When Aaliyah Iglesias was caught vaping at a Texas high school, she didn’t realize how much could be taken from her.
Suddenly, the rest of her high school experience was threatened: being student council president, her role as debate team captain and walking at graduation. Even her college scholarships were at risk. She was sent to the district’s alternative school for 30 days and told she could have faced criminal charges.
Like thousands of other students around the country, she was caught by surveillance equipment that schools have installed to crack down on electronic cigarettes, often without informing students.
When I was in high school in the 90s, the school had an area of the campus (outside) where kids could smoke. It was just an obvious thing to have at the time because half the student body smoked anyway.
France, in the 80/90 in high school we smoked outside, in community college we smoked in corridor, and in university we smoked inside classrooms and lecture theatre/hall, incredible :-(
To bring that forward a generation, there was a period around 2013-2014 when vaping was brand new and schools hadn’t written any rules yet.
I remember kids vaping in class and some teachers being kinda okay with it, or at least turning a blind eye. Granted, only like 1 or 2 people in the school had vapes.
My high school’s designated smoking area was a stuffy room in the basement with zero ventilation. I’m pretty sure they had to completely demo the walls, floors, and ceilings when they wanted to convert it into a classroom, and it probably still reeked for years.
There was a private school near my house that had something similar. They called it The Dungeon.