Letter to principal

Dear Principal,

I had trouble sleeping last night because of the Roger and Dodger incident. I smelled what I knew was Marijuana from my experiences sweeping dorms as a College R.A. I saw students who were running away from the area. I caught those students and myself as well as two officers smelled marijuana on them. I do not understand why it is that these students cannot be considered a suspect of smoking marijuana in school and searched to see if anyone of them had marijuana on them.

If they were suspect, I imagine they officers would have the right to search the student. From what I understood, if you have a reason to suspect someone of having drugs or alcohol you can search their property, like their car or their house. Moreover, in a school I thought the law was you can search anyone at anytime because it was a school. Why these students weren't considered being searched is beyond me, and the more I talked to the sargeant the more she told me that there was not enough evidence to proceed any further with these two students.

The next period I swear Roger went out to go smoke or do something else drug related when he ran out of my class the next hour. If that was the case he may have actually had something on him, were he to have been searched. If not, he still probably would not have been so eager to go out and try stuff again in last period if he knew how close he came to go to jail.

So the reason I lost sleep was because I really don't understand how our school can not take a turn for the worst if the school safety agents don't search students. I would say something to the officers myself but I don't feel it is my place. If they suspect a student of the lightest involvement in drugs they should search him immediately to send the message that we don't want drugs in this school. Not doing so send the exact opposite message, that it is ok as long as it is indiscreet. Then students would start thinking they can smoke more in school, and students may even try to start selling. Then our school would become some ones territory. If there is a territory dispute someone could sneak in one of the many exits with a weapon.

What I hope is not the case is that the security wants to keep the school safe by ignoring the incidents that are happening. It could be argued that having marijuana charges on our record could make the school look bad. I believe that without marijuana charges, fight charges, and other charges will reflect a true image of how important our school security is to the city and perhaps give us more officers. Considering the kinds of violence and other crimes that take place at the scanning schools our basketball team goes to play, a couple marijuana and weapon free fights are childs play.

I hope one of you can talk with security about why those students were not searched and what kind of evidence we need to search a student in the future.

Carl