of times
when you're a police officer and you start searching things, the ugly word
'warrant' keeps surfacing,'' Russell said. ''We don't have to get into any
of those issues.

We're working as an entity of the school -- we're like a school employee.''
The U.S. Supreme Court has also upheld the constitutionality of random drug
testing for student-athletes, a related issue in the area of Fourth
Amendment rights.

Lower federal courts have upheld school drug sweeps, though they've
indicated that some reasonable suspicion should exist. ''At least one of
these courts has indicated you need an individualized suspicion,'' Davis
said. ''In other words, you can't go searching every room, every locker,
every car.'' Davis said in the context of the Oconee High search, ''one
critical point might be whether there were any indications there were drug
or weapon problems in the school.

If there's not any demonstrated showing, then I think they might be on
somewhat shaky ground.'' Adams said there were no prior indications of drug
or weapon use at the school before instituting the search.

He noted, however, that the school board's attorney researched the law
before any search was approved. ''The bottom line is this many school
systems would not be doing it if there was a serious risk of a legal
challenge,'' Adams said. ''We've had people try to sue us, but they just
didn't have a case,'' said Russell, the private contractor. Russell
estimates his firm conducts some 250 searches a month in school systems in
North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. He said his agents have seized
300 items of contraband and 33 guns so far this year. ''Ninety-eight
percent of the parents we come into contact with praise us because we make
them feel good about where their child is going to school,'' Russell said.
Still, constitutional law scholars worry about the rights students are
surrendering in public schools. ''Right now I think the pendulum is still
swinging in giving teachers and administrators more authority,'' Davis
said. ''I'm concerned in how far that is going to go.''