It’s this creeping surveillance that’s bothering some students, even those who told The 74 they otherwise support vape detectors in bathrooms. The possibility of unknown sensor capabilities “is very scary to me,” said Moledina, an Austin teenager who worries about a future in which bathrooms have cameras.
“Just knowing there’s vape smoke in the bathroom doesn’t really help because administrators already know it’s happening, and just knowing it isn’t going to help them figure out who’s doing it,” he said. “So I’m afraid we’ll end up having cameras in bathrooms, which we definitely don’t want.”
Teachers in Minneapolis used surveillance cameras paired with sensors to identify students pretending to be vaping in bathrooms, discipline logs show.
For example, in February, a Roosevelt High School senior was suspended for one day based on accusations that he lit a vape pen in the bathroom. Officials reviewed footage from a surveillance camera outside the bathroom and determined that the student was “entering and exiting the bathroom at the time the sensor activated.” They were searched and administrators found a “marijuana vape, an empty glass jar with the smell of weed, and a bag containing a herbal cocktail.”
That same month, teachers referred a Camden High School student to a drug and alcohol counselor for “vaping in single-stall bathrooms.”
“When you check the camera, you can actually see it [a] student exits the same bathroom,” campus officials said.
Gutierrez, an 18-year-old from Arizona, said she quit vaping after her suspension and now deals with depression through positive means such as painting. What she didn’t do, however, was quit smoking because she received help at school for the mental health issues that led her to vaping in the first place.
She said she stopped vaping after her suspension because she was away from her friends and didn’t have access to it. As Gutierrez recalls, she became frightened into submission by online lessons that portrayed vaping as a disgusting, sticky, purple monster that would poison her relationships.
“Yes, I stopped, but it wasn’t a good stop,” she said. “I didn’t get any support. I didn’t get any advice. I stopped because I was afraid.”