Room Searches—Restrictive But Necessary

Taken at an extreme, room searches are an invasion of privacy and reflect a glaring lack of faith in a community that prides itself on trust. According to the E Book, such searches are warranted when a faculty member has reason to suspect a student is at risk of physical or potential harm and presents their concerns to the Dean of Students, who ultimately decides whether the faculty member can conduct a room search. The search involves both a dean and a Campus Safety staff member. The E Book details that “an effort” is also made to include the student and a faculty resident. Occasionally, a search can also include electronic devices like phones and computers. 

The E Book also makes an important distinction between room inspections and room searches with inspections being defined as “simple entry and observation” and not requiring dean approval.

Law enforcement is a different ball game, with the federal standard being “reasonable suspicion” of illegal activity to warrant a search. Such suspicion legally justifies stop-and-frisks—which are pat-downs—and searches of student belongings.

At the end of the day, regardless of how much faith the community has in our student body, we are simply teenagers finding our way through life. That means that we are probably going to make mistakes involving drugs or other illicit materials that we may or may not regret later on, and room searches are one of the only functional ways for the administration to actually discover and stop this kind of behavior. Even more crucially, the very idea of a room search has a powerful deterrent effect that certainly factors into students’ decision-making.

Of course, students may try to hide illegal substances using other means and in other places, but rooms and possessions like bags are the only areas on campus “protected” from searches—faculty members do not need dean approval to search, for example, the EPAC Forum. Furthermore, faculty can perform drug or breathalyzer tests with the only standard being a suspicion of a student being under the influence (breath and saliva samples can also be collected anywhere on campus).

The faculty we’ve been taught to trust and form personal relationships with can intrude on our privacy and felt the need to include such a search clause. Some might construe the clause as a fundamental distrust of students and a contradiction to the rest of Exeter’s message to the student body—that we both are and are not intellectual adults at an institution for higher learning. But if anything, this is precisely true and important to keep in mind. We are minors learning to act like adults and as much as we like to immerse ourselves in such a world, the faculty still have an obligation to try to prevent us from straying from our paths, and room searches are an important tool to facilitate that.

And even if we were to consider ourselves adults, we would still be subject to such searches from law enforcement, just with a different layer of bureaucracy. The personalized nature of the administration here also makes our lives comparatively easier.

In addition, it’s important to take a step back and consider the norm of room searches among prep schools and colleges. What we find when we do so is that Andover’s room search provision is even more vague and doesn’t require dean approval, and the vast majority of colleges have policies that are likewise vague and don’t require approval. If anything, our policy here is significantly more protective of student privacy and personal space.

Ultimately, the room search policy serves a very clear purpose and respects student rights and personal preferences. We cannot have the intellectual benefits and personable relationships that come with being an adult without some of the restrictions as well.