The Echo

I'M A FATHER AND I NEED YOUR HELP.

On Friday, January 30, Brandywine High School Assistant Principal Mr. Keith Rolph took my son, Brandywine High School junior Joseph Wahl, out of his class and asked him to hand over his book bag. Mr. Rolph did not give my son any reason or explanation whatsoever for his taking my son out of his class and to his office, much less for searching his book bag. My son had no idea what was happening or why.

My son represents Brandywine High School with distinction as both a scholar and an athlete. Joseph was selected this year as one of the two juniors representing Brandywine High School in DYLN, the very prestigious Delaware Youth Leadership Network. Joseph was nominated for this honor by … Brandywine High School.

Mr. Rolph never shared with my son what, if any, accusation had been made against my son, even after the search. Mr. Rolph did not find whatever it was he had been looking for. In fact, Mr. Rolph found nothing he knew to be of any concern at all. But he did find something with which he was unfamiliar — a piece of plastic the size and shape of a credit card, sealed in clear packaging, and about which he questioned Joseph.

Mr. Rolph asked Joseph what it was. Joseph explained that it is a tool he sells on eBay, and Joseph showed Mr. Rolph his eBay page on which he sells a variety of items very successfully. Mr. Rolph opened the package to examine it but needed Joseph’s help to figure out how to assemble it and to see what it was for — a box cutter sold primarily as a novelty item, often for $1 or even less, because it fits in your wallet.

Joseph was stunned when Mr. Rolph told him that because Joseph had brought a weapon to school, he would be suspended for five days and the police would be notified! My son’s head spun as he tried to make sense of what was happening. Did someone suspect him of being violent? Why was his bag searched? What were they looking for? What’s going on?

Mr. Rolph, an experienced administrator presumably trained to recognize weapons, did not recognize this plastic device as a weapon — Joseph had to explain to him what it was. Certainly, if Mr. Rolph did not recognize it as a weapon, it is understandable how Joseph never thought of these items as such when he inadvertently left two of them in his bag which he carries everywhere.

After the search was over, Mr. Rolph still offered Joseph no reason or explanation for the search, but instead began asking Joseph bizarre questions and making strange statements my son could not understand. "Have you tried marijuana?” "Do you hang around people who do?” “Were you in the stairwell behind the school during Period 4?” — a time when Joseph was in class. “We know who you run with!” “Be careful who you hang out with!” He asked Joseph if he knew particular other students — students who Joseph had never spoken to nor with whom Joseph had ever had any contact whatsoever in his life.

Joseph says, “After the search, he filled out disciplinary forms and told me to sign them. He called my dad, and while we waited for my dad to arrive, I was even more confused by his questions and comments. I felt he was making light of what just happened. He talked about his son's swimming career at Salesianum and fiddled with his telephone cord. He acted as if he had not just suspended me for 5 days and called the police.”

When I arrived and joined Joseph in Mr. Rolph’s office, Mr. Rolph told me that Joseph had brought a weapon to school. For the first time in my life, I saw my son, the 16 year old black belt with the athletic build, simply break down sobbing. My heart sank as all I could do was throw my arms around him and try to reassure.

Mr. Rolph asked Joseph to leave the room. Mr. Rolph said he wanted to share information with me that he had not shared with Joseph. Once Joseph was out of the room, Mr. Rolph told me that another student had been caught with drug paraphernalia, and claimed to have received it from Joseph, and that’s why Joseph’s belongings were searched.

Mr. Rolph began to lecture me. “We here at the school know who your kid runs with, and good kids get in trouble when they hang out with the wrong kids. I’m a father, too.” I remember the words because I thought “runs with” was an odd phrase, and it rang in my head. If he knew who my kid “runs with,” he would know how surreal this visit has been for me. What is he talking about?

The credit card shaped tool that Joseph had forgotten was in his bag is not a weapon, but a hobby knife; a tool. It is not even as dangerous as a traditional box cutter with a fixed blade. Its “blade” is shorter than my pinky and is designed to cut pieces of tape, paper, string, and bubble wrap.

This “knife” is the exact opposite of a weapon. If Joseph did have the intent to scare or injure a student, it would be a terrible choice. First, this is a two-handed opening blade. That means the user cannot take this tool out of his or her pocket and flip out the blade to use like an assisted-opening knife (e.g., a switchblade). The user must first turn the safety switch to release the blade, fold back both plastic corners, lock the parts of the handles in place, then switch his grip to his dominant hand. Most importantly, this knife has NO LOCKING MECHANISM ON THE BLADE, which means the construction will collapse if heavy force is attempted, making the blade more dangerous to the user than to an intended victim.

The prohibition in the Student Code against “dangerous instruments” and “deadly weapons” is so vague as to be almost meaningless. Can Joseph bring a pen to school? A pen is a very “dangerous instrument.” Much more dangerous instruments — like scissors — are among the items that the Brandywine School District REQUIRES that its FIRST GRADERS bring to school with them.

Scissors are a much more dangerous instrument then this flimsy tool. If nothing else, I think the scissors requirement makes it understandable that Joseph was not more careful to make sure his credit card tool was not in his bag of personal possessions, and that an explanation and a warning were in order, rather than the five day suspension and the police notification. If this item is prohibited, the district should do a better job of educating students and parents. Like telling us.

What does the police report say? We do not know. We have not seen it. Does Joseph have a record now? We do not know. Did Joseph commit a misdemeanor? We do not know. No one from the police has contacted us yet, but the school telling me that the police were notified and that we should expect to be contacted by them forced me to hire a lawyer to protect my son from any potential charge that could result, and to be in the room if Joseph must talk to them.

Before leaving Mr. Rolph’s office, I asked him if there was any way to appeal his decision. He said that indeed, I had one business day to submit such an appeal to Principal Simmons. So Joseph and I got to work, and we learned a great deal.

Personal possessions like a book bag are different from a student’s locker. The locker belongs to the school, and can be searched at any time. But public high schools are allowed to search students’ personal possessions only when "reasonable suspicion” exists, as is recognized and stated in the Brandywine School District’s Student Code of Conduct. The Supreme Court held that "reasonable suspicion is satisfied when two conditions exist: the search is justified at its inception, and the search is reasonably related in scope to the circumstances that justified the search" (New Jersey v. T.L.O., 1985). This search was not justified at its inception.

While you do not need a search warrant or probable cause in schools, you DO need to reach the threshold of “reasonable suspicion,” and on this matter, the Court has explained that, for example, an anonymous phone call advising an administrator that a student will be bringing drugs to school, COUPLED WITH THE STUDENT’S REPUTATION AS A DRUG DEALER, creates reasonable suspicion to search the student's pockets and book bag (State of New Hampshire v. Drake, 1995). Four students huddled together, one with money in his hand and another moving something around in his pocket, does NOT provide reasonable suspicion to search the students for marijuana (A.S. v. State of Florida, 1997), and that the odor of marijuana in the hall does NOT provide reasonable suspicion to search all students' book bags, purses, and pockets (Burnham v. West, 1987).

Mr. Simmons never responded to our appeal. Instead, we received the rejection from the school district’s attorney. We learned only when we received this rejection of our appeal that Joseph’s search is now attributed not to his having been accused by another student as Mr. Rolph had told us, but instead because Mr. Rolph mistook Joseph for someone else. No one had ever accused my son of anything. Mr. Rolph was looking for some other student, and inexplicably asked for Joseph instead. We find it extraordinary that Mr. Rolph would be so careless as not to know either the actual student or the “mistaken” student in his own school, then search a student’s bag, and all without so much as informing the student what was going on or the reason for the search.

We cannot rule out the possibility that Joseph was targeted by the administration the moment the administration had a pretext for doing so because of Joseph’s and his family’s past whistleblowing efforts regarding a troubling science teacher and the bullying of other students by school staff in an extra-curricular activity.

That is, we do not know and have no reason to be confident that the search was justified even had it been conducted on the right student — that other student’s rights may well have been violated as well. But it was conducted on the wrong student altogether. Who is this other student Mr. Rolph was actually seeking and do we know if his rights were similarly violated? How do we even know that there was such a student?

No matter — our appeal which we were given one business day to submit, and which we wrote when we did not even know that the search was based on a mistaken identity rather than a false accusation, was rejected. The administrator haphazardly subjecting students to unjustified searches will not be reprimanded. To the extent policies exist in the school, they will remain unchanged. Better training for administrators? Forget about it.

The damages my child has already suffered include missed academic opportunities, diminished academic performance, and a substantially weakened college application in this, his most important academic year, all resulting in reduced lifetime earnings. Even his SAT score will be less than it could have been, as he has been prohibited from attending the SAT preparatory classes.

Rather than a warning never to bring this tool to school again, Joseph was given this incident description on his disciplinary record to be seen by colleges, graduate programs, and who knows who else: “WO: 1457 Knife/Poss. Safe School & Rec. Zone.”

Because of the suspension, Joseph is barred from the Blue Hen Championship Swim Conference on Saturday, the most important season-ending meet, in which Joseph would have qualified for the state championship. He has also been barred from the first week of baseball, for which Joseph is Brandywine’s starting varsity second baseman.

Because of the suspension, Joseph was prohibited from participating in the DECA competition today in Dover for which Joseph and his partner, a classmate, had been preparing for the last five months. The top three presenters in each category of the competition get a trip to Orlando in order to attend the national competition and qualify for other scholarships. And tonight, we learned that Joseph’s partner, forced to attend the competition alone, pulled it off. Joseph’s partner is going to Orlando! Alone.

Of course Joseph is excited for his partner. And of course Joseph knows that we can add a trip to Orlando and a chance at even more rewards among the long list of things an arrogant administration has taken from him after five months of his hard work because of the school’s cavalier, uncaring, and callous conduct.

There was no reasonable suspicion to subject my son to a general search which turned into an unlawful fishing expedition when the drug paraphernalia he was suspected of having was not found — and all without ever informing Joseph of which school rule he had allegedly violated, either before or even after the search! Joseph has never touched marijuana, and has never been involved in anything related to marijuana or any other illicit drug. Nor did Joseph ever knowingly bring a weapon to school — this finding must not stand.

What if Joseph had been the “right” student, the one for whom Mr. Rolph was actually looking? He would have had no ability to present his response to a wild claim before Mr. Rolph rifled through his personal belongings on an unlawful fishing expedition to find “something” — anything! — which the school can hang its hat on, using the impossibly vague Code of Student Conduct with which most any behavior or item can be alleged to violate. We see no safeguards in place at the school; nothing to stop an overbearing administrator or group of administrators from trampling upon the Constitution they are entrusted to be teaching their students!

The Supreme Court has held that, at the absolute minimum, students in school disciplinary cases are entitled to have notice of the charges against them, a disclosure or explanation of the evidence behind the charges, and an opportunity to contest this evidence. The Court established these minimal requirements in Goss v. Lopez (1975). The Court held that the students had constitutional rights protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Joseph was never given oral or written notice of the charges against him — not before the illegal search, that is. How dare they.

The Delaware ACLU has already offered their help for which we are most grateful. We are also communicating with the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm well known taking on these David versus Goliath civil liberties cases. We want only to clear the good name and reputation of our son and for the school to correct the policies and procedures that led to this gross wrong. We are hoping that the school will reconsider its intransigence and end this family’s nightmare without litigation.

Brandywine High School took advantage of a 16 year old innocent Honor Student who has done nothing but pursue his education and represent his school with distinction and rifled through his book bag without so much as telling him why. Thankfully, this particular student has parents with sufficient resources to fight back. What if it was some other student lacking that same support? Indeed, how many other such students have there been over the years and how many will there continue to be if we don’t speak up? The moment you turn your back, you’re involved.

Brandywine High School has countless problems. My son is not one of them. Why does the school insist on sabotaging the hopes and dreams of one of its best and brightest innocents with this horrific scarlet letter that will follow him for life instead of doing the right thing and overturning this shameful travesty of justice and clearing his name and record? If you can vouch for Joseph’s character, if you can express how you feel about his treatment, if you know someone who might have information helpful to our cause, or if you simply can help get the word out about his plight by forwarding this information and telling your friends and colleagues, we would be forever appreciative.

Sincerely,

Patrick Wahl, DMD, MBA
Wilmington, Delaware
Cell (302) 229-9520
pat@officemagic.com