Search and Seizure

Going on a tip I found out about from Mr. Fischer, I did some research last night about the controversy over whether it is constitutuional to provide random searches of student's lockers. It seems as though a significant number of people believe that a school randomly searching a student's locker is a violation of the right to privacy as guaranteed by the US constitution. To be sure, such action is a violation of a student's right to privacy, but the overarching question here is: are there moments when performing a search of a student's locker is justified? If a teach suspects something about a student, do they have a right to invade that student's privacy in order to bust them, or, as they probably see it, stop him from hurting others? Sure, that action might be justified. In addition to teaching us our teachers are also responsible for keeping us safe from harm, and if that means breaking into a student's locker then it might be justified. from that point of view, its easy to see a basic reason why students would have to register a locker with their school, like it has been previously done at BHS. It might also explain why the new policy forces a known locker on a student, so teachers can be positive about where a student is operating and storing his stuff, and in the case of an emergency find that child's locker. However, the change in this policy is still perplexing. What has happened at BHS in the past year that has caused this shift? To my knowledge the only search of a kid's locker in my time at BHS was in my sophomore year when a kid commented to a friend that he was "done with this class," and the teacher heard "I'm bringing a gun to class." the kid's locker was searched, but nothing of a hazerdous nature was found. But that was two years ago. As far as I can tell, the school has no true justification for forcing a locker assignment on a student, when the old policy of simply finding an empty one and reporting the number to your homeroom teacher worked fine, and still gave the administration a location for where the student was keeping there stuff. The new policyu in this regard seems a bit over cautious, and in being so is unfair and repressive for the students for whom this new system is a hinderance, rather than a booster of their safety.

Locked Out

Anyone who has been at BHS for more than a few months has realized that the locker system, and even lockers themselves, aren't the most useful tools for our academic learning. Personally I didn't even use a locker until this year, and that was only because my doctor told me that I had to "find a locker of get a back-brace." Often times, the lockers we are given are out of the way, close to zero of our classes, or simply in areas that we'd personally rather avoid. However, until this year that wasn't much of a problem. If you weren't assigned a locker that worked to fit your needs, you could pick a different one and simply go to your homeroom teacher and register your new locker. but this year things are a bit different; the locker you are given at the start of the year is permanent and unchangeable, and though some might just figure "ok so i'll just choose a locker in another part of the school and no one will care," people who take this attitude are having their locks cut off their lockers, or simply being evicted because the locker is not actually theirs. This small change in the system is creating a million and one problems for students who have a locker that's in an out-of-the-way location. My only question is why the new system? What was wrong with a student being able to change their locker by a certain date? Why is registered locker switching now impossible? What are the drives behind this new system? I don't know the answers to any of these questions, the answers of which probably will explain this negative change for efficiency at the high school, but in the next few weeks I hope to be able to talk to the people who can tell me exactly why this new policy has come into effect.