Pubdate: Thu, 20 Mar 2008
Source: Hingham Journal (MA)
Copyright: 2008 Hingham Journal
Contact:  http://www2.townonline.com/hingham/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3806
Author: Nick Bush
Note: Nick Bush is a News Editor for the Massachusetts Daily 
Collegian and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Hingham High School Harborlight.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?237 (Drug Dogs)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)

SEPARATING EDUCATION FROM INVESTIGATION AT HHS

Hingham - Hingham High School and the Hingham Police Department are 
two institutions with very different stated purposes. The goal of the 
High School is to educate and enlighten the young minds of our town. 
The goal of the Police Department is to find and arrest criminals. 
These two goals could not be more disparate. So then why, however, 
are the Hingham High School administration and the Police Department 
becoming so cozy with one another in recent years? If a student at 
HHS is arrested, or even picked up for any reason by the Hingham 
Police, the school is normally notified. In this manner, many 
students each year receive serious punishments from the school 
administration, without doing a single thing at the school itself.

The Police Department is only allowed to give information about 
students to the school if the safety or educational environment of 
HHS could be harmed, according the Code of Conduct. It appears 
however that this phraseology is often abused by both the school and 
police, with the two trading information often. It is ludicrous that 
good, hardworking students are punished academically for making 
mistakes far outside the confines of the classroom.

Students who have done nothing at school can find themselves 
suspended from school extra-curricular activities and sports teams 
for two weeks or more, and are forced to suffer a public ridicule for 
what was otherwise a private legal issue. The pressure of getting 
into a good college is stressful enough for young students, and such 
suspensions only put an unnecessary black mark on the futures of 
these individuals.

The school doesn't just receive information from the HPD, however; 
the exchange is quite even, and the administration invites police 
over to the school whenever possible. HHS never fails to treat school 
dances like expected street riots (if they allow them to be held at 
all), insuring that students' wonderful memories of school dances are 
always shared in their minds with the image of a line of police 
hovering near the wall.

The Hingham High School administration has asserted its right to 
breathalyze every student wishing to come into a school dance, and 
has responded to criticisms by saying that students are taking place 
in an optional, extra-curricular event. The same exact justification 
could be made for mandatory drug testing for any student on a 
sporting team (a radical measure that has never been considered by the town).

Yet the HHS administration has felt comfortable going ahead with 
breathalyzation at dances, which is just as invasive and over the 
line as drug testing. Police officers have been invited to the school 
on a number of occasions to do run surprise searches on the student 
body, sometimes using drug-tracking dogs. Many times the actions of 
the HHS administration have bordered violation of the 4th amendment, 
which guarantees protection from unwarranted search and seizure for 
every man, woman and child born in the United States.

The citizens of Hingham need, for the sake of their own children, to 
demand that the Hingham High School administration stop presuming 
every student is a probable criminal. No student wakes up in the 
morning and makes the long, tired walk to school with the goal of 
breaking the law; they come to school to learn, and broaden their 
horizons. The school's current policies have gone over the line, and 
are actively interfering with the education and futures of its 
students. It may be politically safe for the administration, but is 
far from what is in the best interest Hingham's children.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom