In the wake of recent disciplinary events, Scholium would like to address Episcopal’s search policy and remark about its seemingly reasonable standards. The staff has come to believe that the ultimate beneficiaries of Episcopal’s policy regarding searching and screening for alcohol and drugs are the students.
Before entering the Episcopal Academy every student is required to sign an enrollment agreement which dictates that you as a student agree to abide by the rules set forth in the Student Handbook. The Handbook contains over six pages of legal lexicon detailing the school’s Disciplinary system and policies regarding such topics as substance abuse and the levels of discipline. Although the handbook lists the possible consequences associated with many specific offenses, the policy clearly states that “Final decisions concerning discipline at the sole discretion of the Head of School.” Therefore, while the handbook offers certain suggested policies regarding the enforcement of disciplinary issues, the language remains ambiguous in order to ultimately benefit the students of the Episcopal Academy.
The Episcopal Academy handbook clearly states that, “In an effort to protect students who wish to be a part of an alcohol and drug free student body, we reserve the right to test students for alcohol or drug use. When the school has reasonable suspicion that a student may have been consuming alcohol or is under the influence of drugs, the matter will be addressed with the student.” Jackson Collins, V Form Dean added, “As a private school, anything on campus is subject to be searched including bags and lockers.”
However, both Collins and Head of Upper School Geoffrey Wagg stress that these searches do not take place without due diligence. Wagg noted, “We hear stuff about people all the time but you don’t hear about us searching people’s bags all the time.” When asked what is defined as the “reasonable suspicion” needed in order to conduct a search, Collins clarified, “It really depends on the situation…I filter hundreds of rumors a week. But if enough things are out there in the universe where we feel compelled that we need to act, we will.”
According to Wagg, “We won’t see it as soon as the students do, but we’ll see it when grades drop it becomes clear that they have an issue.”
While further explaining the actual search process Wagg noted, “There are two adults present, we’re honest with the person, we tell them why we are conducting the search and there’s usually no recourse on their part…and in the vast majority of cases when we’ve searched a child or done a drug test, they have turned out positive.” Furthermore, utmost confidentiality is observed in the process. When asked about the most recent incident, Collins noted, “The biggest reason that people don’t know what happened with the student is to protect that student’s privacy. So the student can go off to their next school with a clean slate and start fresh.”
Clearly, it is a well refined and reasonable search process. In fact, it is a process that has been cleared in “a legal court.” As Wagg explained, “We’ve been sued once in my time here and the school was found to have followed it policies and procedures and its policies and procedures were determined to be fair.”
Both Collins and Wagg emphasized that students should not be afraid that they will be subject to random searches. Wagg added that they rarely act on one rumor because he does not want, “someone worrying about students talking behind their back about things that aren’t true.” Collins also accentuated that, “If students are doing what students should be doing they are fine they should not be worried that they will be subject to a random search.”
Wagg explained later that this process, however, is only one of the two ways that Episcopal deals with substance abuse. He articulated, “If we’re concerned that you’re smoking pot and we’re worried it’s affecting you in ways that are counterproductive, we may sit down with you and ask “do you need help?” And if that happens, we deal with it as a non-disciplinary drug intervention. In some cases, we’ll have the student get drug tested every month. There are other things when we’ll get them into programs like the Caring foundation, and once they’re in the program, we don’t deal with it anymore. I don’t think everyone knows that there are two ways that we deal with it, and there are students in those positions with some regularity.” Wagg clarified that if there is a reason to believe that a student is dealing drugs, intoxicated, or high while at school, “we’ll deal with that as a disciplinary situation.” Ultimately, Wagg posits, “Our job is to make sure that this place is a safe place for kids to go to school and if kids are doing things that jeopardize that safety, we have an obligation to deal with it.”