School officials search cellphones of students suspected of cheating
School officials at some Denver, Colorado area high schools have been searching students’ cellphone text messages when they suspect the students of cheating, drug abuse, or other school violations. Officials in the Douglas and Jefferson school districts contend policies that allow them to search lockers, backpacks, and cars parked on school grounds also authorize searches of cellphones when there is a "reasonable suspicion" of wrongdoing. "We have found instances of texts that revealed both drug transactions ... as well as pornographic material stored in pictures," says John Stanek, an attorney for Douglas County schools. However, an attorney from the Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU-CO) decries the tactic as being a "dramatic and unprecedented invasion of students' privacy." According to Mark Silverstein, legal director of ACLU-CO, searching cellphone text messages "goes far beyond anything the Supreme Court has authorized." He points out that while a court would uphold the search of a student’s purse if she were found in possession of cigarettes, that court would not authorize school officials to search her diary to discover if she had written about violating the school’s smoking ban. Multifunctional cellphones represent the newest wave of technology challenging the ability of school officials to draw the line on searches. "It's really a new frontier," says Edwin C. Darden, an attorney and education policy director for Appleseed. "Just as we're dealing with cellphones, here comes text messaging and here comes the pictures." Framingham High School in Massachusetts abandoned its plan to adopt a text message searching policy when it encountered overwhelming community opposition. According to Vice Principal Frank Rothwell, the school district decided that information gained from cellphones was not worth the loss of students' privacy. Allen Taggart, counsel for the Jefferson County School District, says officials must have "reasonable suspicion" that a cellphone search will lead to evidence that a law or policy has been violated. "If you have some indication that they're texting somebody else in class during an exam, in violation of the testing policy ... then you can look," says Mr. Taggart. "If you look over a kid's shoulder and he's playing a game, maybe you wouldn't do that." Mr. Stanek compares it to the time honored practice of a teacher intercepting notes between classmates. He characterizes a text message as "a very complex digitized handwritten note, and it tells a lot or it can tell very little." Mr. Silverstein is concerned that there is no way to limit the scope of the search. School officials could stumble across "all kinds of text messages that have nothing to do with the suspicions." While principals concede that text message searches are rare, they insist they do produce results. According to Edna Doherty, principal of Douglas County High School, an assistant principal was able to verify that a drug sale had been attempted by reading cellphone text messages, which led to the student admitting guilt.
Denver Post
By Karen Rouse
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