In reading a recent article about school searches and seizures of cell phones, I personally think it’s wrong and disrespectful for administrators to search a student’s phone, unless students are going against school rules.

          In the recent winter issue of the Student Press Law Center Report an article “A call for help: Analyzing school searches and seizures of cell phones”, students in our class were asked to give their commentary on this topic.

          I strongly believe that if a student is using a phone or any electronic device during class hours, the teacher or the school administrators have all the rights to take the device from the student and give it back to the student by the end of that class. The school administration should only have the right to search a student’s phone or other electronic device if there is proof that the student in any way has bullied or harassed any other student or staff member.

          “Administrators often argue that searches are necessary to protect students from harassment and to protect the school from liability,”

Laura Napoli wrote in the SPLC article.”

          For this action to be made the school administration should provide proof that a student has been part of such an activity like bullying or harassing or else it’s a violation of the student’s privacy. The student then will have the right to take legal action toward the school and/or staff member.

          For example, when a police officer is going to search a suspect the first thing this officer needs is proof that this suspect has something illegal on him to search ”Law enforcement needs to show “probable cause” before a person’s possessions may be searched,” Napoli wrote.

          Most of the students interviewed on this subject from the Hartford Journalism & Media Academy said they have had their phones taken away for texting in class, but none were searched.

“They should only take it away if the student is using the cell phone during class,”JMA senior Janel Mack said. “Other than that no (they should not be searched.)”

          JMA students Efrain Valdes and Bryan Cabrera agreed.

          “No,” Valdes said of administrators being able to search students’ phones, “Unless the student is using it during class.”

One big problem there has been with the search of students cell phones is that school staff members have taken advantage of their rights in searching their phones. For example, a teacher goes to search for a certain thing and they end up searching other things that has nothing to do with what they went to search for in the first place.  The school administration should make sure that these kinds of problems don’t happen as they did to one high school cheerleader Mandi Jackson in Mississippi. There, Jackson’s coach told her that to be part of the cheerleader team she had to give her Facebook login information. The school justified the coach’s behavior by saying “the coach was looking at all the team members’ social media pages for evidence of alcohol or drug use.”

 I don’t see anything wrong with the coach wanting to protect his team or his players by looking for evidence of alcohol and drug use, but yet Mandi Jackson got disciplined after the coach found a private message where Mandi criticized a classmate. It was wrong that Jackson made comments about a classmate, but this meant that the coach was looking for more than evidence of alcohol and drug use. He went overboard.

Although I agree with the article I also believe that there should be more respect when doing a search of student property. This means that students should be present during the search.  This also means that when a school staff member says they are going to search a certain thing that they need to make sure to search for that certain thing only and they don’t end up searching something totally different.