Uncivil behavior

In the wake of Littleton, schools have been cracking down -- some say at the expense of students' rights

by Sarah McNaught

A few weeks ago, a student at a school in Boston doodled the words "trenchcoat mafia" across the top of his math paper. The teacher reported it to the principal, who suspended the boy and told him that it could be grounds for expulsion if the school's superintendent found out. In another local school, officials found writing on a bathroom wall stating that people were "going to die." The police were called in to search everyone's bag. When one student refused to surrender his bag, he was sent home.

It's no surprise that schools are beefing up security, cracking down on suspicious behavior, and even calling on the police in the wake of the shootings in Littleton, Colorado and Conyers, Georgia. But civil libertarians, as well as some parents and teens, think school officials are going too far.

In the first four weeks after the Columbine High School shootings, more than 350 students nationwide were arrested on charges of threats against schools, school officials, or classmates, according to a study conducted by Education Week. At least 30 of those incidents involved bombs or weapons.

Locally, in addition to the threat scrawled on the bathroom wall, there have been bomb scares and false fire alarms. A few weeks ago, Joe Moscaritolo, assistant headmaster at Madison Park High School, had to call the police after hearing rumors that some of his white students were threatening to shoot black schoolmates. The school also has had problems with students setting off firecrackers in the cafeteria, a situation that Moscaritolo says he will get to the bottom of "even if it means blocking the doors to the cafeteria and conducting searches of everyone inside."

But according to civil libertarians, schools' newfound zero-tolerance attitudes have resulted in serious violations of students' civil rights. The Boston office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is averaging three to four complaints a week from students or their parents. That's up from an average of two calls a year before Columbine, says Steven Saloom, a part-time lawyer at the ACLU in Boston.

"I have heard of school lockers being ripped out to prevent students from hiding things, and school Web sites being censored. Clearly, the kids are feeling like their perceived rights are being violated," says attorney Brad Gordon of the law firm Stoneman, Chandler, and Miller, who represents school departments and districts in Quincy.

"Substantive rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly, as well as procedural rights that dictate due process, are all being violated," agrees Nadine Strossen, president of the national ACLU.

In the case of the student who was sent home after refusing to allow his bag to be searched, for example, "the boy's Fourth Amendment rights were clearly violated," Strossen says. "Although the Supreme Court has ruled that probable cause and search warrants may not be necessary to search a person in particular situations, officials still need reasonable particularized suspicion of the individual they are searching.

"As for the trench coat [doodling] incident, not only was there no imminent threat involved, but the school also failed to follow the laws of due process by allowing the student a meeting to discuss the incident."

In another pending case that disturbs Strossen, a Massachusetts school informed all its students that they must use mesh or clear book bags from now on. "Children should not have to forfeit their privacy rights," she says. "By demanding such things as clear book bags, they are being denied rights that even felons in prison have."

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What's especially distressing to Strossen is that the situation represents a step backward. "Even before the Littleton incident, the ACLU had been handling civil-liberties cases involving students," she says. "And we had been winning or settling, to the best of my knowledge, all of them."

In 1996, for example, the Virginia ACLU settled out of court with a school that had suspended freshman Daniel Green when he included a collage of gritty photos of guns and barely clad women, along with the lyrics of "gangsta" rap songs, in a creative-writing assignment. Green, one of three black students in the class, also used the word "bitch" in a written introduction addressing the teacher. The ACLU argued that the assignment was protected speech, and the school agreed to take the suspension off Green's record.

The current cases are not substantially different, according to Strossen. "The guidelines dictating students' civil liberties are clear," she says. They were created, she explains, by the 1969 Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent County School District, which involved students who were suspended from school for wearing black arm bands to protest the Vietnam war. The court ruled that public-school students have free-speech rights as long as their behavior does not disrupt class work or infringe on the rights of others. Although the Tinker standard has been amended and limited over time, its basic premise is that students' constitutional rights can be restrained only when their activities disrupt the educational process and create a clear and present danger.

But some recent complaints make it clear that those guidelines are not being applied. Strossen cites a local incident in which a 14-year-old was suspended for saying, during a classroom discussion of the Littleton shootings, that she understood how kids can be pushed over the edge. "Teachers have to ask themselves if the speaker intended to instill fear, and does a reasonable listener feel put in danger," says Strossen, who is not involved personally in any of the local cases. "Schools must distinguish a true threat, and they don't do it."

In some cases, in fact, students are being scrutinized -- and even punished -- simply for wearing certain clothes or appearing "different," even when their behavior poses no threat at all.

"If anyone walks through those doors with a trench coat on, they'd be in the office before they made it down the hall," says Joe Moscaritolo of Madison Park, one of three Boston high schools that use metal detectors at building entrances. "We are being much more observant of certain individuals and their behavior" since Columbine, he adds.

Paul Watson is one of those individuals. A junior at Madison Park, the tall, handsome 17-year-old has expensive taste in clothing. With a thick gold chain around his neck, Watson is very particular about what he wears, picking pieces of lint off his black velvet baseball shirt as he speaks.

"I have heard teachers gossip about where I get the money for my clothes and about what else I buy with my money," says Watson. "But it went too far when they shook down my locker because they say I dress too well for a teenager." (Moscaritolo says that Watson "isn't a troublemaker" and that he hasn't heard about the locker incident.)

"It is starting to come down to the way you look and not what you are doing," says Cynthia Phoenix, an 18-year-old Madison Park junior who admits that she was a troublemaker in the past. "That's not fair, and it's sending the wrong message."

Such scrutiny can actually be counterproductive to safety efforts, some experts believe. "Many kids who commit crimes like the one at Columbine were targeted or harassed by fellow classmates, and they internalize that harassment by turning to substance abuse or violence," says Jeremy Mahoney, community outreach coordinator for the Governor's Council Against Hate Crimes. "Those kids are now being singled out for being different by teachers."

There is at least one local high school at which students' behavior seems to confirm the idea that security tactics are backfiring. Korey Lungelow, a freshman at Dorchester High School, says that kids are intentionally pulling pranks in response to the intensified focus on safety. The 15-year-old says one boy wore a trench coat to school as a joke. Another student dropped a book in a hallway of the school, attempting to mimic gunfire, and shouted out "Columbine!"

"They shook me down twice in one day," says Lungelow, referring to the school security. "It didn't make me feel safe, it just made me angry."

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Although the students who have complained to the local ACLU are filing charges, Nadine Strossen is wary of bringing cases to court in the current atmosphere. "A lawyer in the national ACLU office recently sent out an advisory to other ACLU offices warning that courts are going to stretch to find loopholes in the laws," she says. "Unfortunately, we often see stricter punishments being handed down in the court system, too, after a crisis such as Columbine. Attorneys are being advised to cover every angle and not to assume that because a similar case has won in the past, it will win now."

Schools, of course, would prefer to avoid litigation as well. Toward that end, the Governor's Council Against Hate Crimes is conducting workshops that bring together schools, police, and students to address problems of safety and civil-liberties violations.

In addition, the council has sent letters to principals of 316 Massachusetts high schools requesting that each school appoint a member of its staff as a civil-rights coordinator. The coordinator would monitor volatile situations and give kids someone to turn to if they feel their rights are being violated. So far, 200 schools have complied.

"It's all about creating levels of respect," says the council's Jeremy Mahoney. "We need to give the kids a place and people to turn to when they feel targeted, as well as educate school officials about how certain safety tactics can negatively affect those kids."

This fall, Massachusetts will begin a pilot program in 25 schools in which students will be trained as civil-rights teams. These students will act not only as a voice for the students but also as liaisons between disgruntled classmates and school officials.

Here in Boston, a one-day seminar for school superintendents, administrators, principals, teachers, and law-enforcement officials will be held on August 5 to address the issue of safety in schools and the legal rights schools have when dealing with potentially dangerous situations.

To Strossen, though, it's the students' legal rights, not the schools', that are paramount. "During a recent television interview I was asked if I felt guilty because kids have too many rights," says Strossen. "But I firmly believe that kids still don't have enough rights." After Littleton, she says, "teachers are looking for anyone who is different, whether it be through actions, ideas, or appearance." Not only does that unfairly restrict their individuality, she says, but it fails to prevent violence: "Actually, it fuels the problem and further alienates the children."

Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught[a]phx.com.