In order to maintain and ensure a substance-free environment, Niles West teamed up with the Skokie Police Department (SPD), to conduct a canine search this morning, Wednesday, April, 20 — widely known as 4/20, a day to celebrate cannabis culture by smoking marijuana.
Hallways and classrooms were blocked off as Skokie police officer, Nick Larson, guided the K-9 named Jasko through each section of the school sniffing lockers for illegal substances.
“Everything went as planned,” assistant principal Mark Rigby said. “The school decided that it was time to do this, and it was absolutely not a coincidence [that it was on today’s date].”
Although the investigation ran as planned, it caused issues for some faculty members and students who were trying to get to certain areas of the school as the search was happening. Security guards were posted up by each entrance of the hallways keeping the area of the canine clear, and student and teachers were forced to keep out.
“I was forced to wait outside the doors that were blocking off the main staircase and testing center when I had to make up my Anatomy test during second period,” senior Ramail Nissan said. “I was eventually able to take it, but it was really annoying having to be deducted time from the test.”
As a small crowd gathered in the main hallway to see the K-9 being guided down the wall of lockers on the first floor, Niles West security strictly enforced the rules. One security guard told Nissan that he would be unable to get to the testing center because the school’s top priority was the search.
“I understand the rationale behind doing this; however, I don’t understand why, first of all, some of the security guards think it’s okay to be rude, and two, why anyone can say that this was more important than students’ education,” English teacher Sharon Swanson said. “I know that they are following directions; however, given their relationship to the school, I’d like to think they would at least acknowledge and respect the authority of the teachers who were trying to get to their classrooms to teach.”
Students and their parents were first notified of the search via email on Monday, April 18. According to the email, sent to students from Rigby, future canine searches will be unannounced. Parents have been supportive of the search, Rigby said.
Despite the email notification, many students said they were surprised that West put together the search.
“I feel like the search was unexpected to most of the student body considering we don’t really hear much word of drug use throughout the school. After relating it to today’s date, however, I wasn’t very surprised that it was held,” senior Anastasia Psihogios said.
According to Rigby, all results of the search are confidential.
“We would never divulge the results of any search, be it by the dogs or in any other instance,” Rigby said.
Sharon Swanson • Apr 22, 2016 at 5:17 AM
I need to clarify my quote–my issue was with the security guard who was unnecessarily rude to me–not with security guards in general. I do, however, think it’s a sad state of affairs when we’ve reached the point that we need to have armed policemen and so many security guards on campus on a daily basis, as well as a drug sniffing dog. I always believed that when you expect negative behavior, that’s what you get–and vice versa. I don’t need to agree with all of the reasons the administration makes certain choices–that’s not my job–my job is to make sure the students leave here with the skills they need to succeed…and maybe, the practical part of their education involves accepting the fact that we often have to go along with things that we don’t necessarily understand.
Alum • Apr 25, 2016 at 5:19 PM
I think this is really unfortunate. I’m in my mid 30s and graduated from NW a long time ago. I think the damage done by creating a police state environment is a lot worse than the damage done by a handful of students having drugs on them.
This is one of those things that is technically legal but shouldn’t be. It’s not legal to search every apartment in an apartment building, but it is legal to search lockers inside a school, and apparently they’ve decided to go ahead with it.
Meanwhile you have people walking around a school with guns on their hips and drug dogs, and security guards behaving in a way similarly to how they behaved in the 90s.
One of my biggest memories of high school were security guards treating everyone with disrespect. It was always really strange since most of my teachers were amazing people, but then we had this other set of adults in the building who treated us on the whole pretty poorly, and got away with it.
I wasn’t a kid who got in trouble (I actually had zero detentions in my 4 years at niles west), so that should give you an idea of my background and why I couldn’t stand this kind of thing.