Have you ever experienced a random search? If not, this is what happens: A few security monitors walk in accompanied by an administrator, who announces the search. They remove handheld metal detectors and check every student and every backpack in the room. If it beeps, students are to show whatever may be in their pocket or backpack, and if anything is found that are against school rules, they take it.

But under what rules exactly?

According to the California Education Code, which governs public schools in the state of California, weapons and drugs are clearly illegal, which is perfectly fine. However, the rules related to cell phones and other electronics are a little hazy.

The Student Conduct Code refers to rules about cell phones and other electronic that are prohibited under the California Education Codes 48900(k) and 48901.5(a).

Those codes are as follows: “Disrupted school activities or otherwise willfully defied the valid authority of supervisors, teachers, administrators, school officials, or other school personnel engaged in the performance of their duties.”

And: “The governing board of each school district, or its designee, may regulate the possession or use of any electronic signaling device that operates through the transmission or receipt of radio waves, including, but not limited to, paging and signaling equipment, by pupils of the school district while the pupils are on campus, while attending school-sponsored activities, or while under the supervision and control of school district employees.”

Confused?

Basically the first one has nothing directly to do with cell phones or other electronics. But the second one, which is 48901.5(a), states that it is the school board’s decision whether to regulate the use of them.

The school board states in Board Policy 5131, adopted Aug. 23, 2003, the position on electronic devices: “Except for prior consent for health reasons, possession or use of electronic signaling devices, including but not limited to pages, beepers and cellular/digital telephones is prohibited.”

The reasons for cell phones being illegal are good; students video fights, take inappropriate pictures, and use them to cheat on tests. Clearly not everyone is using them to do that, but those who do so are ruining it for everyone else.

If students on this campus could be mature enough to have a phone and be responsible with it, there could be a chance to make them legal, and the inconvenience of having them taken away could disappear.

However, students are not the only ones that need to do something. Adults need to revise rules that are outdated, especially when it comes to electronics. You may have noticed that technology changes a lot within a year, let alone four.

It is easy to put pressure on students to do the right thing, but the same pressure needs to be on adults to be more open-minded and to consider the fairness and appropriateness of rules.

If all parties do their part and try to make a change, we might all be happier. Rules are important; they govern people for the better, even if they cause sacrifice. But rules need to be fair as well – for everyone.