Fourth Amendment Rights of Students

Dormitory Searches at Public Colleges and Universities

The Supreme Court's only case involving the Fourth Amendment rights of college students was Washington v. Chrisman (1982). Chrisman dealt with a search of a dormitory room that took place after a police officer at a public university watched a student who appeared to be under the legal drinking age of 21 leave his dormitory while carrying a bottle of gin. The officer stopped the student and asked for identification and then accompanied the student to his room so that the student could obtain his identification. While the officer was standing in the doorway, he noticed what he thought were marijuana seeds and a pipe on the desk. The officer then entered the room, confirmed that the seeds were marijuana, decided that the pipe smelled of marijuana, and informed both the student and his roommate of their rights. When asked whether there were other drugs in the room, the roommate gave the officer a box containing more marijuana and cash. Once a second police officer arrived, both students waived their Miranda rights to remain silent or to have an attorney present and voluntarily consented, orally and in writing, to a search of the room. The search yielded more marijuana and another controlled substance, leading to the roommate's being charged with two counts of possessing the controlled substances.

After the Supreme Court of Washington invalidated the search that led to the roommate's criminal conviction, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed in favor of the state. The Court held that it was not unreasonable for the police officer to have accompanied the student to the dormitory and to have remained in the doorway. Given that the officer was present lawfully and that the marijuana had been “in plain view,” meaning that it was openly visible in the room from the doorway, the Court held that the seizure of the drugs did not violate the Fourth Amendment.

As reflected by the illustrative cases reviewed in this entry, lower courts, both before and after Chrisman, addressed the Fourth Amendment rights of college and university students in disputes involving searches of dormitory rooms that led to their facing criminal charges for possessing illegal drugs. Such cases have had mixed results. Moore v. Student Affairs Committee of Troy State University (1968), an early dormitory search case, involved the search of a student's dormitory room by two state narcotics agents and the university's dean of men. When the search turned up a matchbox containing a small amount of marijuana, the student was suspended indefinitely. Although a federal trial court found that the hearing process denied the student of his constitutional right to due process, a second hearing resulted in his again being suspended.

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