School shootings are on the rise in the United States, with 140 incidents of gunfire on school grounds occurring this year alone. Some schools try to solve this issue with body scanners. North Meck was one of the twenty-one high schools in CMS chosen to install the scanners, which cost almost $10 million. These scanners don’t improve the school environment or security in the way they are generally anticipated to.
In theory, scanners could be a good idea, but they have many flaws. One of these flaws is inconsistency. Some students say that they've gone through the scanner with different results from one day to the next even though they didn’t change any of the items in their bag.
“I’ve gone through with the same stuff in my bag and sometimes they’ll check me and sometimes they don't,” says a student, who asked to remain anonymous, about the inconsistencies of the body scanners.
Personal items that aren’t weapons can trigger the scanners as well. An examination by the Charlotte Observer shows that 25 percent of CMS students are still triggering the scanners with school supplies or personal items and have to be searched. This can make students anxious about going through the scanners even if they know they don’t have a weapon in their bag.
Additionally, there are many ways to get around the scanners. There are only three areas with scanners, and North Meck’s open campus means that if someone wanted to avoid them, they could.
“The school’s so open people can just leave whatever they have outside and pick it up later,” another student says about the scanners. If students know they are carrying a weapon, they wouldn’t purposefully go through the scanners with it. And with the many places on campus for students to enter and exit, it would be easy for an ill-intentioned person to sneak a weapon on campus.
The overall school environment is disrupted because of the scanners. Funneling 2,146 students into only a couple of areas creates congestion, taking time away from socialization in the morning. Especially because we are coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic — the cause of so much social isolation— it is crucial that we have time to connect with people outside of class.
The scanners also create an inconvenience that has caused many students to be tardy because they had to go through the scanner. “I feel like they make morning transition time more difficult than it needs to be,” says a third student.
The majority of schools that install body scanners have more students of color than schools that don’t. According to some research, “the percentage of students of color who attend schools is the greatest predictor of the presence of these measures, even when controlling for other factors such as neighborhood crime, poor school climate, and other factors that may explain school disruption.” Safety scanners can negatively affect students, especially students of color. This racial discrimination can cause early anxieties within students of color around security and make them feel like criminals. In order to create progress in society, it is important that schools don’t contribute to racial discrepancies.
We shouldn’t have to worry about getting scanned for weapons on a daily basis. These scanners may make it seem like the school is taking precautions towards safety but there are many defects involved with them. The inaccurate and inconsistent detections, easy ways to get around them, disproportionate impacts on students of color, and overall disruption caused by them isn’t worth all the money spent on them. They give a false sense of security and don’t solve the real problem: children having access to harmful weapons. 🆅
The opinions expressed within this piece are solely the author's and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of North Mecklenburg High School.