The overhead speaker beeped throughout every hall of the school. A message from Principal Chas Coker announced that the school is now on a hold.

The door was unlocked and opened in senior Huntley Poole’s Spanish class. He watched as five men in red shirts and khaki pants entered the classroom. While the situation was out of the ordinary for him, Poole was calm because he did not have anything to hide. 

Or did he? 

“It was such a crazy ordeal [because] I’ve heard about searches but I’ve never experienced them,” Poole said. They [took] everything and made sure we weren’t hiding anything. We had to have our backpacks in the front of the room and they were pulling each student out and separately to search all of their backpacks and all of their clothes and metal detectors and pat us all down and [had us] take off our shoes.”

As everyone headed through the metal detectors popped up in the hallway, a red shirt approached Poole and pulled him to the side. 

One of the men in the red shirts told Poole that his bag was being confiscated and that his belongings would be returned at the end of the day, Poole said.

When the search was over, he sat at his desk with none of his class materials for the day. After just an hour, the red shirts entered the classroom again, and returned the items to Poole, who learned in surprise what had caused the confiscation.

His inhaler for asthma.

“The people who were searching pulled out my inhaler and they just took it,” Poole said. “I have asthma and the nurses knew that and I did have doctor’s notes… But eventually they came back later and gave it to me.” 

While some students, like Poole, may believe that this policy is too strict, school administration such as Wando security director, Kirill Misyuchenko, said he believes otherwise. 

“There’s a [state] statue that says that anybody who enters a school is a subject to search,” Misyuchenko said. “I don’t see how strict they are; they’re actually laid back… the only thing I don’t like is how much instructional time [it takes up.]”

In addition to the instructional time taken up in the classroom where the search is happening, the entire building is placed on a hold during the search. When the men in red shirts, officials from the district, walk into the building, the entire school goes into administrative hold, which prevents students from leaving the classroom under any circumstances.

“If kids find out, they could try to go to the bathroom and get rid of contraband, so that’s the only reason for it,” Musyuchenko said. 

During a search, a classroom is selected at random to be investigated. School Resource Officer John Kane is one of many school employees who oversee a random search. 

“The random searches help to ensure no one feels targeted. Every classroom in Wando is put into a randomized generator that is picked right before the classroom is searched,” Kane said. “The goal for the random searches is to hopefully find nothing.” 

While this may be the goal of the search, it is not always the outcome. Items are often confiscated from students during a search. 

“What is typically found is over-the-counter medication such as Tylenol or Advil, which is still not allowed for students to have on their person. We also find vapes and nicotine pouches at Wando,” Kane said. 

Other objects that have been found at Wando in recent years include a taser, pocketknife, and Oleoresin spray (commonly known as ‘pepper spray’) as reported by Misyuchenko. If someone thinks the searches are too invasive, Charleston County School District policy covers expectations and regulations regarding searches.

“Every student that attends Wando High School or any Charleston County School District high school or middle school signs paperwork at the beginning of the year, and part of that paperwork is consenting to random searches,” Kane said. “After the search is done, the CCSD search team passes out a piece of paper explaining that the students have randomly been selected for a search, and that the search has been consented upon by students and parents after signing paperwork at the beginning of the school year as well as entering the premises [where] there are signs posted at entrances of Wando stating that everyone who enters consents to a search.”

Even so, students such as Poole feel this policy is too strict and do not see the value of the search. 

“I just kind of thought that was really pointless that they took [the inhaler],” Poole said.