Schools Has the Right to Search Student’s Lockers

Lockers are school property; students are merely allowed to use them as they do with sports equipment, library books, school computers, etc. Lockers can be taken back without notice, for example if they are vandalised or become smelly with rotting food. Students are or should be told that schools have the right to search their lockers – it is a part of being in a school community where you have to accept its rules and responsibilities.

It is in the interests of all students that drugs and weapons are not in school. The best way to ensure that such contraband items are found and removed is for the school authorities periodically to search a random selection of student lockers. Even if there is a privacy issue, students yield that minor right in return for the wider benefit of safety.

We trust teachers to use this power responsibly and not abuse it. Even if the policy sees a small minority misuse the search power, the cost is outweighed by the benefit of greater security and disincentive to smuggle contraband such as drugs and weapons in to school.

Schools have a duty to care for their students. This responsibility is placed upon schools because the students in their charge are minors – children in the eyes of the law – who need more protection than adults. This same legal status also explains why constitutional rights to privacy, etc. cannot be applied absolutely to school students. Schools’ duty of care applies both morally and legally – and they may be open to lawsuits if they don’t take reasonable measures to prevent other students from bringing drugs or weapons into school, or to recover stolen property. In both these cases, searching lockers is an obvious and reasonable response to a threat to student welfare.

In addition to general searches of lockers, particular individuals are often suspected of activity, often quite serious, that mean teachers need to inspect their property. Without the ability to inspect lockers, young criminals will know that they can hide forbidden things there without fear. On the other hand, the possibility of a search means that students will think twice before bringing things in to school. Students may indeed find other hiding places – but this doesn’t mean that they should be given total control over the most obvious hiding place in school. Other safety techniques – such as metal detectors, sniffer dogs, security guards – may be useful too, but they are not mutually exclusive to locker searches. All these things can be used in addition to, not instead of, locker searches – and indeed, a combination of all of them may yield the most secure results.

The magnitude of the problem should be the basis for this debate. In the USA, every school day, at least 100,000 students bring guns to school; 160,000 students skip classes because they fear physical harm; 40 students are hurt or killed by firearms; 6,250 teachers are threatened with bodily injury; 260 teachers are physically assaulted. Is searching someone’s locker really a step too far in trying to stop this?