Panel Day Reflection

                                   

Bud Allen

Personally, I thought that Panel Day was very helpful and contained a lot of new and interesting information. Most kids in my room had very interesting questions that I hadn't really thought about before. Because of Panel Day, I am much more familiar with the terms that are used often during student searches, such as probable cause, reasonable suspicion etc. Also, I understand the difference between probable cause and reasonable suspicion more clearly. Josh Flore summed it up very nicely by saying "Reasonable Suspicion is when you find the item that you're looking for 51% of the time. Probable Cause is when you find it 90-95% of the time." This really put it into perspective for me.

Josh Flore

The three experts that were on our panel, were Josh Flore (a police offier), Bud Allen (defense attorney), and Daniel Shepardson (house administrator). It was clear that Bud Allen was for the students, and believed that they should have as many rights as everybody else. He emphazized that if you know your rights well, you will be able to stay out of trouble. Bud Allen when defending a case would always be on the side of the student, and would think that the police had somehow conducted an illegal search. Josh Flore, was on the other side of this spectrum. He would say that the police were always doing the right thing. It was interesting when at one point, Bud Allen said something about how the UVM cops weren't real police officers. Josh Flore replied, "They train with us, we go to the same school, how are they not real cops?" It was entertaining to see them go back and forth about this. 

Daniel Shepardson

Daniel Shepardson was sort of the middle ground between these two extremes. He thought that they shouldn't get the police involved, unless it was truly necessary, but the students shouldn't necessarily get as many rights as an adult would. When searching a kid, he would take into account the safety of the suspect, the safety of the rest of the students, what they were really searching for etc, before making the decision to call the police. The school wants to keep the police away as much is possible, he said. 

A lot of questions that were asked were very interesting, such as the one about searching a teacher instead of a student. Nothing really surprised me about their answers. It was all pretty much what I suspected. I did learn a lot more about the real searches and seizures instead of just student searches, from Officer Flore. He talked a lot about car searches, and what officers could and could not do. Because of him, I now know when you can refuse a car search, and when you can't etc, not that I will ever be in that situation, but it's always good to know. It was also interesting to see what Shep thought about CVU and its student searches. He believes that we will never have to have drug testing for athletes. He stated, "the students and the teachers in this school have good relationships, so that won't be necessary."

Overall, Panel day was extremely helpful in seeing the different sides, between a lawyer and a police officer, and then seeing how student searches relates directly to your school.