Smoky Hill High School intends to install new vape detectors in our bathroom, these detectors send out a message.

Rachel Brown, Dean of Students was asked what prompted the decision to install the detectors in the bathrooms, “The amount of students who are missing class to go vape in our restrooms.”

The school has implemented these detectors in our bathrooms to minimize students in the bathrooms.

Evan Hayes (10) said, “People are still gonna be in the bathroom ain’t gonna change anything. Or even if it does change, people being in the bathroom while they’re going to do still be out of class, and people are just going to blow the smoke away like they always do.”

Students already don’t believe this will fully fix the school bathroom issues.

“They were supposed to install them over the summer but I think there was an issue with how they installed them but I think they had to be hardwired instead of using a battery or something. So the district had to, I think, change their plans and it just took longer, but it was not the school’s decision. It was something with the district and how they were installed,” says Monte Reynolds, Dean of Students.

The school had arranged for the vape detectors to be installed during the summer yet they haven’t changed it in the student handbook.

Brown said, “If a student is vaping in the bathroom, it will alarm and then alert security and the deans and I think that will make students not want to be in their vaping because they know that they’re gonna get caught.”

The detectors would trigger alarms and notifications to security and deans, discouraging students from engaging in vaping due to the fear of getting caught.

Students at other schools have already found a way to ‘beat the system’.

A student from CT who wished to be anonymous said, “The vape alarms only go out when visible with e-cigarette and marijuana smoke, you can go to the farther side of the bathroom you all go to smoke.”

“It’s a good idea but, good luck with all the other kids who actually don’t vape in the bathroom,” Hayes said.

Students who were simply using the bathroom can get pulled into the dean’s office as well. There are still many major holes in this idea the school has implemented into the school.

“The only concern I have is that if there is a student vaping in there, and several students who are not vaping then everyone will be brought to the dean’s office to be searched and that might be an inconvenience to someone who’s actually doing the right thing,” said Brown.

Vaping detectors could lead to an inconvenience for innocent students who may be a victim to search along with those who are actually vaping, potentially creating a situation where the right actions of some students result in unfair issues.

“I’m concerned about them being tampered with, also just the supervision, coordinate security and the deans. When they do go off, the system we have a place for that,” said Reynolds.

The school has established a policy in place when the detectors are triggered.

Reynolds states, “I hope so I have met with administrators with other schools who use them and they say it does help.”

The school hopes this new system will work like other schools say it does.