Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Calling out dogs not best method

The Spokesman-Review

The candor shown by Lakeside High School administrators about drugs in their school is admirable. Their concern for students is laudable. It’s their method that raises questions.

Twice this year, Lakeside, in the Nine Mile Falls School District, has been locked down while a drug-sniffing dog made a random sweep. Was that tactic used because of evidence that alcohol, marijuana and other drugs are present on campus in alarmingly higher quantities than might be expected? Because of a recent escalation in the availability of such substances? Because of a precipitating drug-abuse?

No, no and no.

Nine Mile Falls Superintendent Michael Green says that when Lakeside students completed the Healthy Youth Survey, their responses reflected a concern about the availability of drugs in their school. Some schools shy away from such surveys because they reveal information that makes administrators uncomfortable. So Nine Mile Falls deserves credit for listening to its students and facing up to an unpleasant but hardly surprising reality.

They reason that the best learning environment is untainted by illicit substances and the distractions they pose. No amount of drugs is acceptable, so send a clear message that if you try to sneak contraband onto campus, there’s a good chance you’ll get caught.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

For one thing, unless the dog is brought in for a sniff-and-scratch exercise every day — which it isn’t, and won’t be unless school officials feel they can afford to waste that many instructional hours — many youngsters will accept the dare.

More significant, though, there are better ways to create a climate in which the students themselves take ownership of the problem. According to findings from the Healthy Youth Survey, many students object to the presence of drugs, and they can be enlisted to establish and preserve a safe environment. It’s not a question of ratting on those who violate the policies, but of standing up for classmates who don’t.

That approach also sends a message to the young citizens-in-training that a fair-minded society deals with problems first at the citizen level and withholds more intrusive responses until there are reasonable grounds for using them in more narrowly targeted circumstances.

Since the general student population has perceived a problem in its midst, give the general population a chance to correct it. If individual pockets of unacceptable behavior arouse reasonable suspicion, that’s the time to call out the dogs.

The customary reaction to random searches is that you have no reason to worry if you’ve done nothing wrong. That’s flawed thinking. The gradual erosion of civil liberties and the individual presumption of innocence are ample cause for everyone to worry.