This year Morton East introduced backpack checks, and students have made it clear they dislike it.

Students have been trying to rebel by not letting the deans or security guards check their backpacks, however, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, the school’s obligation to teach and protect students within the school requires the “probable cause” standard to be diluted to one of “reasonable under the circumstances”  (The circumstance here would allow for searches in school.)

Meaning: school can legally search your backpack the moment you are in a school area. If students think they can avoid that by putting the stuff in their lockers, well you shouldn’t, lockers are owned by the school, so the school can search those without having “reasonable suspicion.”

There’s been multiple cases of backpack checks and how far security can go, with cases even making it up to the Supreme Court, “The Supreme Court of the United States said, in a series of cases, that the school has a right to conduct reasonably measured searches of students if there is a reason to do so.”

It’s vital for students to understand and cooperate with these checks, which help ensure the safety of everyone in the building.

In a random survey of 100 Morton East students, 66 students reported that they would not let security guards check their backpack.

“It takes about 25 minutes to search a full classroom, we only find lighters, but deans usually check the backpacks and we just take care of the students who get caught with something,” said Josue the Security Guard.

We also wondered how security or even deans had the right to go through our stuff, so we asked around.

“You can get searched because when you first came to this school you agreed on the form to be searched if we needed to,” said Principal Mr. Jose Gamboa.