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Should Education And The Law Be Justified When Searching A Student?

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Assignment 2 Student Freedoms Annette Lester Professor, Dr. Sonya S Shepherd Education and The Law July 29, 2012 Your Belongings Can Be Searched, But Not Arbitrarily When a student is under school supervision it is not required for school officials to obtain a search warrant before searching a student and no police have to be involve either for the search or seizure of a student or property. When safety is involve of the student or personnel it is the duty of the school to search a student. A warrant may protect the student and staff but as long as the school officials conduct themselves in a manner viewed reasonable, they don’t have to prove probably causes before searching a student. Searches can be justified if an …show more content…

A search must be reasonable at its inception, i. e., there must be "reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school. School searches must also be reasonably related in scope to the circumstances justifying the interference, and "not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction. In applying these rules, the Court upheld as reasonable the search of a student's purse to determine whether the student, accused of violating a school rule by smoking in the lavatory, possessed cigarettes. The search for cigarettes uncovered evidence of drug activity held admissible in a prosecution under the juvenile law. General searches of students in the absence of reasonable suspicion generally are vulnerable to legal challenge. However, based on a lower expectation of privacy, the legal barrier is lower for searches of lockers and desks, the use of metal detectors and depending on their placement, surveillance cameras in schools and now on school buses. Metal detector searches are clearly permissible security measures. Although individualized suspicion in normally required for a search, general searches are permissible where the search is minimally intrusive and the individual has a lower reasonable expectation of

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