(I did not attend panel day, so by request from my teachers I am going to do a reflection on my first, not my second interview, in place of reflecting on panel day)
Officer Brian Fox of Hinesburg community police department has dealt with many cases in his life as a law enforcer. He was very willing to answer all of my questions with very specific answers. I found out a lot of information from him. Most of his points that he made were about how he could enforce the law more on students, and how officials can only enforce it to an extent, but they can do it with less reason. He also spoke to me about how school officials could search you with little reason whenever, but a police officer can only do it if they have reasonable suspicion, and they can do as little as a pat down, no farther. Officer Fox couldn't just pull over a student or anyone driving a vehicle and say "you look like you have marijuana in your car, get out so I can search it just in case...” He has to get a warrant to search the person's car and belongings, without one this action is illegal, but in school it’s totally OK for an official to do something like this. So the main thing explained by officer fox was that for an officer to search you he'd need more evidence, but for a teacher, since they are "in loco parientes" they have more power and can edge around your rights to search and seizure to an extent if they have probable cause to you having any sort of contraband.
I agree with you on this topic. I don’t think that teachers should be allowed to search you unless there is an actual cause. Because teachers can abuse their power in school and be cruel to students. We all know the teachers pick favorites so it doesn’t seem fair that should be able to do a impartial search. But I do think that if there is a real reason to search a student they should because they could be planning on harming themselves or other people and that would not help the community. But if there were constant searches going on in school students wouldn’t feel safe or they would feel the need to rebel because they don’t feel that they are trusted. I liked your point of view and I thought it was very interesting.
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