UPDATE: At 6 a.m. Thursday, we attached the text of the full policy adopted by the Board of Education as a PDF. Look to the right of this article and click the PDF link to open the document.
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Anybody who attends prom as a student or a guest will have to submit to a breathalyzer test to determine if he or she had been drinking alcohol.
If the student or guest fails the test, or refuses to take it, he or she will not be permitted into the dance.
That decision was made Tuesday night when the Board of Education voted 6-0 in favor of the plan, which would be a pilot program for this year, the school board said.
“In light of recent arrests at the high school, and accidents and concerns about alcohol, I think it’s a good idea,” said board Chairwoman Paula Guillet.
The idea was brought forth by interim Superintendent of Schools John Reed, Ph. D., who said the use of breathalyzers at proms is commonplace in the state and in other parts of the country. Seymour, Newtown and other neighboring towns have the same policy.
“I don’t think anyone is going to refuse to come to the prom because of this,” Reed said. “And if they do, that’s probably a good thing. …This is not an ‘I gotcha.’ We have no desire to catch anyone. The desire is to get the kids to make the decision to avoid alcohol.”
The prom will be held on May 25 at the Aqua Turf in the Plantsville section of Southington. Breathalyzers will also be administered at an alcohol and drug free post prom party that is organized annually by the Oxford High School Booster Club; it's held at the high school.
There was much discussion before the vote about topics such as the legality of these devices, how they would be administered, who would administer them, whether anyone is trained to administer them and whether the school board is protected legally from someone who may file a lawsuit because their child was not allowed into the prom.
Reed said the devices will be non-intrusive breathalyzers, which do not take a person’s blood alcohol level but simply determine whether someone has been drinking. He said they were used for 15 years during his tenure as superintendent of Newtown Public Schools.
“In that time, no problems about this came across my desk,” he said, adding that the procedure has gone smoothly in other school districts across the state. He said principals and superintendents meet on a monthly basis, and he’s yet to hear of an issue with the use of breathalyzers at school functions.
Board member William Neary, an attorney, said he was worried that the board could open itself up to liability, especially if the person who administers the test is not certified.
Reed, who said he’s taking full responsibility for the use of the breathalyzers because it was his idea, said the testing procedure “does not need to meet any great standard of law.”
“And there are those out there who say we could be liable if there is an issue (involving alcohol) because we could have done something and we didn’t,” Reed said.
Neary ultimately agreed that the goal of the breathalyzer is good.
Board member Ted Oczkowski, a high school administrator in another school district, said he’s been to many school events where breathalyzers have been used.
“I’ve administered them, and they’ve never been wrong,” he said. He added that the device is very sensitive and that if someone put a shot of alcohol 10 feet away, the device would pick it up.
Board members Oczkowski, Neary, Guillet, Michael Macchio, Amy Cote and Stephen Brown - the only members in attendance - voted in favor of the breathalyzer policy.
Reed said he will consult with other school districts and other police departments that have used breathalyzers and Oxford will follow their procedures.
Breathalyzers for all entrants to the prom? The rationale is saving lives…which is always the rationale for abandoning our most cherished principles to win a battle that loses a war. What principles are on the chopping block here? Let's start with the Constitutional prohibition against unwarranted searches, and the near-universally recognized presumption of innocence. The reason the prom breathalyzers are so scary is they prepare the kids to forget the Constitution and limited government powers they were taught in Civics class. Entering the prom should awaken thoughtful and civic-minded students to the terrible reality that the Bill of Rights and Constitutional government in the USA is a myth. From the Cold War to the Drug War to the Terror War, there has been throughout living memory in this country a sense of emergency that has eroded and contradicted the Constitution. Welcome to the police state you actually live in, kids.
Here are the words of Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, a former editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/20/unplugging-americans-from-the-matrix/ EXCERT: The demise of the War Powers Act and the Geneva Conventions, and the asserted power of the executive to imprison without trial or charges or to assassinate any American whom the executive thinks might be a “national-security threat” are indicative of a total police state masquerading as an accountable democracy. In America six-year old little girls who misbehave in school are handcuffed, jailed, and charged with felonies." END EXCERPT Here is the link Mr. Roberts provides on the policing of schoolchildren: http://lewrockwell.com/rep3/young-children-brutalized-by-police.html Kids might as well get used to it, since the adult country is actually much less free (or democratic) than the shiny veneer of elections and Civics classes made it appear. The candidates are pre-selected by the system of corporate financing of elections, and the government routinely exercises unlimited powers it does not legally have.
Cold War Roots of Lawless Government: So numerous, but here is an introduction to what happened. Its relevant because the cold war undermining of constitutional govt created precedents and made it "normal", preparing us for what has become limitless police powers in daily life . Heady stuff but worth the patience if you care if government actually has to follow law and Constitution:
http://yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-part/executive-power/the-national-security-constitution-and-the-bush-administration/ EXCERPT: Put bluntly, officials and state institutions can change the Constitution without asking for permission. This is exactly what is suggested by the critiques of the use of presidential power to defend national security…. There is substantial agreement as to what was troublesome in the constitutional record of the Bush presidency. The three most salient departures from the status quo were: (1) indefinite detention without due process inside the United States and its possessions; (2) authorization of torture and other harsh interrogation techniques; and (3) authorization of National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance outside of the framework set by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In turn, these initiatives shared a common characteristic: they could not have happened unless it was assumed that the President had the unilateral power under the Constitution to authorize the violation of federal law and judicial doctrine, even in the absence of a prior finding that the law in question was unconstitutional....
…the Administration took the country rapidly into a world of torture, surveillance contrary to law, and legal black holes such as the detainee facility at Guantánamo Bay. ….President Bush and Vice President Cheney invoked Article II constitutional powers and, consistent with executive practice in the Cold War, deliberately avoided claiming authority to wage war based on statutes such as the AUMF. ….how President Bush altered the constitutional order in such a way as to make these policies possible in the first place. I suggest we require a theory that is attuned to the Cold War constitutional order, ...and is able to explain the problematic character of the constitutional order that has resulted—one prone to violating its own precepts in constitutional crises. (My emphasis --W.) END EXCERPT That was the imperial side of cold war roots of govt defiance of Constitution. Think of the McCarthy-led attacks on law-abiding citizens suspected of political dissent for the domestic side of the cold war roots of today's police state.
Drug War effects on Constitution: The USA has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world. When a public health issue is redefined as crime, it corrupts rule of law as it makes the drugs and the streets more dangerous. The Bill of Rights: A Casualty of the War on Drugs? By Eric E. Sterling, http://www.cjpf.org/drug/billofrights EXCERPT: It is my thesis that among the most tragic casualties in the "war on drugs" are our constitutional liberties. To start, let's go through the Bill of Rights in the Constitution one-by-one to see how they have been affected by the war on drugs…. END EXCERPT Click the link above to read Mr. Sterling's examination of the Drug War erosion of each of the 10 Amendments comprising the Bill of Rights (and 13, 14, 15 & 19).
Terror War effects on Constitution: Already covered in the Cold War roots of Bush's defiance of law and Constitution (continued even more brazenly and openly by the Obama Administration). Our Presidents now make wars and issue assassination orders without consulting Congress or law --that is what dictators do. The terrorists win when we abandon our Constitution in panic. I'll quote Mr Roberts once more for his concise description of the REAL national emergency we face, the one of abandoning our Constitutional system of enumerated (limited) powers of government, presumption of innocence and rule of law: http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/01/28/the-dissolving-constitution/ EXCERPT: …the police state destroying protections against searches, the First Amendment, habeas corpus, due process, and the right to an attorney, with grand jury subpoenas issued to war protesters, with lists of American citizens to be assassinated, with ongoing war crimes committed in wars based in lies and deceptions, with the executive branch’s seizure of the power to violate statutory laws against torture and spying without warrants…. END EXCERPT
Conclusions? Get used to giving up your rights (and democracy), or think about how they might be restored. The BOE abandonment of the Constitutional prohibition of unwarranted searches and the universal presumption of innocence only shows how long rule of law has been disregarded by leadership at all levels of government, from presidents and Congress to the BOE. Constitution has become just another quaint old irrelevant Magna Carta. Might as well save the paper and stop printing Civics textbooks. Finis.
I would hope that a Police Officer will be administering the test so that if a student does not pass, there is the extra step of making sure that student, if they drove to the prom, is not legally drunk and not able to get behind the wheel of their car to leave. Exactly how this will be implemented needs to be thought out and clearly defined, but I agree 100% with this action.
This speaks volumes.
I think you are reading it like I am. Sue happy people who either a) are not responsible for THEIR children b) let's give a lesson in how to push the blame onto somebody else for our stupidity Since when does the town become responsible for somebodies actions?
I take back everything bad I may have said about you. You have redeemed yourself to the highest degree.
1) How many of our daily activities are mere "privileges" not protected by Constitutional limits on govt power? For example, would your argument justify breathalyzers or dogs or searches at the grocery store door, or at the church door, or at a baseball stadium or public park gate? If any of those establishments invited the police to search all entrants, would that too be legal simply because we do not have the right to grocery shop or visit a public park or other public or private place of commerce or leisure? Exactly where do Constitutional rights and limits apply? 2) Whatever the exact legal precedents or principles used to justify govt power beyond its constitutional authority (such as mandatory breathalyzers, i.e. search) in situations of "privilege", do you think that it is good civic education of our students to subject them to an automatic denial of presumption of innocence and submission to an unconstitutional search?