Pleasant Valley has begun cracking down on students vaping during school, and the school’s new principal is taking initiative to prevent this problem from continuing.
As many students learned during their class meeting, Principal Mike Hawley has instated new measures to prevent students from vaping in the bathrooms during school. These include the new “vape detectors” and a metal detector.
These new devices were implemented by the school administration to ensure the safety of PV and the students in it. “[The detectors] detect the ambient air, right, the chemicals in the air, essentially, for lack of a better term, like a sniffer. They sniff the air and they detect all the chemicals in the air. There are some chemicals that only appear in vape devices that they can detect,” said Deputy Jamey Fah.
Soon, the administration will see if these new measures lead to success. Staff at PV look to these new devices with high hopes that they will reduce the number of students vaping on school grounds. “We hope to make sure students are not vaping in the bathroom. We want to keep them being used as they should be, ” said Hawley. He anticipates these new devices, along with a metal detector, will help the administration stop this problem in its tracks.
“Their [the school’s] reasonable suspicion is things like the vape detector. They know that it’s reliable,” said Fah, explaining how the school works with these detectors. “If the vape detectors go off the school can check the cameras and see who entered the bathroom around that time. That gives the school reasonable suspicion to open an investigation.”
A part of that investigation would be using the metal detector to examine the body of a person. Because all vapes have at least a small amount of metal in them, when the metal detector is used on somebody who is carrying a vape, it will detect the metal in the batteries.
The detector is significantly less invasive than a body search or a pat down. This will make it easier to start an investigation on a person without invading their autonomy. Less invasion will allow for easier investigation, helping to catch students who have been vaping in the bathroom and try to prevent them from doing it again.
The school’s main goal is to overall reduce the number of kids who vape at school. The administration hopes that with the help of this new principal, and his new devices, they will be able to successfully help make the school a healthier place.
