In a few weeks, the Pequannock school board will be voting to decide whether or not they will begin performing random alcohol tests on its students. Following the lead of several New Jersey school districts, Pequannock is not only considering conducting Breathalyzer tests at school sponsored events, but also using a screening device that will determine if they have used alcohol within the last 80 hours. Through this test, which would be administered to a random pool of 1,800 students, the school would be able to determine on Monday morning whether or not students had been drinking over the weekend.
While many oppose the test due to its unreliability — mouth wash and antibacterial soap can easily produce false positives– I’m far more worried about the increasingly intrusive role that schools are playing in certain aspects of students’ and families’ lives.

Of course, school officials insist that they are instituting this policy for the benefit of the students. Rather than trying to catch people, the school argues that it is merely trying to dissuade students from drink and provide resources for those with alcohol problems. While I don’t doubt the good intentions of the district officials, at least in the short term, this initiative is nonetheless a part of a broader process of militarization that is taking place in schools around the country.

Every day, schools are becoming increasingly focused on surveillance, discipline, and punishment rather than teaching and learning. In many public schools around the country, students are subject to locker searches, personal frisks, metal detectors and fingerprint scans on a daily basis. Many students –disproportionately black and brown– are being kicked out of school for relatively minor offenses due to draconian zero-tolerance policies. By equipping schools with yet another authoritarian mechanism by which to trample upon civil liberties, we further distance ourselves from any democratic notion of school.