EDITORIAL: Promoting a culture of fear

On Friday morning at approximately 8:45 a.m., administrators of South Kingstown High School came over the loudspeakers and announced that the school was in a “lockdown, code blue” mode and ordered everyone to get inside their classrooms, turn off the lights, lock the doors and cover the windows.

Then, for the following 45 minutes, State Police and South Kingstown Police officers brought dogs into the school and through the parking lot to search student property for drugs.

Those who were inside the classrooms, including faculty, had no idea that the Homeland Security drill was also a drug search. So in the dark were the students, both literally and figuratively, that some panicked, assuming that the lockdown had been ordered because somebody in the school had a gun. Students began text messaging parents on their cell phones or on AOL Instant Messenger through school computers. Imagine the clutch of fear felt by a parent getting a message that the high school is in “code blue” and everyone is huddled in darkened classrooms.

Given what’s been happening at South Kingstown High School lately, the students can be forgiven for assuming that the drill was prompted by a violent episode. Several fights had broken out at school just the day before in what has become a common sight in the hallways. In fact, students complain about fighting and alcohol use as much as drug use.

This generation is living in a culture of fear. The seniors at South Kingstown High School were in seventh grade when terrorists drove planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and they were in fifth grade when two students at Columbine High School in Colorado went on a shooting rampage. They have grown up with the words “Terror level: Heightened” scrolling across their TV screens. So why shouldn’t they assume that a drill is the real thing, or that police are responding to violence?

School administrators, who asked police to conduct this search without prior knowledge of the School Committee, made a lot of assumptions. They did not account for students’ fears; they forgot that nearly every student at the high school has a cell phone and can communicate with the outside world; they assumed that the school community would endorse the drill without question. In short, because they felt justified in their actions, they assumed the community would feel the same way.

By combining a Homeland Security drill with a drug search, they also created a lot of unnecessary anxiety and confusion.

The upshot of this fiasco was the discovery of one joint in one locker. That’s right - out of a school population of approximately 1,300, one student was found to be harboring drugs. While school officials may argue for zero tolerance, we hardly think that one joint in one locker posed such a threat to the health, safety and welfare of the students at South Kingstown High School that a massive police search was necessary. We doubt the students, or the parents, feel more secure today than they did before Friday’s episode, which did nothing to address some of the very real problems at the high school, including violence, disrespect and alcohol use. If anything, the drill only reinforced the culture of fear in which our children are coming of age.

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