[420 Girl]

As parents, we share the Canton school administration's goal of keeping students away from drugs and drugs off school property, but we vehemently disagree with the approach used at Canton High School, [June 19, Page B1, "The School Drug Sweep"] in which students were held in classrooms while police and dogs searched the school and grounds in a dragnet-type sweep.

In effect, it casts the whole student body as guilty until proven innocent. It not only interrupts but greatly disturbs the calm and positive atmosphere required for learning, humiliates and frightens innocent students and desensitizes them to the seriousness of lockdowns.

The search was not initiated because of any individualized suspicions but apparently was instead meant to alarm the entire student body. This intrudes upon the rights of individual students whose possessions are searched for no reasonable cause and creates a police-state atmosphere in what is, if left alone, a peaceful, productive, safe and exemplary public school.

According to studies we have seen, drug searches do not even accomplish the goal of preventing teens who want to use drugs from doing so, but merely make them more wily at how to go about it.

This sweeping approach steamrolls the rights of an entire school population, disrupts learning, causes innocent students a profound sense of having been violated, and fosters an antagonistic and distrustful attitude toward the administration. Is the one marijuana stem found in the parking lot worth those costs?

This is a well-intentioned but misguided policy that merely creates the illusion that the administration is keeping our children safe.

We have always been thrilled with Canton's schools, and aside from this particular policy, remain so. Administrators should investigate students they suspect of breaking laws, but should not drag the entire student body through another unnecessary, painful experience like this.

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