It’s this gradual monitoring that stuns some students, even those who told The 74 they otherwise support vape detectors in bathrooms. The possibility of unknown capabilities with sensors is “pretty scary to me,” said Moledina, an Austin teenager who worries about a future where there will be cameras in the bathroom.
“Just knowing there’s vape smoke in the bathroom doesn’t really help you because administrators already know it’s happening, and just knowing it’s there won’t help them figure out who’s doing it,” he said. “So my concern is that, at the end of the day, we’re going to be putting cameras in the bathroom, which is definitely not what we want.”
Discipline logs show that Minneapolis teachers used surveillance cameras combined with sensors to identify students vaping in the bathroom.
For example, in February, a senior at Roosevelt High School was suspended for one day based on allegations that he poisoned weed in the bathroom. Officers reviewed footage from a surveillance camera outside the bathroom and determined that the student “was entering and exiting the bathroom during the time frame when the detector went off.” He was searched, and administrators found “a marijuana vape, an empty glass jar that smelled of weed and a baggie that contained weed shake.”
That same month, teachers referred a Camden High School student to drug and alcohol counselors for “vaping in a single stall bathroom.”
“When I reviewed the camera it appeared [a] The student is coming out of the bathroom in the same stall,” campus officials said.
Gutierrez, 18, of Arizona said she quit vaping after being suspended and is now dealing with depression in positive ways like painting. What he didn’t do, however, was let him go because he got help at school for the mental health challenges that led him to commit the rape in the first place.
She stopped vaping while suspended, she said, because she was away from her friends and lacked access. Gutierrez recalled that after online texts depicted vaping as a disgusting, sticky purple monster that would poison her relationships, she was scared of further compliance.
“Yes, I stopped, but it wasn’t a good stop,” she said. “I didn’t get any support. I didn’t get any counseling. I stopped because I was scared.”